PICKit 2 IR capture tool

Consumer IR, consumer infrared, or CIR, refers to a wide variety of devices employing the infrared electromagnetic spectrum for wireless communications. Most commonly found in television remote controls, infrared ports are equally ubiquitous in consumer electronics, such as PDAs, laptops, and computers. The functionality of CIR is as broad as the consumer electronics that carry it. For instance, a television remote control can convey a “channel up” command to the television, while a computer might be able to surf the internet solely via CIR. The type, speed, bandwidth, and power of the transmitted information depends on the particular CIR protocol employed.

The PIC Kit 2 is a brilliant tool that can be used as a programmer, debugger, serial receiver and for signal capture. In many ways it is more versatile than the PIC Kit 3. One of my projects required IR capture to duplicate remote codes. I decided to create this small module that plugs directly on the PIC Kit 2 and can be used to capture IR codes for almost any IR remote available today. The software supplied from Microchip also allows to approximately measure the timing which makes it quite handy.

The circuit is pretty simple and can be wired in 5-10 minutes

Pic Kit signal capture window:

Source article:  http://sunbizhosting.co.uk/~spiral/blog/?p=85