Remote Control for Your PC: With a home-made infrared receiver （1）

Published:2011/7/31 22:57:00 Author:Li xiao na From:SeekIC

By Harry Baggen

With the PC seeing increasing use as a multimedia machine, recording and playing back video and audio, users will soon want to control a number of functions remotely, just as with their TV or hi-fi set. All you need to realize this is a standard infra-red remote control unit, a homebrew receiver circuit and some software.



A number of manufacturers in the consumer electronics sector supply remote controls with special receivers — the complete kit allowing a PC to be controlled from a distance. In many cases, the remote control includes a kind of mouse replacement so you can even move the cursor around on the screen. The infra-red (IR) receiver usually consists of a small receiver module for connecting to the PC’s serial port by way of a cable. The supplied software then looks after the processing of received IR signals. In many cases, a remote control set
is included with a TV card for the PC, although the features then remain limited to a number of essential TV and radio functions.

Fortunately, several alternatives are now available to link a PC to a remote control. Thanks to a number of clever programmers and some really simple hardware it has become possible to use a dead standard remote control transmitter to realize remote control on your PC.

The receiver is, of course, home built, which — we are sure — is unlikely to present problems to readers of Elektor Electronics. Incidentally, if you happen to have an IR remote control lying around, say, from a TV card system, you’ll find that this may often be used without problems in combination with the programs discussed below.

On the Internet you’ll find a variety of articles and web pages discussing home construction of an IR receiver. The designs vary in complexity from five-component ’interfaces’ right up to microcontroller-driven gadgets. In all cases, however, you’ll have to build up a small circuit. When a microcontroller is used, we found that in the majority of cases the hex code to program your own MCU is freely available.

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