Building Your Own IrDA Interface?

agdv ponders a cool sounding project: "I am interested in giving my desktop PC IrDA capabilities, as it has an IrDA header in its motherboard. While not very useful for my current needs, it would allow me to play some and have it ready should I ever need to transfer stuff to it from say a PDA. I know I can get one for about 25 bucks from eBay, but I was wondering if it could be reasonably easy to make one myself."

"I know it would be way more fun, possibly cheaper, and I presume I can get all the necessary materials from RadioShack or Mouser (I made a cable for direct serial connection and one for connecting my TI computer to my PC that way, but I don't know if this would be a bit out of my league). Has anybody tried something like that? Is it feasible? Do you have instructions, or hardware to reverse-engineer?"

If only more PC makers would make this a standard port, IR would be very useful. As it is ... does anyone have any successful projects to reveal?

Comments

i've tried it, here is where I got stuck...

[idgrad]

I've been looking at this same project for a while now, and have run into several dead ends. The big problem is getting a hold of an IR TX/RX that is soderable. Most of the ones available are meant to be board mounted, and are FAR too small to be of any use to anyone using a sodering gun (no matter how small the tip, TRUST ME).
Here are some very usefull links I managed to track down regarding this project. If anyone finds a source of breadboard mountable/soderable IR RX/TX's, please post!

The best page (diagrams and all): http://tscherwitschke.de/irda.html
Another project page:
http://www.geocities.com/CapeCanaveral/Lab/1475/ re motectrl.html

Retail systems:
http://www.actisys.com/act210.html
http://www.evation.com/