In message  <961022215144_101722.3022_IHN181-2@CompuServe.COM>
 PICLIST@MITVMA.MIT.EDU writes:

> My current plan is to time the distance between incoming pulses. This doesn't
> seem very elegant, but is it the normal way of doing this sort of thing?

Sometimes!, Sharp Electronics curent products use this method for their
IR remote controls. Bursts of IR are transmitted and the data is dependent
on the gaps between them, I can't remember the figures off hand, but it
was something like 0.5mS is a '1' and 1mS is a '0'. The complete code is
sent twice, with the second version having part of the code inverted, this
is then compared to the first code received for error detection.

If you are interested, I have working code for receiving and decoding these
Sharp IR signals.

A more popular scheme is the Philips RC5 system, this uses the transition
from high/low and low/high to signify the two bit states.

For your requirements, I suspect the Sharp type method may be more visually
interesting, as the differing bits can easily be seen.

Nigel.

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