Industry's Low-Cost RF Remote Control Solution Launched to Spark Remote Control Revolution

With the continuous improvement of people's living standards, the number of household appliances is increasing, and consumers have put forward higher requirements for the remote control function and performance of these appliances. RF remote control will gradually replace the traditional infrared remote control due to its advantages of long distance, ability to pass through common non-metallic obstacles (e.g. partitions, wardrobes, etc.), low power consumption, and support for more complex protocols.    In the current consumer electronics field, RF remote control has been used as a cool and fashionable selling point, is being accepted by more and more consumers. Maybe a few years later, when you tell your children that the remote control of the TV set when you were a child had to be pointed at the TV set to be able to remote control, they will feel very surprised.

First, the characteristics of infrared remote control Infrared remote control (IR Remote) has nearly 30 years of history, has been a remote control of electronic equipment, especially household appliances, an effective and economical method.     Infrared remote control is the use of near-infrared light transmission of remote control instructions, the wavelength of 0.76 μm ~ 13 μm. near-infrared as a remote light source, because the current infrared transmitter devices (infrared light-emitting tubes) and infrared receiving devices (photodiodes, transistors and photovoltaic batteries) of the light-emitting and light-accepting wavelength of the peak for the general 0.8 μm to 0.94 μm in the near-infrared wavelength, the two spectra just overlap, can be well matched, and can be used for remote control. The two spectra coincide in the near-infrared light band, which can be well matched to obtain high transmission efficiency and high reliability. Since the wavelength of infrared light is much smaller than the wavelength of radio waves, infrared remote control will not affect other household appliances, nor will it affect nearby radio equipment.

The principle of infrared remote control is to use electrical signals to control (or called modulation) infrared light-emitting diodes IRLED), producing infrared light invisible to the naked eye, by a plastic lens to focus the infrared light into a very narrow beam of light emitted. In the receiving circuit, the infrared receiving device is a photodiode that converts the received infrared light into an electric current, which is then decoded by the microcontroller in the receiver.

The transmitter circuit of the infrared remote control uses an infrared light-emitting diode to emit modulated infrared light waves, and its characteristic element is an infrared light-emitting diode. The infrared receiving circuit consists of an infrared receiving diode, a triode or a silicon photocell, which converts the infrared light emitted by the infrared transmitter into a corresponding electrical signal, which is then sent to a post amplifier for processing.

Infrared remote control has many shortcomings: first of all, infrared has a strong directionality, and can not penetrate walls, furniture, the human body and other obstacles, that is to say, between the remote control and the equipment can not have the obstacles above the obstacles; Second, infrared light is only suitable for one-way communication, if you want to achieve two-way communication, the cost is very high.

Second, the characteristics of radio frequency remote control In recent years the emergence of new radio frequency remote control (RFRemote), which uses hundreds of megahertz of radio waves to replace infrared light as a carrier of remote control information. As radio waves do not have directionality, and can cross non-metallic obstacles. As a result, RF remote controls have no transmitting elements sticking out of the housing.    In addition, the remote control distance using radio frequency technology is also much larger than the general infrared remote control distance (generally less than 10m). Under the same control conditions, the distance of RF remote control can easily reach tens of metres. In practice, according to demand, by increasing the radio frequency output power to further increase the remote control distance.

Compared with infrared remote control, RF remote control has a very obvious advantage - low power consumption. Infrared remote control generally use two five or seven batteries, usually replace the battery once a year; while the radio frequency remote control can do three or four years before replacing the battery. Due to the low power consumption, RF remote control can be powered by button batteries, which is conducive to the miniaturisation of the product and more stylish appearance.    More importantly, radio frequency remote control can easily achieve one-way or two-way remote control functions, such as the use of radio frequency remote control of the air conditioner, in practice, the user can control the air conditioner through the remote control, at the same time, the remote control can also receive air conditioning electronic control board information, displaying air conditioning the current state of operation, such as indoor and outdoor temperatures, operating modes and so on.

3, the common radio frequency remote control circuit analysis

Currently on the market from the cost of common RF remote control programme than infrared programme is generally higher than many fundamental reasons for the slow progress of RF remote control programme to replace the traditional infrared remote control (only in some high-end home appliances), the common Chuanghui company launched the SCSR1** series of RF remote control (to do an internal link to its own product page) programme, after many rounds of cost reduction efforts, the present After many rounds of cost reduction efforts, the current programme cost has been with the infrared programme is not comparable, will cause the popularity of RF remote control in low-end home appliances, and ultimately triggered a revolution in the traditional remote control!