The Raspberry Pi Zero W is a tiny, cheap Linux computer with WiFi. It’s perfect for Internet of Things things such as controlling ceiling fans, window blinds, LED strips, and judgmental toasters. This leads to an obvious question: how do you attach your ceiling fan and LED strips to a Pi Zero? A lot of these things already have infrared remotes, so why not build an infrared hat for the Pi? That’s what [Leon] did, and it’s Open Hardware with documentation.
[Leon]’s Anavi Infrared Pi Hat does exactly what you think it should do. There’s an IR receiver, two IR LEDs, and UART pins for debugging. That’s all you need to control infrared doohickies over the Internet, and [Leon] wrapped it up in a nice neat package that’s the same size as a Raspberry Pi Zero. Add on some documentation and you have something we rarely see: a project meant to be used by other people.
This focus on allowing people to actually use what [Leon] created can lead to only one cynical conclusion: he’s probably selling these things somewhere. The cynic is never surprised. [Leon] has a crowdfunding campaign going, that’s over 400% funded with a month to go. That’s okay, though: all the design files are available so if you want to build your own without supporting people who build useful devices, have at it.
I Like this, I was doing similar but would it be better to make it a universal opto-coupler board, eg pads for IRDA chip, quad optical encoders, PIR and such? and a mini one for IR remotes that’s on a cable so you can mount LEDS/ Quad encoders where you need them.
Erm, you can do that with an ESP8266, and the code is already written:
https://www.letscontrolit.com/wiki/index.php/IR
https://www.letscontrolit.com/wiki/index.php/IRTX
Some of my ceiling lamps have ESP8266 (SONOFF), so I can control them via both WiFi and IR remote control.
For IoT infrared bridges you can just use an ESP8266 as well.
But this would be interesting as a pre-built IR receiver module for Pi-based media centers.
You don’t. You use a cheap microcontroller like the esp8266 and spend less than the list price of a pi zero, unless you’re one of the rich types that buys everything from adafruit and thinks neopixel is a word. Save the Linux boards for projects that require an appropriate amount of computing power. Waste not want not.
Yes…rich types that will spend a few dollars to save hours of time. We all get that some people are willing to do more to save a few bucks, or because they like programming in C and flashing firmware – there is nothing wrong with that. There is also not anything wrong with spending a few extra dollars because you don’t have the skills/time/desire to build everything from scratch.
Thank you for spreading the word! I am a software engineer and ANAVI Infrared pHAT is just my small hobby hardware project. It is totally amazing and fantastic to see an article about it at Hackaday :)
I would like to highlight that this is an open source hardware created and powered by free and open source software. The design of the PCB has been done with the free and open source KiCAD. LIRC takes care of controlling the IR receiver and transmitters once the add-on board has been attached to Raspberry Pi :)
How is the pi Zero W on power usage? I know the ESP8266 Is not great on power use. Also how is it for WiFi range?
the 8266 can be quite good on power if you use it right, and would have been a much better chip for this project..