Building an IR transmitter?*

[HighLife]

Can anyone verify whether or not were allowed to build our own IR transmitter instead of using a TV remote?

(Srry for the repost the last thread was poorly named)

[DonRotolo]

This is an opinion. For an answer which you can use at competition, use the official Q&A forum.

Yes, you can build your own (but why?), or modify a remote to have a higher IR light output. Just try not to have so much light you interfere with everything. A regular remote should be workable from 50 feet, you might have to try 3 or 4 before you find one.

Don

[xanarchyx]

if you want more range or power, just add another 1 or 2 IR LEDs in parallel with the one(s) in the remote. make sure that they are aimed like the other one and use the same voltage. also the same wavelength might be needed, not sure on that tho.

[keen101]

Originally Posted by xanarchyx

if you want more range or power, just add another 1 or 2 IR LEDs in parallel with the one(s) in the remote. make sure that they are aimed like the other one and use the same voltage. also the same wavelength might be needed, not sure on that tho.

Yes, that would be the most advisable solution. just add more IR LED's to increase the range (and perhaps power too).

[HighLife]

No, I was thinking more along the lines of making a different user interface. Maybe hooking it up to a joystick....

[pakratt1991]

hooking it up to a joystick, while workable, would be very jerky and hard to control, seeing as it would only have one speed and would only receive a signal every 1/10th of a second.

I know that my team was looking into making our own IR transmitter, we rigged something up today using a AVR (i believe) along with a little code, and it worked great

[danshaffer]

Originally Posted by pakratt1991

I know that my team was looking into making our own IR transmitter, we rigged something up today using a AVR (i believe) along with a little code, and it worked great

That's cool. I was concerned that we would have to hit that 38KHz or something band for the red IR board to be able to pick up our signals. What kind of signals were you using (how many bits, what frequency, etc)?

[emusteve]

If you look at <R65> (which is a bit too long to post here), it implies that not only can you build your own signaling device (it even gives maximum dimentions), but you could also design or hack your own receiver! The restrictions are communication method - Visible or Infrared light, or Sound, and that it only receive/respond to 4 states.

Steve