Yep, my bad. Here is EXACTLY what I did.
Diagram of my wiring attached.
+6v came from selectable DC power supply.
LEDs are the super bright IR 5mm from adafruit with 1.6V forward voltage.
They can take up to 1A when pulsed, I was trying to drive them with 100mA in this case.
Transistor was PN2222.
IR receiver picks up 38khz signal at short range when I wire a 330ohm resistor and 1 of the LEDs directly to the Arduino output pin running the same code (without the transistor setup).
Everyone always recommends looking at the LEDs through your phone camera to see if they're on, but all the new phone cameras have IR filters built in. Any other way to test whether or not they're actually pulsing?
led_wiring.tiff (66.2 KB)