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IR Remote Control Access In Windows With WinLIRC: How To Control Your PC Using Any Remote



If the analysis of the configuration file is performed correctly, you shouldbe presented with an "Analysis successful" message, as shown in Figure4. This means that you have successfully taught WinLIRC how to interact withyour Packard Bell remote control.




How To Setup IR Remote Control Access In Windows With WinLIRC




The Packard Bell FastMedia Remote is particularly interesting because itsinfrared receiver unit is not bound to the Packard Bell FastMedia remote alone.In fact, you can use the infrared receiver unit with virtually any IR remote.lirc.org helps you out by offering pre-programmed configuration files usable byWinLIRC for a slew of infrared remote controls.


I already 'googled' a lot and asked Panasonic, whether this TV remote control sends its IR signals based on the infrared protocol RC-6. But they were not able to provide me with this piece of information. Many thanks in advance for your answers.


Intel NUC systems can be used with Media Center Edition infrared remote controls (and others), like the ones listed in the article below. I am not aware if it will work with your TV's remote but hopefully other users will comment about their experiences.


I installed WinLIRC and EventGhost with Windows 7 Pro 64 on the NUC. These Software applications do not interprete any infrared signal, which is transmitted from the TV remote control to the NUC. Thus, I am pretty sure that it is a General issue refarding the CIR Nuvoton Receiver. That's the reason, why I deinstalled (deleted completely) Win 8.1 Pro 64 and installed Win 7.


Consumer IR devices use an infrared LED in the handheld remote and an IR receiver located inside the device. Since sunlight and ambient room lighting would interfere with any IR detector just looking at light levels, the signal modulates (i.e. turns on and off) a high frequency carrier signal. This is called amplitude shift keying(ASK). Typically for IR, the frequency is in the 30-60Khz range with 38Khz being the most common carrier frequency. There are a few early first generation electronic ballasts for fluorescent lights operating this range that can cause interference with IR remotes, but in most cases it works well. This means that the IR LED transmitter must be modulated. On mbed, this can be done using the PWM hardware. The IR detector modules have a built-in bandpass filter and hardware to demodulate and recover the original signal.Sparkfun IR LED transmitter moduleThe Sparkfun IR LED breakout board seen above contains a 50MA high output IR LED and a driver circuit using a transistor as seen in the schematic below. An IR Led can be used instead now that this board is no longer available, but the circuit still needs the correct polarity to control the LED on/off state, since the serial port's internal UART receiver hardware must have a low start bit and a high stop bit to work. A discrete IR LED should have an operating voltage of around 1.5V, so don't forget the series voltage dropping resistor!


Characters typed in PC terminal window echo back using the IR linkThe demo is started on mbed and a terminal application window is started on the PC using mbed's virtual com port. As seen above in the demo, any character typed in the PC's terminal application window is sent out over the serial port, transmitted and received using the IR link, read back in on the serial port, and echoed back in the terminal application window. If the characters typed in do not appear in the window as they are typed, there is a problem with the IR link. LED1 and LED2 on mbed are used to indicate TX and RX activity. If you only see a few occasional errors, look around for a fluorescent light that might be causing interference. While running the demo if you happen to have an IR remote control handy, point it at the IR receiver and hit a button. Assuming that the IR remote uses a carrier near 38 KHz, you should see a random looking string of characters on the PC every time you hit a button.


These demos show just the basics of getting the communication channel operational. In the case of a handheld remote, if the signal is not received the user just hits the button again and perhaps moves closer. For applications that need more reliability, a bidirectional link would be required. One solution to support bidirectional communication is for each device to have a transmitter and receiver operating at a different frequency. Another possibility is to turn off the transmitter when it is not sending data. This requires a more complex protocol such as CSMA to solve the problems that would occur whenever two devices start to transmit at the same time. Being able to send data in both directions would allow each message to be acknowledged and checked for transmission errors using a checksum or CRC. In case of an error, it could automatically be retransmitted. Many of the higher data rate RF modules use frequency shift keying (FSK) instead of the simpler ASK for modulation. Similar to AM versus FM commercial radio broadcasts, having the signal change the frequency of the carrier signal provides more noise immunity than changing the amplitude, but it also requires a bit more hardware and power. More advanced wireless systems also have several channels at different frequencies and they automatically switch to an inactive channel to avoid conflicts. These techniques are required for reliable networking and many are built into the more complex and costly wireless communication standards and protocols such as WiFi, Bluetooth and Zigbee. In general, higher data rates, longer range, and higher reliability always adds to the power used, hardware cost, and software complexity. If you need higher data transfer rates and higher reliability, there are several wireless networking solutions available on breakout boards with mbed code examples in the wireless section of the mbed cookbook. These modules offer a drop-in solution and typically have a RF transceiver along with a microcontroler with firmware that implements the wireless protocol. Other wireless modules available on breakout boards shown below to consider for use with mbed and with mbed code examples are the RFM22B (128KbPS low-cost FSK transceiver), XBee (Zigbee), RN-42(Bluetooth) and the WiFly (WiFi)


For longer range, more advanced antennas with high directional gain pointed in the correct direction can be used for stationary transmitters and receivers. The Wi Fi antenna seen below worked at 56Km using 200mw of RF power with a gain of 23.5 dBi. RF amplifiers can also be used to boost RF output and increase range, but check regulations and limitations in each country on RF output power. The 1000mw RF amplifier seen below can boost Wi Fi range to 12Km and has been used for remote control of UAVs.2.4 GHz Grid Antenna with 23.5 dBi gain


I just found this instructable article by Josh on how to build your own cheap multi functional camera controller. The basic idea is to use an SLR camera with an infrared (IR) controlled shutter along with a microcontroller. Josh wrote some software for the microcontroller to choose shutter trigger options via a simple push button menu and then fire off the camera at the appropriate time. The infrared output is via an IR led. Personally, I would have used one of our tivo style ir blasters with 1/8" plug.This also got me thinking of a great use for our RS232 IR Blaster and RS232 IR receiver. Using lirc or winlirc and a PC the same exact controller can be built to control your camera. Yes, you'll need to have the PC near the camera, but this may not be a problem for some of the shots Josh had intended to take with this rig. I also thing a PC based design can be made much faster and cheaper assuming the PC is already available.Remember: If you make a unique setup like this using our parts and send us the details you can qualify for our food for your thoughts promotion.


Eric Sorensen has some info on controlling an IR based train set. To do the job, he made his own IR Blaster and receiver and used his sound card to capture the waveform. This sounds like a great project to re-create with the IR Blasters and receivers sold here! It would certainly take a lot less time to setup with lirc.


Jeremy in NY wrote me to say he was using the irblaster.info cabled RS232 ir receiver on his windows XP desktop to control foobar2000. Foobar has a winlirc client plugin that makes this possible and he was enjoying the setup, but wanted to also have it work on laptop. As is the case with most laptopsl these days, his did not have a serial port. The solution: a 16C550 compatable PCMCIA uart card from dealextreme for just $17.25 with free shipping. Jeremy is now able to enjoy foobar on both of his machines!Do you have an irblaster.info story that you would like posted here? E-mail it to mike at irblaster dot info.


I was googling for interesting uses of products from this website again and I came across a research paper on Measuring perceived video quality of MPEG enhancement by people with impaired vision. The paper mentions using our IR Receiver to allow participants to interact with a PC via remote control.Thanks for the mention!


I found this interesting thread over on the SnapStream forums on using winlirc ir blasters with Snap Stream Beyond TV. Remember, I recommend the windows version of the ir blaster if you want the best compatibility with winlirc. Here is a direct shopping cart button for the windows version of the $12 RS232 IR blaster.To summarize the procedure, Snap Steam Beyond TV can call an external channel change script by adding the a key to the registry. For example, this registry code causes SnapStream to call c:\winlirc\channel.cmd with an argument of the channel number on every channel change.[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\snapstream media\EXETunerPlugin]"Executable"="C:\Winlirc\channel.cmd""Arguments"="%CHANNEL%"This same post on the SnapStream forum also has some info on using winlirc and IREX for an ir receiver. The IR Receivers from irblaster.info work well on both windows and linux so you can use them with this method. 2ff7e9595c


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