Advent of Code is a yearly programming challenge that releases a pair of problems every day in December leading up to Christmas. It’s a good excuse to do a different type of thinking than you typically encounter doing software development, and at work we have a competition with prizes for those who finish a certain number of problems. Last year, I decided to the the challenge in Elixir, and, while I didn’t finish (it was a crazy time at work), I really enjoyed the opportunity to try out a language I was interested in but had no real other opportunity to use.

I built a Tetris clone. You can play it here. It also has touch controls that work for mobile users (This is still pretty buggy).

Most television remotes work by sending signals via an infrared LED at a certain carrier frequency. The receiver of these signals uses a device that decodes theses signals and outputs a stream of data. I found a library that made reading these signals trivial. Combining these two I felt confident I could come up with something to allow easy control of either television. After ordering a couple infrared LEDs and the above receiver diode from Sparkfun, I threw together a prototype.