External IR Receiver for HD300

[gplasky]

Do you have any IR extenders left over from a Hauppagage card and remote? There's a thread out there and I'm pretty sure all it takes is reversing a couple of wires on that to use it on a HD300..

Gerry

[Brent]

Originally Posted by gplasky

Do you have any IR extenders left over from a Hauppagage card and remote? There's a thread out there and I'm pretty sure all it takes is reversing a couple of wires on that to use it on a HD300..

Gerry

I do. Might try that. Me and a soldering iron hmm...

[gplasky]

Just cut the wire, swap and twist them and throw a little black electrical tape to test. Not only good but good enough.

Gerry

[KryptoNyte]

Hey, folks,

I recently purchased a used HD300 on Ebay that was supposedly working as intended. When it arrived, I realized that after a couple minutes of operation, it would heat up and no longer respond. With the help of Photon, Routerunner, and Brewston, I was able to decipher the problem wasn't the unit actually freezing up, rather it was the IR receiver failing to operate (after the unit was warm). The issue could be resolved if I unplugged the unit for at least 6 hours, and then restarted it - I could operate it for a couple minutes before the IR would die again.

Based on Photon's IR receiver purchase earlier in this thread, I purchased the same thing, and one cable from Monoprice;

http://www.centrix-intl.com/details.asp?productid=5344

and

http://www.monoprice.com/products/pr...seq=1&format=2

Without any soldering (you could solder if you wanted a cleaner, safer solution), I cut the wires and made the connections per the attached image, then applied electrical tape to each connection individually, then wrapped the whole connection one last time.



If you had multiple HD300's, you could purchase (1) of the monoprice products for every (2) of the centrix products.

Anyways, hopefully this will help someone that would like to have an easy made IR receiver for the HD300, or possibly even someone who believed their HD300 was freezing up, when it may just be the internal IR receiver failing. Whatever monoprice cable (or alternate) you end up with, it would probably be wise to continuity test to be sure the config matches the attached photo.

[TwistedMelon]

I just wanted to follow up to confirm that you don't need to buy any kind of specialized or pre-built IR receiver for the HD300.

Any 3-pin 38kHz IR receiver IC should work when wired to the correct pins on a 2.5mm stereo connector. You can buy these ICs from Mouser, Digikey, Farnell, A-1, Radio Shack, etc.

An example of a very popular IC: Vishay TSOP 34838

http://www.mouser.com/ProductDetail/...xNBvshin09E%3d

$1.14 - it's smaller than the fingernail on your pinky finger.

[reggie14]

Has anyone found one a compatible IR receiver for sale anywhere? I'd like to avoid making one.

[KryptoNyte]

For you folks that would prefer not to build your own IR cables, would you be interested in buying them, similar to the one I built in my thread above, but with soldered connections and shrink wrap to tidy them up? Would 20 bucks be reasonable to ask for time to make and what little cost there is in parts, shipping included to anywhere in the Continental US?

There isn't much activity in this thread - I just assumed there weren't too many folks interested in these cables anymore.

[reggie14]

I think its a reasonable price, although honestly if one needs to be handmade I'll probably just try to do it myself. It's probably easier than replacing the caps in a HD100, which I managed to do.

[KryptoNyte]

I would seriously recommend just purchasing the parts and going for it. You can see from my photos that it is quite easy to do.

[reggie14]

My first attempt was successful, although not as pretty as I would have liked. I slightly underestimated what size shrink tubing I needed.

It was actually a bit more difficult than I expected. Those wires are awfully small!