Thread: IR in vb

What did you want to do? Talk to an IR-Man serial port device?

I want to recieve commands to my app from remote control. I haven't a clue what I need as of yet, so I just need some advice. I have experience which com ports when programming my LCD!

If anyone knows of a reciever circuit, and maybe so vb code to get the input I would be sorted.

Should of explained in more detail to start with... Cheers Rock

I'm using this receiver circuit:
http://www.geocities.com/uirr/index.htm

A friend built it for me. You can apparently omit the 5.1V zener on the TXD line 'cause the PIC has one internally, and the oscillator circuit can be ommitted as well, as the circuit was built for PICs without an internal clock. Flash the PIC with a RC of 4mhz and it works fine. Used a 12C508A PIC 'cause the program fits

A demo app which i wrote to quickly test the circuit is here:
http://nakoruru.rudora.net/vb/ir.zip

It's pretty simple (although my code in there's a mess! Btw, I use Patrice Scribe's Win32.tlb to execute API faster.. If you don't have it, just cut and paste the Sleep function from the API Viewer).

I don't have much knowledge of PIC programming, so that circuit would be out of my league. I found this site, and the circuit seems much easier for me to build:

http://www.cesko.host.sk/girderplugin.htm

Although would I be able to use your code with it? I don't really have much electronic knowledge, and have only been programming for about 4 months.

Cheers Rock

Before we build a PIC circuit, we breadboarded some IR receivers without a PIC. There's a slight problem with most of them, your app has to poll the COM port quite frequently as the data isn't buffered, which makes your CPU usage jump. This also means that if you're not constantly polling (eg. if Winamp changes track, and overall system CPU usage changes), it skips a few cycles and might not read from the COM port.

The PIC is actually quite easy to make, and there's a few ultra-cheap PIC programming circuits online.

The code that i've posted only works for IRMan compliant devices, and you'll need to use Girder or write your own code for a device like the one you posted.

cheers for the info mate!