Category Archives: AnalysIR Blog

Update: More good news today & another Bonus feature!

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More good news today & another Bonus feature!

The news is that today AnalysIR was accepted into the Microsoft BizSpark programme, which will help us out in our development efforts on the MS platform along with lots of other goodies.

The Bonus feature is the addition of support for Importing of Global Caché commands in GC-100, iTach, GC-IRL & GC-IRE formats into AnalysIR. This was suggested by one of our backers & we hope to close the loop by supporting export as well (Time permitting).

An interesting point is that GC sells a learning device (like an RS-232 dongle) for importing IR signals and it costs circa $100 on Amazon. It looks like when we get the export feature working, AnalysIR with an Arduino will be able to a lot lot more than this $100 device.

So the list of formats now supported for import includes:

– IRremote
– IRLib
– Pronto CCF
– Global Caché GC-100
– Global Caché iTach
– Global Caché GC-IRL
– Global Caché GC-IRE

and we may add a couple more in the initial release. We also hope to support export of these protocols from AnalysIR – time permitting. This means that you will have a generic device than can record & decode via the Arduino – plus convert to/from all these formats. Impressive!

Thanks to our backer who has a Global Caché device and is willing to test the AnalysIR export once it is available.

Update: Bonus feature – IR Chart Analytics for AnalysIR

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Today we have added another bonus feature to AnalysIR – a colour coded chart which displays the distribution of Marks & Spaces of an IR signal, including an option to select the granularity of each time slot measured (from 10 to 1,000 uSecs). We have included a screenshot below of an NEC signal at 50 uSecs time slots and the chart shows the number of Mark/Spaces for each time range found.

chartscreenshot
Screenshot of AnalysIR Analytics feature

This feature has a number of potential uses:

– Makes decoding new protocols easier, because you get a quick analysis of the pulse lengths (marks & spaces) in the signal.

– Can immediately show problems with your IR receiver, transmitter, encoding or decoding circuit/logic. For example, in the chart above the space for a ‘1’ bit should be 1,690 uSecs and it’s shown on the graph as being spread out between the 1550 to 1700 time slots. This is not normally a big issue as most decoders will allow a reasonable margin of error when decoding, but it can help to highlight issues when designing.

– Using the image save option means you can export the chart and use in reports, blogs or presentations.

Thanks again to all our backers who used the IGG referrals option for AnalysIR. It has had a real impact. (We are now ranked in the top 10 Technology projects on IGG which have reached over 75% of target!  – ahead of many bigger projects Keep sharing your AnalysIR referral link.  See earlier post re referrals)

And finally, keep your feature suggestions coming!

 

PS: You should be able to zoom in/out of an image using CTRL ‘+’, CTRL ‘-‘ or CTRL ‘0’ in most desktop browsers.

Screenshot: Import feature & Global Support for AnalysIR

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Another quick update to let you know that we have also included Pronto code import, as a bonus feature today, in addition to the other 2 formats in the post earlier today.

As we were testing the pronto code import, we came across another protocol from Pioneer based on the NEC protocol, but with different timings. So we also included support for this Pioneer protocol into AnalysIR.  This import facilty is really superb, only sorry we didnt do it earlier 🙂

A screenshot is included below and in full resolution under the Gallery tab (click on image).

ImportScreenShot
Screenshot of AnalysIR Import feature

A big Welcome and Thanks to our latest backers. We now have over 50 supporters from at least 11 countries spread across the continents of North & South America, Australia and Europe as follows:

Australia
Belgium
Brazil
Canada
Germany
Ireland
Italy
Netherlands
Romania
United Kingdom
United States

Apologies, if we missed anyone.

Maker Faire – Timelapse & RFE deadline

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Created on the Timelapseberry Pi, a Raspberry Pi-based timelapse camera (AnalysIR is on the right)

PS: As I was typing this timelapse sequence of Maker Faire last week just arrived, which shows the AnalysIR stand on the right. (looks like it can only appear at the top of an update)

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Great News!

Yesterday we successfully managed to import from the RAW/DUMP output of the 2 main Arduino IR libraries (IRremote & IRLib). To use it’s very simple, just copy and paste all of the text output and paste into AnalysIR. Simple! You then get a graphical display of the signal and the option to save it to disk as part of the session History. We will continue to test over the coming weeks and maybe even add another import source. Suggestions Welcome!.

You may ask – why is this feature useful when AnalysIR can just record and decode and save the signal directly. Well there happens to be a huge resource across the Internet of pre-recorded signals from all sorts of tools & devices, and it may be beneficial to import them into one place for comparison or troubleshooting. Another use would be to help others who are looking for help on support Forum(s) etc. Once the signal is imported into AnalysIR, you can then export an image of the signal trace (or plot) which could also have advantages in education.

Now that the end date is on the Horizon, we are finalising our release plans. So if there are any feature requests, from backers we would like to hear about them in the next 3-5 days at the latest, so that we can include them in the initial release(if feasible).

Celebrating 50th backer with new ‘Import’ feature

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WOW

We are delighted to welcome our 50th backer and to celebrate we are going to spend some time today adding a new feature – going to try importing from one other system to get us started and hopefully add more in future.

Thanks to everyone who took the time to make referrals, it is having a real impact on our ranking on Indiegogo.

Update: 50% of Campaign target reached

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Great News – we have passed 50% of the minimum target, but with lots of hard work remaining to get to 100%.

We had a great weekend with the Maker Faire & coverage on the Arduino Blog. I believe we also got coverage on Adafruit yeaterday, all of which really helps to get the message out for AnalysIR.

Thanks again to our backers who shared the link to our project (see earlier post on how to) – it really helps and we can see the impact via the analytics.

We will make another update once we have fully recovered from Maker Faire (Great fun and very very hard work on the day and in preparation).

This morning we were pulling our hair out using the Leonardo platform, but it seems that unlike other Arduinos you need to properly close the serial port in the windows application before exiting, otherwise the Leonardo is visible as a COM port but unusable. It took hours to debug this and we will make a post on the Arduino forum in case others hit the same problem.

……more later and a BIG welcome to all of our new backers.

AnalysIR featured on Arduino blog for Dublin Maker Faire

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New infrared applications using Arduino at Mini MakerFaire Dublin (tomorrow!)

Friday, July 26th, 2013

AnalysIR

Here is an extract of the Arduino blog post featuring AnalysIR. Click the the link above to visit the Arduino Blog.

The power of infrared light was widely and best appreciated with invention of television’s remote controls. The signal between a remote control handset and the device it controls, consists of pulses of infrared light, which is not visible to the human eye.

Tomorrow at MakerFaire Dublin you’ll we able to see the work of AnalysIR, a project that is taking this technology to a whole new level.

They implemented a Windows application which connects to an Arduino with the addition of an IR receiver and can decode new IR signals in a fraction of the time: no need for expensive Logic Analyzers or Oscilloscopes.

Here they are with their Indiegogo campaign:

At MakerFaire they will be showing some cool demos of what you can do with IR like generating electricity, seeing the invisible -Using iPhone & Android camera to check if TV remote is working, long range TV remote Control Demo Using Optics and many more applications for a total of 10 installations. Look out for them on Saturday!

Update: Arduino Guru, Massimo Banzi tweets for AnalysIR

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We are off to the faire tomorrow, for a day of Fun  – Maker Faire that is. We are presenting 10 IR based exhibits (more later).

BanziTwitterIt has been an exciting day for us here in Dublin with the coverage on the Arduino blog. I have uploaded a screen grab from our twitter feed showing one of the Arduino founders tweeting about AnalysIR.  The blog is accessible from the Arduino website or via http://j.mp/16hAGH7 .