After watching recent Adafruit videos (1, 2, & 3) about IR and getting a neat new microcontroller which has a built-in IR transmitter, it looked fun to hack around with. I don’t have an IR receiver though. Then I remembered this old component video switch was in a storage closet. I tore it apart and easily got out the IR receiver. While I was destroying the device I figured I might as well take a bunch of parts that may be useful. If nothing else it was good practice desoldering.

The big PCB with a lot going on is already gone with the trash. The two small PCBs with buttons and LEDs (a triple set and a single) are cool and will be fun to work with since they’re already wired up. Would be neat to use these in an actual project some day.

The other components I kept are:

• IR 4 button remote
• L7805 voltage regulator
• PIC16C505 CMOS microcontroller

• HD74HC126P quad buss buffer

• 2x CD4052BE analog multiplexer/demultiplexer
• HA17358A dual operational amplifier
• 78L09L voltage regulator
• A1515S PNP transistor
• 71M4 IR receiver sensor

Of course, I can’t find a datasheet for the one part I want to use. IR is pretty standard, so I’m hoping they didn’t go rogue when developing this device. I’ll post more once I get a chance to experiment.

Several months ago I would have had no idea what any of this stuff was, let alone how it worked. I still don’t know what several of those ICs do, but at least I’m able to look at the traces on the PCBs and follow connections to get a general idea of how everything works.

Never stop learning!