Sourcing challenge: equivalents for expensive name brand parts:
TSOP4438 Vishay - Everlight IRM-3638J15. 0038 and 1838 seem to be common root part numbers
TSOP4456 Vishay - tsop34856 is around, but this part seems EOL. too bad, RX @ 45meters (?!)
QSE159 OnSemi - ugh, this one I need to talk to a few factories, seems rare
It seems like the 56kHz demodulator is not going to happen. Instead, I think dropping the LED size to 3mm, and using at least three might be a better plan. Ideally 1 tight beam in the center, flanked by two wider beams on the side/edges?
Can’t say I personally do much IR hacking, but I do love the idea of these expansion boards and would love to see more of them (both officially, and from the community). Especially with how easy it is to just put a basic pin header on the edge of the PCB – no need for a specialized connector or anything.
I’m glad you like the expansion boards, I’m going to keep making them as I build out the firmware. It’s helpful for me to have a solid platform for testing multiple chips.
This is probably where it’s headed. 3 x 3mm 100mA IR LEDs, each with a constant current driver. I’m going to use good Vishay high power IR LEDs - no reason to cheap out there.
I should mention that (IMH)) having the ability to store and load “scripts” will become more important. For instance, the setup for the SLE4443/SIM had several steps that wasn’t obvious to a new user (i.e. me). The Github repository can contain several “example” scripts that would be very helpful to new users - a component library so to speak. They should be eventually be added to the Device Demos but we all know keeping documentation in sync with the source is always a challenge, An IR database would certainly need this as well.
As for adapter boards, having a general purpose prototype board could be another item to add to the store.
However, I think we can use less current and add an additional LED if we use two LEDs per current driver. At the moment a lot of excess current is burning off in the transistors. It depends if we have enough voltage overhead. I’ll look into it soon, but for now I’m sending this board off for prototypes.
Yeah, I didn’t go any further with the IRDA. It seems to be dated, though it might be useful for vintage stuff.
I like having a look at IR signals though, and it’s nice to be able to copy weird cheap remotes (LED strips for example). And of course TV B Gone functionality.
At some point we’ll need to look into offline functionality. At the moment the button doesn’t do anything until the terminal has been enabled. There’s no reason it has to be like that, its just where the interrupt flag is serviced in the main loop. After that it would use the built in scripting stuff.
I’m sure you could start some kind of timer on the first button interrupt to do double/triple taps.
I have one button on a piece of kit for job and it has way more than 3 functions. Ok there is a beeper so you get feedback. Bit BP5 has lots of LEDs.
In my case push and hold for 10 seconds puts you in shift mode1, hold for 20 shift mode 2. I have 3 LEDs so use them to show one of 8 options. (well 6 as initial value and final value are backout/null)
Just looking at bus pirate and we have 10 leds on the top. Hold button down, after a few seconds all LEDs out then each second light a further LED. 1 to 10 for button1.scr … button10.scr. Hold until all go out again for cancel.
We do also have an LCD, but I get that it is a much bigger pain in the rear to use that. Paul, who did the scope, mentioned that there are some nice graphics libraries and I hope to look into that some day too.
