I am making a Universal Remote Control for persons with physical handicaps. Many times, they cannot point remote control towards the receiver due to physical limitations. I have noticed that many of the commercial IR based remotes seem to work without line of sight.

My guess is that they send very strong signal and possibly have wider beam angle of IR LED so that they can achieve this. I notice that they seem to work from reflected beams if it is not in line of sight.

Can any one share some more information on this as to how to do this in a cost effective manner? For example, which IR LED to use and how much current to send through LED and so on.

Thanks,
- PR