In my quest to find the right components for a domotica solution I found the TSOP 1838 (IR receiver) in the Nodo project. This sensor has only three pins to connect which makes it easy to use. Not if you don’t take a very close look at the datasheet and connect the pins the wrong way. Being new to the Nodo project, TSOPs and Arduino together with the fact that I ‘knew’ I had the pin layout right, I began to try different sketches and remote controls. I took me quite some time to finally get it right. I mixed up the pins. After connecting everything the right way it was really easy to get it working.
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On the right you see a picture of the TSOP 1838
I included the pin layout .
The left (OUT) pin is used to retrieve the IR signal. This pin is connected to a digital input of the Arduino.
The second (GND) pin is the ground pin.
The third (+5V) pin is the pin that you must connect to the 5V pin of the Arduino.
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
You can find several IR libraries and code examples that can be used together with the TSOP1838.
Ken Shiriff has a blog where you can find a great example and download. I did try the IRrecvDump.pde and it worked great.
Ladyada.net also has a great page about IR controls and Arduino.
The nodo-domotica project is also using a TSOP1838 for IR reception. In the nodo sketches pin 3 is used to get the IR signal, but don’t be fooled by the image showing you how to connect the sensor (that is where I went wrong) it looks like the middle pin is the signal pin but that is not the case!
Hopefully you get the sensor up and running in just a couple of minutes. I have to figure out what the protocol is for my DreamBox, XBOX, Sharp TV remotes. These are not yet supported by the libraries mentioned above. Support for Sony, NEC and some Philips protocols is available. Sony is the one I saw working.
As they say RTFM (to get the correct pin layout) …
