Every once in a while I will learn something that just makes my day. I don't know if this has been mentioned or if anybody else already knew this, but there is someone who will try this today. Yesterday I had a remote for a cable box that had brand new batteries but would not cotnrol the cable box.There were 3 of us on the job site so i asked one of our techs if he had ever seen Ir go bad on a remote. He then said," I can see IR, can't you?" He then took a mx450 he was programming, took his iphone out, turned on his camera in his phone, pointed the remote at the camera and pressed a command on the remote, and to my surprise the camera in the phone allowed us to see the ir lights in the remote.

I took the bad remote and tried the same thing and got nothing. It is a great way to test IR and se if there is signal coming from the remote. I have to admit, I went home and showed my wife how cool this was. She just stared at me and went back to reading her book.

Are we that boring?

Kick her to the curb, she doesn't appreciate a monumental event like that.....

I remember when someone showed me that a few years ago (more like 10). It still impresses my clients when they see me do that.

I've been using this trick for years. Don't quite understand why it works though.

The CCD inside the camera senses a wider bandwidth of light than we do; Therefore, the camera displays IR as bright light through the display.

"i see dead people"

Doesnt work very well anymore. Worked great with my motorazr.

For a lowtech solution that predates the cell phone camera...

[Link: mcmelectronics.com]

+1

I am expected to light up and become englufed in her story about the postage machine fiasco that happened around lunch time but when i talk about Crestron i get this blank "would you shut the hell up" stare.

Im talking about pushing a button and making all sorts of things magically happen and shes talking about ink leaking from the postage machine..

I use the cam on my phone to check our splices on WII bars as well

Cameraphones lack the IR filter of most P&S cameras.

I was on the phone with Crestron Tech support a couple months ago and they had me do the same test with a phone. I had heard about this before but never actually tried it until then. Great feature to have and now that almost every phone has a camera itis much easier to use this feature.

And you're an AV tech???

Another trick, less impressive but it work fine also: Get a good old am/fm radio, tune AM 1400 and press the buttons of the remote while the IR emitter is very close to the antenna. You will hear it.

I learned that about 3 years ago on this very site. I think it was from Ernie, but dont remember for sure.

Human eyes react to and can be damaged by IR even if you don't 'see' it. So dont stare directly at powerful IR emitters (i.e. the sun or a first gen Microsoft Surface IR Blaster).