Tag Archives: Arduino

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.

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

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

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.

Continue reading Constant current infrared LED emitter circuit

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

AnalysIR integrated support for USB IR Toy

Dangerous Protoypes
USB IR Toy V2 from Dangerous Prototypes (via Seedstudio)

We received a V2 USB IR Toy last week from Dangerous Prototypes via Seedstudio.
(See early access note for backers below)

After some initial teething problems we set about playing with this new device. Then we went about trying to integrate it into AnalysIR. We found that operating the IR Toy in ‘Sampling Mode’ worked best for our needs. There are several other modes available which are described on the website below. Continue reading AnalysIR integrated support for USB IR Toy

Custom TV remote control using Arcade style console

  Following on from our previous blog post about SKY+ RC6 IR codes, we have now completed the project and are about to ship to its new owner – a friend of ours.

SR1We purchased a Sega megadrive Arcade style games console which was BNIB for €25 ($35) and disabled all of the built-in gaming functionality. We then wired up each of the 12 available switches (Joystick & Arcade style buttons) to the Arduino Nano which was placed onto an Arduino prototyping shield and mounted to the enclosure using ‘lots’ of hot glue. Note some of these consoles come with an additional 2 buttons, which can bring the total to 14. In addition, the joystick has 8 positions in total of which we used only 4 as it would be too difficult for the user to manage all eight. Continue reading Custom TV remote control using Arcade style console

Crowdfunding Campaign Update – 23rd Oct 2013

Hello Backers,

We have been busy over the last few weeks updating AnalysIR, for you. We hope to make the next release at the end of this month around Halloween.

You may not know that Halloween originated in our part of the world, but we promise not to introduce too many scary features this time 🙂 .

Our next release will include a number of Updates & fixes as follows: Continue reading Crowdfunding Campaign Update – 23rd Oct 2013

Update: AnalysIR Phase 1 roll-out, Arduino Due

Just a quick update to let you know how things are progressing with the phase 1 roll-out.

Today we have issued our 2nd release to the initial participants which includes 22 updates and fixes to AnalysIR plus many other updates to the User Guide. AnalysIR has benefited greatly from the feedback received with a bonus of more features added.

We have recently received an Arduino DUE and have succeeded in porting our existing Arduino code to this new device. The porting was surprisingly quick and very few changes were required, which is all credit to the Arduino Team for making it so easy for us. The DUE code will be merged into our release cycle sometime over the next month or so.

So far we have had mainly positive results on the Arduino platform. However, the Raspberry Pi platform (RPi) is presenting more challenges than anticipated. The good news is that we believe we have a workaround for RPi and we will work on resolving any trailing issues over the next weeks. Another aspect of the RPi roll-out is that it requires greater knowledge of things such as Linux, networking and compiling on the RPi for users. We will put some thought and effort into trying to simplify this experience – but this may take more time than anticipated. Arduino is just so easy to use…..

At this time, we would also like to open up the phase 1 roll-out to another 10 backers on a first come basis. So the first 10 emails to arrive in our inbox, from backers, will receive an invitation. You can use the IGG message feature for this or just email info@A?????IR.com (replace the A?????IR with our name). To participate you will need an Arduino or RPi and an IR receiver and of course time.

At this point we still expect to release AnalysIR to all backers in or around Sep 30th.

Finally, many thanks again for all your support and patience.

Campaign completes successfully at 208% of Target & 150 Backers

Wow, what a couple of months this has been with over 1,300 emails received, new partners, over 4,168 referrals to the campaign, 208% funded, several world firsts with IR on Arduino & Raspberry Pi and most importantly backed by 150 people from 32 Countries across the globe. Not to mention some great bonus features added to AnalysIR along the way, some of which have been inspired by our backers.

Our tasks for the next week include, progress on the following:

– Documentation
– Installation Package for download
– Some bug fixing
– Online bug tracker
– Online discussion board
– Web site
– Select & Issue email Invitations to 1st phase roll-out participants
– Ship remaining kits.

I would like to finish up this update by welcoming our latest backers and thanking all our backers for your support.

The AnalysIR Team