Anyone got a copy of Total Remote on a 5450?

I want to see if it uses, IRdA, CIR, or both LED's whe emitting the IR.

Nevo and PDAWin TVR both use both LED's

VITO and NetRemote only use the CIR emitter.

Nevo and PDAWin TVR both have good range, while VITO and NetRemote have a range of less than 2 feet


I only found this out last night while learning codes from the Canon DV cam. You can see the IR flashing from the front of the iPAQ while viewed thru the camera.

I can't check this out myself as I have used the 3 day trial of TR, and can't get rid of it from my system in order to re install it and start the three days again.

Cheers

Neil

I suspect you have confused the IrDA and CIR emitters.

CIR emitters are higher power and use the same IR wavelength (~940nM) as the CIR receivers in AV gear.

IrDA emitters use ~840nM IR and are, by design, very low power.

The short range you report is typical with IrDA emitters while good range is typical with CIR emitters.

Without knowing the sensitivity to different wavelength IR of the CMOS sensor in the camera, it's difficult to judge whether the size and brightness of the spot has any correlation to range.

I was wondering about the camera sensor sensitivity also,especially after seeing the pictures taken of IR output under the Features section of the site.


But when using the IR beam capabilities of the iPAQ to send info to a mobile phone, it is definetly the less bright LED that is emitting. This surely is the IrDA LED.

TVR and Nevo both use both LED's while VITO and NetRemote both tx using the brighter LED, which is not the one used when connecting to the mobile phone.

This is very strange.

I can't check again this evening, as I do not have the camera with me, but I am pretty sure that the brighter of the 2 LED's is closest to the SD card slot, while the other less bright LED is more towards the stylus holder.

Neil

Since I had to research the living shizzle out of this for the v2.0 Total Remote update, I can clarify.

Hold your iPaq 54xx so the screen faces up and the top of the PPC points towards you. This puts the stylus on the left side.

The IrDA LED is ~2mm to the left of the area on the case that shows a radiating wave pattern (just to the right of the stylus) and just slightly down. After all, you wouldn't actually want that raised "iconographic" stuff DIRECTLY in front of the LED.

Users of the IrDA port for CIR would include, well, everyone.

The CIR port, the so-called "Nevo LED", is located at a point almost equidistant between the stylus and IrDA icon detail.

Users of the CIR port would include Nevo, TVRC and Total Remote. Nothing else I know of.

Now, I cannot explain the intent, but when you use Nevo BOTH the IrDA and CIR ports light up on an infrared picture. Equally inexplicable is the fact that the CIR LED is physically much smaller and weaker than the IrDA port, again as seen in infrared pictures. This is the same thing that Neil saw, but he has his ports backwards (probably just assumed the brighter port was the CIR port).

Thanks for that Don,

I have been having another look this morning thru the camera, and did note that any beaming of data did come from the brighter IR LED, when I last looked I thought it was the less bright one, but this would appear to be because it must be able to control it output power. and when it beams data it only shows a low brightness on the DV screen.

And yes Don, I was assuming the brighter one to be the CIR.


Thanks for that.



Neil


This message was edited by npaisnel on 03/12/04 04:25.

It's not really an infrared picture. One would assume the camera is optimized for humanly visible light and that the closer in wavelength to the visible spectrum, the brighter a source will appear. IrDA is closer to the visible spectrum than CIR so IrDA appears brighter. It does make Daniel's camera shots of dubious value in judging IR strength of various remotes.

I used to do a lot of black and white photography, processing developing etc,and had played with IR sensitive film for a while, so thes thoughts had crossed my mind,

Guess I'll have to see if I can dig out a roll of film again some time, if you can still buy the stuff!!!