Making the LCD setup permanent

I soldered everthing from the previous post.

The pickit 2 plugs into the 5 pin header and my UART cable plugs into the 4 pin header. The blue terminal block is for 5V and ground.

Infrared improved

This time I improved my infrared project to read the full infrared signal. All of the programming has been done using microchip's C18 compiler.

My new method of approach, as compared to my previous one, is to measure the duration of the pulses being recieved by the sensor instead of sampling at specific times.

In addition, this setup sends the data it received accross UART to the computer.

Here are the program files: main.c myLCD.c my LCD.h

IR Receiver Revisited, Improved

Lately I've come up with many ideas for circuits that need to be remotely controlled. I thought that I'd revisit my old IR project and improve it so that it is useable in other circuits. 

Here is a video of it working:

In order to store the IR signal, you need to turn a switch on and feed the microcontroller the IR signal you want it to remember. The green light means it recognized the stored signal. In the video above, I had the receiver circuit set to receive the 1 button, and changed it to wait for the 2 button to be pressed.

Further improvements I plan to make are: to scale down its size, to make it more reliable, and design a board layout for it.

With this circuit completed I can finally start making remote controlled robots and other cool electronic devices.

It Works!

Here is a video of it working:




There were two reasons to why it took so long for this to work. One was that my delay loop was not necessarily the length that I wanted it to be. Instead of being 0.1ms it was 1ms, and I was trying to make it work with the wrong timing. The other reason was that I had the IR output plugged into the wrong port.

But anyways... It works!!

The code: IRsony.asm

Not Working Yet

Recently (finally...) I found out that IR remote don't work the way I assumed they do. I had previously thought that the IR remotes sent out simple signals where on is 1 and off is 0. However, this turned out to be completely wrong! Even worse, different companies used different styles of signals!

Since I was using a Sony remote, I decided to do a little research on how Sony does it.
This is what I found online

,and here is my new program for it: IRsony.asm

Quick IR Test Circuit

Here is a quick test to see if the IR receiver works.




Here is the schematic.

My First Printed Circuit Board

Today, with the help of a friend of mine, I made my first printed circuit board. I used Eagle CAD to design my circuit. Then, I printed it onto photo paper using a laser printer. After that I melted the toner on the photo paper onto a copper plate and etched it.

This board is my IR receiver module.

ASM Code for New IR Receiver

This is the new IR receiver code that I wrote a couple weeks ago.

IR Code.asm

Again, just like the other file, without the rest of the code this will not do anything for you.

The code linked above receives and stores the first eight bits of the IR signal from what ever remote I point at it. I have not yet written the part of the program that displays the 8-bit binary number as a decimal number from 0 to 255 on the seven segment display board that I made just a little while ago.

Craziest Solder Job Ever

For my Infrared Receiver project, I decided to use 2 seven-segment LED displays (I put the third display there just in case I decide to use it). I first prototyped it on my breadboard, then soldered it together on perf-board.

This display ended up being the hardest solder job I've ever done. Making this ended up taking more than an hour to do.

The seven-segment LED displays I used have common anodes. Each of those anodes are connected to NPN transistors which control which LED display is on.

Fixing the IR

Instead of using the RabbitCore and Dynamic C to do my infrared project, I decided to continue working on it using a pic micro controller and by programming it with assembly. I have already completed the code that takes care of receiving the signals from the Radio Shack IR receiver. I still have to work on the part that tells me the signals that it recorded.

Clock difference

I recently discovered the reason why the inputs I was recording from the IR-receiver using my Rabbitcore was all mixed up. It had no apparent pattern to it, and the signals it was picking up from my television remote (from pressing the same button) were inconsistent.

It turns out that the timing that the IR-receiver is sending the information is different from the timing that my Rabbitcore was programed to receive. This means that the Rabbitcore was picking up the same signal more than once, and was also picking up signals when the output of the IR-receiver was in the middle of switching from high to low or low to high. Fortunately, since the clock of the Rabbitcore is faster than the IR-receiver, this means that I can solve this problem through modifying the software.

IR Receiver

This is the IR receiver module that I put together. This receiver plugs into my Rabbit dev board. The receiver is on the left side it's part no. 276-640 from RadioShack, the part at the very top is 7805 which is a regulator, and the chip on the right side is a 4001 QUAD-NOR gate. I used the nor gate just because the signal output of the IR receiver was a bit weak, other than that it just takes up space.

Although I was able to record the signal received by the module onto my computer, I wasn't able to figure out what they meant. They seem to have no apparent pattern to them. I wont be able to use this device effectively for a while or without more work.

I got the original design for this circuit from http://www.unusedino.de/lirc/receivers.html

Here is one that someone else made...It looks way better and is much smaller, but this is made to connect to a USB port. Here is the site where I found it.