July 05, 2026 • *Categories** • *Reading time:** 3 minutes It's that time of the year again. For the past three years I participated in the old computer challenge (http://occ.sdf.org/) every year, and I always had a lot of fun, so I wanted to do something this year, too. The topic for this year isn't strictly about old computers, but rather about making something yourself, to combat the onslaught of AI slop that we're all being subjected to on a daily basis. I like this topic, and so I've been racking my brain without much success on what I could (and want to) make. I currently have a lot of time (thanks to some health issues (https://82mhz.net/posts/2026/02/living-with-chronic-fatigue-syndrome-cfs/)), but not a lot of energy or ability to focus and work on something for a prolonged period of time (thanks to the same health issues...), so many things I would want to do are probably beyond my current abilities. So I thought rather than torture myself trying to come up with something elaborate and then failing at it, I'll try my hands on something simple and fun. I'm going to use an Arduino to build a USB infrared receiver, so I can control my media centre (which is a Raspberry Pi running Kodi) with an infrared remote control. (I know I can attach the IR receiver to the Pi's GPIO pins directly, but using USB makes it more universal.) That might sound complicated, and in the past it would have been, but thanks to Arduino and tons of available software libraries it should actually be pretty straight forward. I'm also a firmware developer by trade, so this falls way within my comfort zone. I don't even have to buy anything, because all that's needed is an infrared receiver, a remote control and a random microcontroller board, of which I have way too many anyway. So I dug out a few parts I had lying around, and that's my project for this year. Make something usable out of the parts in the picture, and maybe 3D print an enclosure to make it look nice. https://82mhz.net/images/occ2026/occ2026_1.jpg Infrared sensor, Arduino clone, Apple remote The goal here is to build something (semi)useful, but also to create a tutorial on how to get started building something with an Arduino, so that anyone who is interested in working with microcontrollers but is maybe a bit intimidated by it can follow along and see that it's actually fairly easy to get something going. Should be fun. I'm going to get started now, I'll post updates throughout the week. • If you would like to send me a message, comment or share this post, you can do so here: Send me an E-Mail (mailto:andreas@82mhz.net?subject=Post%20%22Old%20Computer%20Challenge%202026%20-%20Make%20Something%22)Reply on Mastodon (https://82mhz.net/posts/2026/07/old-computer-challenge-2026-make-something/)Share on Mastodon (https://share.joinmastodon.org/#text=Old%20Computer%20Challenge%202026%20-%20Make%20Something%20-%2082MHz%0Ahttp://82mhz.net/posts/2026/07/old-computer-challenge-2026-make-something/%0Aby%20@82mhz@mastodon.bsd.cafe)