I'm putting the final touches on my premp/input selector box.

I have an working IR receiver but its tied to some proprietary IR remote sender. it works but I've recently found a commercial DIY style product that uses learning on the receiver side so that you can use ANY remote sender and have various buttons map to the 16 or so pin outputs.

in fact, since its learning you can have buttons or button groups span different source remotes, perhaps one for volume from an old stereo and another for on/off from something else. like that.

before I order a sample kit, I was curious if there are any good ones that people have used before (or created themselves) - and it would be NICE if the source to the pal wasn't locked... all the commercial ones are locked, I think, and so you are stuck if the seller decides not to support to sell more in the future.

here's one I found:

TinyIR2 Learning IR remote control receiver

are there others like that, perhaps ones that are 'open' ?

the learning feature seems to be such a nice thing to have - its what sets this kind of design apart from all the other 'easy' ones. I'd like to stay with a learning receiver and not have to do the learning on the sender side.

TIA,

I tried looking for one that was either open source or at least schematics that are freely had. The problem however is that a module must contain not only the receiver but also some form of microcontroller that will do the actual "learning".

I think it would be easy to build though if you are familiar with microcontroller programming, basically just record through receiver and store the result as a variable. The problem though would be saving the variables through power outtage/battery change/etc.

I got that learning remote module I was talking about. here's my build shot:



it works, too right after the build I aimed my tivo remote at the IR 'eye' and it successfully learned the volume-up/down keys (and 10 more; 12 max).

its not great that its a 'locked' software chip, but I do *love* the idea and functionality it gives. it worked on the first build and I tested it with just a 9v battery. a quick 'time-to-working' is always a plus with me, on kits

now I need a circuit idea, maybe someone can help. I need a 'radio button' behavior where when 1 of 'n' is selected - it then gets latched and the others all reset. a momentary contact (active=high) would clear all others and button release would keep the state until next time.

I think it should be nothing more than a latch (d-flop?) for each pin that is part of a 'radio button group' and all of them having a common 'reset' line (which comes from an OR'd collection of all the pins in that radiobutton group).

that sounds like a large multi-way OR gate (one for each button in the group) and that feeding a set or reset line of a group of flipflops.

is there a better way?

I believe that the IR decoder chip ensures that only 1 output is high at any time. so the 'exclusive' behavior is there via the main chip - what I need is the 'grouping' where one 'pushes out' the rest like old style car radios

the outputs of the radiobutton pins will go to relays that switch my input sources (spdif as well as analog). I only want one source at a time, so that's the rbutton behavior to a T

this tiny-ir2 kit that I just built already has support for some pins being defined as toggles (built in latches) and some as momentary (like the 2 I plan to use for volume up/down). but there is no support for rbutton_groups and I can't get access to the 'internal' latches on the toggle pins, so to speak.

any ideas?

alright, I solved it myself

in fact, I took the opportunity to try a home-etched laser toner transfer pc board. my first time doing that!

here's the result:



I left some parts off (pulldown resistors and bypass caps). but this is just a proof-of-concept anyway.

oh, one other novice mistake: I either forgot to mirror image the pc trace pattern OR I double imaged it; at any rate the image is upside down (!) and so I had to solder the parts to the trace side instead of the component side. oh well - at least I didn't have to DRILL this board at all (LOL)

schematic:



very simple with just a cd4002 NOR gate and 2 cd4013 D-flipflops.

I now have my radio button circuit - so that will let me have an input selector on my preamp.