6.4 - IR Remote Control

In consumer electronics, remote controls are used to operate devices such as televisions and DVD players. In some cases, remote controls allow people to operate devices that are out of their reach, such as central air conditioners.

IR Receiver is a component with photocell that is tuned to receive to infrared light. It is almost always used for remote control detection - every TV and DVD player has one of these in the front to receive for the IR signal from the clicker. Inside the remote control is a matching IR LED, which emits IR pulses to tell the TV to turn on, off or change channels.

Required Components

In this project, we need the following components.

It’s definitely convenient to buy a whole kit, here’s the link:

Name

ITEMS IN THIS KIT

PURCHASE LINK

Kepler Kit

450+

Kepler Kit

You can also buy them separately from the links below.

SN

COMPONENT INTRODUCTION

QUANTITY

PURCHASE LINK

1

Raspberry Pi Pico W

1

BUY

2

Micro USB Cable

1

3

Breadboard

1

BUY

4

Jumper Wires

Several

BUY

5

Infrared Receiver

1

BUY

Schematic

sch_irrecv

Wiring

wiring_irrecv

Code

Note

  • You can open the file 6.4_ir_remote_control.ino under the path of kepler-kit-main/arduino/6.4_ir_remote_control.

  • Or copy this code into Arduino IDE.

  • Don’t forget to select the board(Raspberry Pi Pico) and the correct port before clicking the Upload button.

  • The library IRsmallDecoder is used here. Please refer to Add libraries for adding it to the Arduino IDE.

The new remote control has a plastic piece at the end to isolate the battery inside. You need to pull out this plastic piece to power up the remote when you are using it. Once the program is running, when you press the remote control, the Serial Monitor will print out the key you pressed.