m5Atom Lite IR range
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Hi,
Just wanted to ask if anyone out there using the IR with M5Atom . I was already using stickC for the same functionality so Atom was a replacement. But quickly realised that the IR range is very very short (needs to be <1 cm to the receiver) compared to stickC. I also realised that the IR works pretty well without the plastic case. So I had to carve a window on top if the IR chip to extend the range.
Did anyone have same experience? Is it the way case is designed or was there a problem with my unit?Thanks
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Hi @alperkal, my 5Atom Lite just arrived, and I tried to get the IR unit working. I could not manage to receive any IR signal. Thus, so far, I cannot tell what its range is, unfortunately. How did you manage to get it work? Which IDE and what libraries do you use? I have tried, among other things, IRremote Arduino Library by Ken Shirriff.
As soon as I get it working at all, I will be happy to tell you the IR range of my unit. I hope, I do not have to carve out a hole. It does not look that pretty any more. -
I also have about 2cm IR range from my atoms (matrix or lite). That isn't useful at all. I didn't try modifying the case to get any more range, that shouldn't be a solution.
It looks like a bad design/implementation problem to me. Infrared comms is not exactly new technology. TV/DVD/Sound system remote controls have been doing this for years over at least 5m distance.
I decided to ignore IR and use espnow between M5 cores where I can. The range is about 5m from the atoms, which is just about ok for home automation projects. I also understood that the wifi range of the atom is being improved. Unfortunately not all devices are wifi network compatible, so a nice, longer distance infrared signal would be much, much better. I hope this infrared problem can be solved. -
@atomesi pls check the specs. As far as I remember Atom has only IR TX, not RX.
I'm using a fork of IR-Remote. Fork gives the ESP32 support. I've been using this fork with M5StickC and now with M5Atom for Alexa & IR (TV) integration, With the case modification, it works fine again. -
@veryalien you don't have to modify, you can just open up the case and try without the case.
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I renamed topic to M5Atom lite as I experienced this with the lite. But looking at the comments, I think it's the same for the M5Atom
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@alperkal Oops, thanks for that! That's a good and convincing explanation why I got only zero values.
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We have tested the launch distance， the IR signal can trasmiter 50~60cm。 did your transmitter program modulate the transmit signal? @alperkal @veryalien
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@m5stack said in m5Atom Lite IR range:
We have tested the launch distance， the IR signal can trasmiter 50~60cm。 did your transmitter program modulate the transmit signal? @alperkal @veryalien
The built-in infrared receivers and transmitters seem to be ignored by m5stack, so we all try to copy or modify other infrared libraries which might not work with the hardware correctly.
Could @m5stack please implement, test and publish a standard infrared tx/rx api for all the m5stack cores and bases with infrared tx and/or rx?
This would solve all the issues with questions "how did you try to implement infrared communication?". If the expected range and performance are published then we would all know exactly what to expect from the m5stack infrared hardware.
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@veryalien the standard infrared tx/rx api lib not published yet. we has plan to create the IR lib , but the engineer is too busy, so pls waiting...
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I published this video a short while ago https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V8rmir-Tmy8 you can try the libraries I used. I reckon I got around 10cm range from the sticks but much less from the atoms, you can see in the videos, what range I am successful at.
