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Infrared

Lee Morris

Jun 6, 2016
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Jun 6, 2016
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Hello,

I need a little help!

I'm fairly new to electronics and have been using the genie E18 micro-controller to build basic circuits and I'm getting used to using the simple programming! I would like to build an alarm circuit using infrared, could I use one Genie E18 circuit with a infrared emitting LED to communicate with another Genie E18 circuit with the photo transistor as the receiver?

Thankyou
 

Harald Kapp

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Nov 17, 2011
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Welcome to electronicspoint.

A phototransistor alone will very likely not suffice, depending on the distance between emitter and receiver and environmental conditions (light, fog etc.). The signal from the phototransistor is rather weak and may not be good enough to be read by the microcontroller's inputs. The signal needs to be amplified or conditioned. This page describes some methods.
Another approach is by connecting the phototransistor's output to an ADC input of the microcontroller. This will alow you to read the signal strength instead of an on/off indication only.
 

Lee Morris

Jun 6, 2016
2
Joined
Jun 6, 2016
Messages
2
Thankyou
Welcome to electronicspoint.

A phototransistor alone will very likely not suffice, depending on the distance between emitter and receiver and environmental conditions (light, fog etc.). The signal from the phototransistor is rather weak and may not be good enough to be read by the microcontroller's inputs. The signal needs to be amplified or conditioned. This page describes some methods.
Another approach is by connecting the phototransistor's output to an ADC input of the microcontroller. This will alow you to read the signal strength instead of an on/off indication only.
 
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