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Please give tips how to improve IR range

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leon_ace04

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Help! We need to improve the range of Infared that can be read by remote appliances. We are just using cheap IR transmitter because it is required in our study. Our study focus on manipulation of appliance with use of IR connected to our programmable flow chart design. The problem is our IR has only a range around 6ft distance. We need to improve this. Please help us.

Thanks! :wink:
 
leon_ace04 said:
Help! We need to improve the range of Infared that can be read by remote appliances. We are just using cheap IR transmitter because it is required in our study. Our study focus on manipulation of appliance with use of IR connected to our programmable flow chart design. The problem is our IR has only a range around 6ft distance. We need to improve this. Please help us.

Thanks! :wink:

Have you tried more transmitters?
How about more power (in pulsed mode for dissipation purposes)

How about imporving the sensitivity of the receivers?

These ideas can possibly help you with range.
 
leon_ace04 said:
Help! We need to improve the range of Infared that can be read by remote appliances. We are just using cheap IR transmitter because it is required in our study. Our study focus on manipulation of appliance with use of IR connected to our programmable flow chart design. The problem is our IR has only a range around 6ft distance. We need to improve this. Please help us.

A standard IR remote works about 30 feet or so, which is usually plenty of distance. If you're only getting 6ft you're doing something BADLY wrong.

But you don't give any details of what you are using?, or how you're using them? - you need to give FAR more detail!.

My PIC tutorials have an IR tutorial, this gives circuits and software for building an IR remote control system based on the Sony SIRC's system.
 
More Details

For more details, this is the circuit we made for our IR transmitter setup.

**broken link removed**


What do you think? What are the things we need to change to improve the range?
Your advice is very much appreciated. Thanks
 
Re: More Details

leon_ace04 said:
For more details, this is the circuit we made for our IR transmitter setup.

**broken link removed**


What do you think? What are the things we need to change to improve the range?
Your advice is very much appreciated. Thanks

That's only driving the LED with about 30mA, and I suspect you aren't using 40KHz modulation?. It's normal to pulse the IR LED's at about 1 AMP or so!.

You also haven't mentioned your receiver?, by using 40KHz modulation you can use the standard three pin IR receiver IC's - these give excelelnt performance at low cost, and are VERY easy to use.

Again, check my tutorials for details!.
 
First of all, thankyou Mr. Nigel and Optikon for the advice. Sorry if I haven't explain well this project we were doing. Let me explain.

We are group of Computer Engineering students that has a project all about IR home automation which can be programmable through a flowchart we made in Java. So far, we were able to record the IR signal from IR remote home appliances. We can now able to manipulate the behavior of the appliance connected to our device with the use of IR as our medium. Its like an universal remote in a computer that can control IR home appliance. The hardware problem now is that we can't improve the range. We were able to designe many circuits and as so far what I previous posted was the one worked for only 6ft. Thanks to Mr. Nigel, I was enlighten about the normal use of 1A in an IR LED. About the 40KHz modulation, I was already aware of that because I read some materials telling me that IR home appliance has a protocol of 30-40Khz to be able to control in far range.

Here I would like to ask everybody's comment on this circuit. Will it work in a ideal modulation of 38KHz?

**broken link removed**

@Mr. Nigel
I have read your site and its a very interesting site. I'm still trying to find information that can help me.
We don't need to make a receiver circuit because we are sending the signals to the appliances we are controlling.
Thank you very much!
 
leon_ace04 said:
@Mr. Nigel
I have read your site and its a very interesting site. I'm still trying to find information that can help me.
We don't need to make a receiver circuit because we are sending the signals to the appliances we are controlling.

OK, so it's down to your transmitter then! - you didn't make that clear before.

The diagram you posted still runs at a lower LED current than one amp, but you should get far more range than six feet! - my tutorial board reaches over 30 feet, with two LED's in series with a 4.7 ohm resistor.

I generate the 38KHz in software in the PIC, was your original circuit doing the same?. Although the serial port probably isn't a good port to use?.
 
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