For the interest of those who were following this thread in mid-November, I
wanted to report that I had great success using the
record-IR-stream-as-audio method posted by David Duffy.  He had proposed
connecting an IR sensor to the input of a garden-variety sound card and
using audio editing software to record and view the various codes from
remote controls.  I actually dismantled the remote control I wanted to
decode, removed the IR LED,  and connected an audio cable to that point.
This setup inverted the data twice, so that what resulted on screen was a
true representation of what my bit-banging routine needed to recreate.  I
used Cool Edit, which has a convenient time scale below the waveform.
Zoomed in, this time scale displayed seconds to 4 or 5 decimal places, which
was more than accurate enough for me to simply calculate the bit durations
subtractively.  Sure; the SoundBlaster's AC-coupled input made hash out of
the bit transitions, but for a zero-cost DSS, I'll take it.  Once I had
finished coding, I was able to view the results by connecting the PIC output
pin to the SoundBlaster the same way.  This made it a breeze to tweak the
timing loops.  Maybe I've just been inside too long, but this is a neat
idea, and my hat's off to whoever first came up with it.

Rob Robson

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