Home-Brew IR port. Was - Please Ignore RS232 message. The subject should read IrDA port... Sorry

[Paulo Marques]

Alan Ide wrote:
> Ok, I have formulated a plan of attack for my IR port addition. I have 
> been googleing (is that a word?) my little brains out for 2 days now and 
> this is what I have come up with thus far. I was looking for the 
> simplest (no sense in reinventing the wheel) but also the most 
> "customizable" solutions. Please note, this is my first such attempt at 
> a "hardware" project, my "hack" skills lie mostly in higher level 
> software, thus I NEVER before had to interface with hardware directly, 
> so this could all be WAY off. Please be brutal with your opinions.

Ok, you asked for it ;)

What you're trying to achieve will be really difficult by just 
connecting a led to a GPIO.

IIRC, an IR remote usually modulates the signal to avoid interference, 
so you'll probably have to toggle the IR pin at frequencies of around 
36kHz which will put very hard real time constraints on the driver.

A completely different approach, that I though of while reading your 
post, is to have a bluetooth receiver with an infrared emitter attached 
and use it as a bridge between the Neo and the devices you want to control.

The advantages are:
  - you don't have to hack your Neo, no risk of damaging it
  - the bridge box can be "big" and use standard size components which 
make it easier to build
  - you don't have to point your Neo at the receiver

On a quick googling I found these (but there are probably others):

http://www.ipenabled.com/firefly.html

http://www.innotechsystems.com/sp4001.htm

Used together they can probably do what you want to achieve, but I would 
have to read the specs to make sure (baud rates, protocol, etc.)

Maybe googling some more, we will find a device already made for this...

Just my 0.02 euros,  ;)

-- 
Paulo Marques
Software Development Department - Grupo PIE, S.A.
Phone: +351 252 290600, Fax: +351 252 290601
Web: www.grupopie.com

"God is love. Love is blind. Ray Charles is blind. Ray Charles is God."