I'm having a heck of a time figuring out what is wrong with my remote IR setup. Here's what I'm working with:

Denon X4200W (IR in port)>3.5mm stereo cable>BAFX IR Repeater (emitter port 1)>BAFX IR Repeater (receiver port 1)>3.5mm stereo cable>Channel vision IR Breakout connector>Cat 6 run through my house>Cmple IR Repeater Wall Plate

I have the breakout connector wired as follows:
G->Orange
+V->Green
Sig->Blue

The IR wall plate has four leads that can connect, labeled G, +V, IR, ST. I have it wired as follows:
G->Orange
+V->Green
IR->Blue
ST->Brown

In this configuration, with everything powered up, I do not get LED lights on the wallplate and the Denon does not receive commands.

I wanted to see if "ST" on the wallplate was the signal instead of "IR", so I changed the sig line on the breakout connector from blue to brown. This did not change anything, so I tried to wire both the blue and brown (IR & ST on the wallplate) to sig on the breakout connector. Same thing, no LEDs, no signal to the Denon.

I have also plugged in a BAFX IR receiver into the BAFX Repeater and tested that the Denon does respond to commands that way, so the issue must be with the breakout connector, wallplate or wiring between the two.


I've never wired up a remote IR system like this before, so I'm not really sure the wiring is correct or if I'm missing something obvious.

Is there anything I can check or try to resolve this?


Edit:
I'm not sure if this is why this doesn't work, but the 4 connections on the IR Receiver wallplate are:
G:Ground
+V:Power
IR:IR Data
ST:Status signal

The BAFX repeater only has a 3.5mm stereo connection and it's pinout is:
Base:Ground
Collar:Power
Tip: IR Data

So it seems that the BAFX Does not support both IR data and status line. I'm picking up a Sewell Direct SW-29309 BlastIR which supports all 4 lines. Will update with my results.

The 'Status Signal' is to apply voltage when something is on (like a power supply on a switched outlet of a receiver) (or 12v trigger from a device). It lights up an LED on the IR receiver, to show something is on.
You do NOT need to hook that up in this situation.
When the IR system is powered up, it has its own LED that flashes when it picks up an IR signal from a remote (or IR noise).

You need to check if the pin out of the BAFX matches with what you have on the Channel Plus keystone. There is not a standard for that and I bet something is reversed. Test with a multi-meter.

Also, emitter ports are mono plugs not stereo plugs. You already discovered that a stereo cable will work plugged into the Denon & the emitter ports. But the connection is 2-conductor (Mono plug) not 3-conductor (stereo plug).
Only the IR receiver is 3-conductor to the block.

Also, you want to use twisted pairs on the wire, not single conductors. By the way, the solid colors in cat cable are negative (ground in your case). I like using orange w/white for +V, Blue w/white for IR data, and the solid orange & blue (together) for ground.
You didn't say how long the cat cable run is. If it's over 100', you could have capacitance problems. Again, the wiring topography you choose isn't helping that.

As Brad says, it's best to use CAT5 wire pairs... as wire pairs. Any possible interference pickup will be reduced by doing this. Let's say you want to double up on the wire to an LED; you'd tie together blue and orange, and you'd tie together white/blue and orange/blue. The next issue is polarity.

Maybe Brad's more of a phone guy than I am. I have always thought it important to call out the hots, so I'd call blue the hot and white/blue the not so hot. The phone company does it the other way around. THIS IS JUST A CONVENTION. That is, it makes no difference to the electrons; it's just that we're human and we have to decide on ONE way to always wire things, in a perhaps vain attempt to reduce the rate of confusion below 50%.

If I were me... in order to try to visualize what's happening, I'd try to set out the list of connections in the same direction as some kind of signal flow. That is, I'd exactly reverse your list. Start with the first thing: The Ir goes to the wall plate; things don't go to the wall plate. The last item is the list is the Denon, and surely signal goes TO it, so saying it goes TO the mini cable can confuse the mind. THIS IS JUST A CONVENTION. But I find it helpful, if I've done something stupid,* to be boringly repetitive in the way I portray things. This also lets me understand a schematic I made ten years ago.

Disconnect the Denon from your system. Go buy an LED that's made to operate on six volts DC. Even Radio Shack might have them. It has two requirements: It has to work and it has to be a color you can see. This way you can take the Denon out of the system and SEE if everything is working.

By the way, that "its own LED that flashes" will not flash if the system picks up a signal unless an IR emitter is connected. That is, it doesn't show that it has picked up a signal. It shows that it has picked up a signal AND emitted a signal. If your Denon connection is wrong, you may not see that LED, and that might make you think more is wrong than it is.


*I believe most audio/video wiring is almost dead simple. But hundreds of examples have taught me that if you take your eyes off what you're doing for even just a moment, you're screwed. This is especially true with wiring where you're selecting wire colors.

Best of luck with this. And hey, thanks for coming here with intelligent questions and a thorough explanation of what you've seen so far. Even some of the best of us here have to ask for help, then refine the question over a couple of days, until they have really asked the question that they came here to pose.

edit: Aw, crap. I forgot something. I've run a Niles IR output more than a hundred feet on a pair of CAT wire and it has worked perfectly. I am not worried about capacitance. However, I don't know your brand of stuff, and it might be flaky. If all else fails, put a 1K resistor from IR signal to ground near the Denon. Come back and ask for an explanation if you want one. This post is too long already.

Edit:
Although the EIA/TIA standard show polarity for the conductors and it matches to what I said, IEEE 802.3 POE just throws polarity on different sides of the connector. Also, telephone wiring standards have the polarity reversed on the blue pair from EIA/TIA.
And then looking up Xantech's suggested wiring topography for IR over cat, shows something different as well.

So I guess it does depend on what standards you want to follow as to what polarity you put on what conductors.

Hi Brad,

Thanks for getting me straightened out on this! I'm allllmost there.

I ended up setting my original wallplate IR reciever and breakout connector aside and picked up a SewellBlast IR wallplate kit. Interestingly enough, the wallplate that comes with the Sewell is identical (PN on the board)to the one I mentioned in my original post. Still, I took the old stuff out and set everything up with the Sewell kit.

Wiring it my way did not work. It was not until I followed your suggestion carefully that the system is working properly(Or/wW->+V, Bl/wW->IR, Or&Bl->Gnd); Thank you for that! There is one more bug I'm trying to chase out and it's a real head scratcher.

When I use the Sewell system with the included IR emitters to the front of my Denon, it works perfectly. However, if I try to utilize the "IR in" 3.5mm mono port on the back of the Denon, it does not respond at all. The wallplate and the Sewell show a blinking blue light when I send IR commands, but the denon only responds to the emitters pointed to the front, not the 3.5 mm connection on the back.

The reason why this bothers me so much is that when I was testing the BAFX repeater, I couldn't get the wall plate working, so I tried connecting an included receiver to the BAFX and I was able to successfully send commands to the denon via the 3.5mm IR in plug. Now with the Sewell system, it seems that everything is working up to the emitter side of the block, which only leaves the 3.5mm mono cable and the denon as possibly problematic. Knowing the Denon worked before, I bought a couple of more 3.5mm mono cables and just tested them with the same result. Using the "IR in" 3.5mm port does not work, while using the IR emitters pointed at the front of the Denon does.

I read through the Denon manual and the only instructions for setting up an IR repeater with the IR in port is to use a 3.5mm mono cable to connect IR in to the emmiter port of the repeater. I was thinking that maybe there was a config setting somewhere to enable this, but it's not mentioned anywhere and I actually doubt that there is because the BAFX was working with the IR in port.

Do you think that there is anything else that I could check to see if I can get the IR in port working, or do you think that there is some kind of compatibility issue with the Sewell & Denon?

You know what, Denon screwed up once years ago and had a stereo plug for the IR and we all had to use stereo plugs to get the stupid things to work for those model years.
Now no one has said anything about the X4200W being like that but if the stereo plug worked before.... did you try using the stereo plug again to see if it would work?
Your not going to hurt anything by trying, worse case you are shorting out the IR signal which will NOT damage it in anyway.

Now plugging a mono cable into an 'active' 3-conductor IR receiver port... that could cause an issue for the power supply or resistor in the IR block by shorting the +12v. So don't do that :)  Although I don't know if anyone has ever damaged one even doing that.