Ir Amplifier

compuguru

Active Member
I was going to install my Ocelot at my church to be the brains behind my "idiot resistant" theater there. I got the Ocelot all programmed, and hooked up a single emitter to the Ocelot that was connected to the projector. That worked fine. So I put in my Y-Adapter to split the signal two ways, one to the projector, and one to a dual emitter that does to the DVD player and AV Receiver.

However, when I tried that, it didn't work. The emitter on the projector still blinked, but the two I just plugged in didn't. I unplugged the one going to the projector, and lo and behold, the dual emitter started working.

I beleive that the Ocelot is not outputting enough power to drive 3 blinking IR emitters. I know I could get a SECU-16IR, but I don't want to spend that kind of $$$ unless I have to.

Do you have any recomendations (DIY or to buy) on what I could use to give the signal coming out of my Ocelot a boost?
 
I don't think you really need an amplifier. It's a wiring problem.

IR emitters are LEDs, and LEDs can't reliably be wired in parallel. The LED with the lowest forward-bias voltage will draw all of the current, leaving none for other LEDs.

There are many solutions. Here are a couple:

1) If each LED had it's own current-limiting resistor, than that would force the LEDs to share the current. There are calculations necessary for that.

2) If the LEDs are wired in series, they will all get the same current. But the Ocelot would need to put out enough voltage for all of the LEDs. The voltage required to turn-on an LED varies from around 1.4 volts to 3 volts, with IR LEDs usually around 2.2 volts. I don't know what voltage the Ocelot can deliver.

3) As David said, you could get a Xantec distribution block. That's the simplest, and probably what I would do if I wasn't such a pig-headed geek.
 
Hi

If your using blink emitters , i would suggest buy a couple of non blink xantech emitters and try that.....Using a single Blink emitter is like having 2 standard emitters in series......

HTH
Frank
 
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