Veteran Hackaday YouTuber Electronic Wizard has released a video explaining the inner workings of commonly used infrared (IR) remote controllers.
It focuses on the NEC family of protocols, which include a 38kHz carrier wave to encode a binary signal and are prevalent in standard IR remote controls.
The video demonstrates how to interpret the binary signal using a mixture of long and short pulses, similar to Morse Code.
Electronic Wizard uses a Rigol DS1102 oscilloscope and a breadboard jig to sniff the signal from an example IR controller and provides a link to a 38kHz IR communications tutorial for those wanting to construct their own receiver.
