Mystery Object - IR Receiver and PLL Synthesiser?

Hi,

Pretty much first time posting here but I know the is probably the best place to pose this question!
I picked up this little gadget the other day and have spend a good many hours when I should be revising to try and work out what it does. It is in a perspex box labelled "Super Baby J" and features two female F connectors on it (joined together on the PCB) and a power supply input (with bridge rectifier and 7805 regulator on pcb.

There is a IR receiver coupled to a PIC 16f84 microprocessor, which is itself coupled to a LM7000 PLL synth IC which is a key component in radio tuning circuits but is not a tuner in itself, the datasheet for it leaves me dazed and confused.

There are some passives and a few transistors associated with the LM7000 which also has a trace running to both the F type terminals.

The PIC has its crystal and stabaliser capacitors fitted.

Any Ideas, I am thinking along the lines of something which shifts frequency, maybe for using foreign radios in the UK or similar? I can only see it putting something on the RF bus, I figure it would of had a remote for controlling it.
Google is no help on looking up Baby J....

Pics are attached!
- Alex

Hi Al
It's been a long time since your post here ! Whether now relevant or not, here's a reply ! That device is an old cable-box hack which worked with analog tuners.
Pre-digital encryption techniques were varied and one method used was to pre-program a fixed set of frequencies into the tuner of the cable box allowing access to those 'tuneable' channels. The 'premium' channels were out of band and your 'Baby J' is basically a band shifter.
The LM 7000 PLL is acting as a stand-alone tuner whose frequency is selected by the PIC.
Setting up was easy, once connected inline with the incoming RF signal to the receiver, a fresh channel scan would result in all those premium channels being available !
I just found your post here because I have a few of these in the bottom of an old junk box and remembered about them as I have a use for the LM7000. A quick look for its datasheet led me here....
Hope that helps !
Cheers

NelMac said:

Hi Al
It's been a long time since your post here ! Whether now relevant or not, here's a reply !

Click to expand...

Bigal has not logged in here since the day after his post here.

Despite that, welcome to ETO, your post is informative.

JimB

Hi Jim
Thanks for the reply ! I posted that just out of sheer randomness !
Thank you for the welcome !
N.