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Please Note: to make this board easy to use, we have both solder-able breakout pads and also a JST PH 4-pin cable. We often use JST PH cables for I2C but this board does not use I2C – the white wire is data from a microcontroller to be emitted over the IR LED, the green wire is demodulated IR remote signal data to a microcontroller. The black wire is ground, red wire is 3V~5V power and logic level.
For the emitter half, we use the same schematic and setup as our “High Power IR LED Emitter” breakout, with an onboard N-Channel FET driver, to blast 100mA-200mA of current pulsing through each LED for 10+ meters of range! One LED is vertical and one is horizontal so you get tons of coverage. If powering with 5V, the board will draw about 200mA per LED (400mA total) when pulsing on. If powering with 3V the board will draw about 100mA per LED (200mA total). Since you can’t see IR with a human eyeball, we have a small yellow LED labeled ‘IN’ that will blink when the IR LEDs are on.
For the receiver half, we use the same ‘vertical’ IR sensor in our “IR Receiver breakout” The sensor is designed to recognize remote control style modulated signal at 38KHz and 940nm wavelength. The demodulated IR envelope is piped out the OUT labeled pin into your microcontroller which will then need to decode it. To make debugging easy, there’s a second yellow LED labelled “OUT” that will blink when data is received.
Each STEMMA board is a fully assembled and tested PCB, but no cable. No soldering is required to use it, but you will need to pick up a 2mm pitch, 4-pin STEMMA JST PH cable. Alternatively, if you do want to solder, there’s a 0.1″ spaced header for power/ground/signals.
Note that this board is specifically for receiving 940nm 38KHz IR remote control signals – it isn’t going to work for proximity/distance sensing or other frequency signals. The signal must be read by a microcontroller that has pulse-input reading capabilities – basically just check that it supports common IR Receiver connectivity and decoding. Sometimes you need to use special code or pins.
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Stop breadboarding and soldering – start making immediately! Adafruit’s Circuit Playground is jam-packed with LEDs, sensors, buttons, alligator clip pads and more. Build projects with Circuit Playground in a few minutes with the drag-and-drop MakeCode programming site, learn computer science using the CS Discoveries class on code.org, jump into CircuitPython to learn Python and hardware together, TinyGO, or even use the Arduino IDE. Circuit Playground Express is the newest and best Circuit Playground board, with support for CircuitPython, MakeCode, and Arduino. It has a powerful processor, 10 NeoPixels, mini speaker, InfraRed receive and transmit, two buttons, a switch, 14 alligator clip pads, and lots of sensors: capacitive touch, IR proximity, temperature, light, motion and sound. A whole wide world of electronics and coding is waiting for you, and it fits in the palm of your hand.
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Python for Microcontrollers – Adafruit Daily — Python on Microcontrollers Newsletter: CircuitPython 2025 Wraps, Focus on Using Python, Open Source and More! #CircuitPython #Python #micropython @ThePSF @Raspberry_Pi
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