The problem AdBlock TV (ADBTV) solves

TV ads are annoying and brings unwanted noise to our homes. Muting ads reduces a lot of noise inside one's house. ADBTV blocks ads by muting them whenever they appear on TV.

A simple, cheap, extension to your Raspberry Pi for blocking/muting ads on TV.

When ads start to appear after a program, ADBTV will recognize the advertisement audio and will send an Infrared signal to the TV asking it to mute. When the ads end, TV will be unmuted and audio will continue.

Audio from set-top-box (STB) is routed to the Raspberry Pi and TV is asked to mute. So, audio will be continuously received in the Raspberry Pi. And when ads end, the TV will unmute again

Features :

• Cheap : 300Rs worth-addons above Raspberry Pi
• Lightweight : Runs even on 1GB RAM rasppi (our Pi is the 2015 1GB model)
• Offline : Completely runs offline, no need of internet
• Web UI to control ADBTV running on Raspberry Pi
• Record TV audio and save
• Add new advertisments, sounds to block
• Decentrlized ad-sound sharing with IPFS (not necessary)

Challenges we ran into

• Infrared emitting was a hurdle. But thanks to the Linux Infrared Remote Control project, it became easier.
• Recognizing ad sounds was problematic, it's not perfect, but we were able to optimize it to the needed level
• Routing audio from the set-top-box (STB) to rasppi. We didn't think this will work out initially
• Since we are beginners to hardware, choosing and buying the right components was difficuly