> The IR signal may be on a carrier wave, because when I press any button
on
> the controller and put the IR LED really close to my eye, I see 4
> evenly-spaced dim red flashes. Last I checked, that meant carrier wave.
> However, the flashes are kinda slow, about 1/4 of a second apart, and
the
> toy responds instantly when a button is pressed, so I'm not really sure.

Almost certainly what you are seeing is the transmitter repeating the code
4 times to increase the chances of it getting there.

However, it very probably is also modulating the code onto a carrier.
These carriers are usually around 40KHz.  The carrier is just switched on
and off to signal bits.  Usually there are a few bits in the front to let
the detector's auto-gain circuitry stabalize, then the payload bits, then
a checksum.

This general scheme is so common that there are IR receiver modules fixed
at various carrier frequencies.  You give them +5V and ground, and they
return a digital signal indicating when the carrier is present.  All the
filtering, auto gain, and detection of the carrier is done in the receiver
module.  You have to decode the bit stream.

The first step is to figure out what the carrier frequency is.  Get a fast
IR detector and hook it up to a scope.  Once you know the carrier
frequency, you can buy the right IR receiver module.

The PIC CCP module in capture mode makes it easy to determine the time
between carrier bursts, which is usually all that is needed to decode the
data stream.


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