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.

RCM2000 Rabbitcore!

I have just received the RCM2000 microcontroller dev-kit in my mail!

The dev-kit came with Dynamic C, a programming cable, and a prototyping board. I will be spending the next week or so learning about programming in Dynamic C. Today I finally got the leds on the prototyping board to blink and the computer to receive messages from the microcontroller.

Right now I'm not really sure on what I will be doing with this yet. I'm kind of thinking about making Infrared-controlled robot or something, but I'm not really sure yet.