Infrared Receivers – signal lag and distortion

Many electronics enthusiasts will be familiar with how Infrared receivers demodulate IR signals. In this post we show a visualisation of the time lag and distortion of the signals as they pass through the IR receiver for demodulation and noise filtering.  Most DIY projects use the raw timings from the IR receiver to decode individual signals. However, not many will be aware that IR receivers can distort the signal timings by significant amounts. Fortunately, common IR decoders take this into account and compensate for timing distortions introduced by infrared demodulators / receivers.

Infrared Signal, Modulated & De-modulated
Infrared Signal, Modulated & De-modulated

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Air Conditioners: Recording long Infrared Remote control signals with Arduino

hRecently we have been helping several members on the Arduino forum to record and playback their remote control signals from their Air Conditioners. These signals are typically much longer than those of TVs or common media devices. The 2 most popular libraries for Arduino, IRremote & IRlib are excellent, but have some limitations which we have covered in a previous post. In this post we address one particular issue that is proving challenging to users.

airconremote
Long Infrared signals prove challenging for Arduino users

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Arduino: 10 common pitfalls with Infrared Remote Control

Arduino: 10 common pitfalls with Infrared Remote Control
Arduino: 10 common pitfalls with Infrared Remote Control

Over the last few months we have been regular contributors to the Arduino and other forums, answering questions about Infrared remote control projects. It became apparent that beginners typically trip up on many common ‘pitfalls’. So we decided to list off our ‘Top 10’.

 

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Raspberry Pi, AnalysIR & LIRC serve-up Infrared Remote Control

We have been intending to add support for LIRC into AnalysIR for a long time. Recently one of our enthusiastic users, working on his Raspberry PI,  needed some help getting Air conditioner signals from his ‘Air Conditioner’ infrared remote control decoded. His preference was for a LIRC based approach as he already had this working for his TV via his RPi using a cool web based interface from his smart phone.

Rasberry Pi tight integration with AnalysIr and  LIRC
Rasberry Pi tight integration with AnalysIr & LIRC

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Latest ‘New Year’ release of AnalysIR with full support for USB IR Toy and more.

Dublin, Ireland – 31st January 2014. We are happy to announce the latest ‘New Year’ release of AnalysIR to all our backers & supporters. Since the completion of the crowd-funding campaign on Indiegogo we have added over 125 updates and enhancements to AnalysIR, with more to come.

AnalysIR Screenshot
AnalysIR Screenshot

A major highlight of this release is full AnalysIR support for USB IR Toy from Dangerous Prototypes (V1 & V2 hardware) for decoding and resending IR signals at all common modulation frequencies. In our opinion, AnalysIR is now the premier GUI supporting DP’s IR toy, not to mention the Arduino, RPi, MSP430 F5529 LaunchPad (beta)  and more. A selection of enhancements in this latest release, include: Continue reading Latest ‘New Year’ release of AnalysIR with full support for USB IR Toy and more.

USB IR Toy – Infrared Carrier frequency review

Since introducing support into AnalysIR for the USB IR Toy we haven’t played too much with setting the different infrared carrier frequencies. After reading some mixed experiences on the Dangerous Prototypes forum we decided to put it to the test. So to start off we implemented a feature in AnalysIR to set the carrier frequency and to default to 38kHz at start up. UIRToyModulation38kHzNext we checked the mechanism described on the DP website about configuring the carrier frequency and everything seemed to work out OK. Continue reading USB IR Toy – Infrared Carrier frequency review

Follow up: Custom TV infrared remote control using Arcade style console

For anyone following the progress of our ‘Custom TV Infrared remote control’ for the SKY+ box, we received it back for some upgrading over the last week and tomorrow (weather permitting – there are lots of high winds in Europe today, with many flights being cancelled) it will be flown back to its owner, with several upgrades on board.

 

Custom SKY+ IR Remote control, by AnalysIR
Custom SKY+ IR Remote control, by AnalysIR

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Constant current infrared LED emitter circuit

Recently, we have been asked several times about driver circuits for IR LEDs, particularly with good range and coverage. Most of us start off driving infrared leds directly from an Arduino or other MCU using a basic resistor in series with the LED connected to a digital output pin of the MCU.

IRsignaltraceRectifierDiodeIN4148
An oscilloscope snalpshot showing a trace of Ve from the constant current circuit shown below.

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Testing AnalysIR with a custom PCB

Here are some photos we captured, of a sample of our MCU test rigs and custom PCB for AnalysIR.

AnalysIRtestrigs
A sample of our test rigs for AnalysIR

The photo above shows some of our test setup for Arduino, Raspberry Pi, TI MSP430 LaunchPad and the (big) baby of them all the USB IR Toy. The small red custom PCBs are ones we had made via Elecrow which worked out great. So instead of just using  solderless breadboards we now plug these ‘half shields’ directly into the Arduino header, or in the case of the RPi using a ribbon cable. The USB IR Toy already has the IR receivers on board and doesn’t require this PCB.

We should also be able to hook up the LaunchPad to this board using headers. So once we receive the full set of headers, we ordered on-line, we will have all our test setups much neater and more reliable. Previously, we used solderless breadboards, as can be seen in the photo attached to the LaunchPad. Continue reading Testing AnalysIR with a custom PCB

USB IR Toy – test release issued.

Today we issued a test release of AnalysIR, supporting V1 & V2 USB IR Toy loaded with firmware V22. If you have an IR Toy and want to test it out, leave a message with your email in the contact form at the top. Naturally, this is available only to backers with AnalysIR. You can support our project and get a copy of AnalysIR via the option at the top of this page.

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