How far will IR travel?

Kenny

Does anyone know how far I can run an IR cable?
I need to run IR to a TV and the cable length will be about 60 feet.
We will probably use the standard AMX IR emitter. Is there a better one to use for this purpose?

Kenny

DHawthorne

60' is quite possible, it depends on the wire, of course, but I've had runs that long work fine. Just stay away from emitters that have indicator lights, they suck up a lot of current.

ericmedley

There are several OEM IR gazintas that you can use to extend IR. Niles makes an IR block that allows you to extend IR quite far.

TurnipTruck

You can go well over 100 feet with a low capacitance cable like Cat 5.

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papadouk

TurnipTruck wrote: »

You can go well over 100 feet with a low capacitance cable like Cat 5.

I agree. Once i controlled a B&O DVD Player in that distance (and keep in mind that B&O equipment are using high IR frequencies in 455 KHz). The player was in the ground floor and the NI-3000 in the basement.

Kostas

TurnipTruck

The issue with long IR runs is not voltage drop as it would be with a long extension cord and a power tool. The current drawn by the LED is only in the area of 5-20 milliamps. The distance issue is from capacitance which causes the square wave corners of the data to round. Given that Ethernet over twisted pair cable is rated at 100 meters and Ethernet's data rate is MUCH higher than IR, I would guess that you could go well over 100 meters with IR.

bano

IR go long way over UTP

I took a 1000' box of cat 5 coupled the pairs together,ir port to blue pair, coupled to orange pair, coupled to green pair, coupled to brown pair connected to device and it worked fine, in essence going over 4000' of copper. BTW my employer at that time had to part with $100 as he bet this would not work. Of course I tested it prior.....

TurnipTruck wrote: »

The issue with long IR runs is not voltage drop as it would be with a long extension cord and a power tool. The current drawn by the LED is only in the area of 5-20 milliamps. The distance issue is from capacitance which causes the square wave corners of the data to round. Given that Ethernet over twisted pair cable is rated at 100 meters and Ethernet's data rate is MUCH higher than IR, I would guess that you could go well over 100 meters with IR.

vining

bano wrote: »

Of course I tested it prior.....

That's not right!

TurnipTruck

It is NOT a good idea to parallel the pairs with Cat5. I have seen people tie together all of the solids for one conductor and the stripes for a second conductor. The pairs have different twist rates which essentially make the pairs different lengths. While this is fine for DC, high frequency signals can arrive at their destination several different times. The effect is more pronounced as the cable length increases.