I successfully put together an Arduino powered project that can light up an LED and control a servo using an infrared remote.
As a noob I was quite happy with my progress (pats self on back), but now I'd like to take this same idea and shrink it down and put it outside in a tree. Simply put, I'd like to use an IR remote to turn on (and off) a battery powered string of LED's.
I could easily use what I learned from my previous project to make this work, but I'd like to avoid hanging up a dozen or so arduinos in the trees outside my house. And it seems like a waste to use an arduino to do simple On/Off logic, so I was wondering if there was a simple IR activated switch circuit I could use to replace the arduino for this particular project. Something I could buy off the shelf, or make myself with a few components shoved into a project box.
Perhaps something similar to this:
But with something that receives an IR signal from a remote as opposed to a motion sensor.
I think the biggest challenge is that you usually read an IR "data stream" from the remote so that you can ignore stray infrared or signals from the wrong remote. And, that requires some "brains" on both the transmitter & receiver ends.
But if your setup can be triggered by a simple IR beam, it's possible to do it without a microcontroller. A [u]Type-T Flip-Flop[/u] can be used to toggle the state between on & off every time you "hit" it. I'm not sure if you can find a type-T fiip-flop but you can wire a [u]J-K Flip-Flop[/u] as a type-T. (You might need a transistor or some other circuitry between the IR sensor and the flip-flop and/or some kind of debouncing.)
You could use a PT2262/PT2272 encoder/decoder pair. Very cheap chips at about a dollar or two each, and you need minimal external components to use them. (Datasheets attached.)
No micro or other brains necessary for simple on/off control.
I bought some of each from UTSource a few months ago. They probably still have them available.
