Blog - /Tech

While trying to figure out why my Apple Remote was not working with a USB IrDA dongle that I had recently purchased, I thought I had better check to see whether the battery in the remote needed to be replaced. After a bit of searching, I came across this article on Apple's website. It turns out that digital cameras which use CCDs can show infrared light as bright white. Just point the remote at the camera and start pressing buttons.

I immediately remembered the first few days of OLPC ownership and the fun of playing around with the built-in webcam. I fired up the OLPC, launched the Record application, and sure enough, a bright light with some diffraction effects showed up whenever a button was pressed on the remote. I was also able to point the camera at the adapter and see periodic flashes of light, presumably due to irattach sending a signal every second or so. I didn't see any change in the flashes when pointing the remote at the adapter and clicking, however, which was disappointing.

It turns out that my old TV remote also emits these flashes, so now I am thinking that I might try to use that instead.

Update

Yeah ... the TV remote thing isn't going to fly because the dongle does not provide the right kind of access to the signals. My guess is that Apple did something proprietary with their built-in IR receiver that the dongle has not implemented.