In many cases IrDA has been superseded by more modern technologies such as Bluetooth, but when one is designing an embedded system is important not to become prejudiced by recent trends. What is important is to find the most suitable design solution for the problem.

Recently, we designed a security system that involved a number of standalone units all of which required configuration during installation. By implementing IrDA on these devices it enabled us to utilise off-the-shelf devices (such as Palm devices) as cost effective, modern user-interfaces, with little cost implications to the core product.

There are a number of easy ways to implement IrDA on a product and, as always, it is a balancing act between development costs and parts costs. We find a happy compromise is to use a device such as the Microchip MCP2140. This device reliably implements the IrDA stack keeping development costs low, and at $1.50 it can be cost effective in your product. If $1.50 is too much for your product then we would recommend implementing a software stack on something like a Microchip dsPIC.

We also have a lot of experience implementing IR remote controls for consumer devices. Typically we would implement an RC5 infra-red protocol, as this makes utilising off-the-shelf remote controls a more straightforward process.

• MCP2140 MCP2140A MCP2155
• IrPHY, IrLAP, IrLMP, IrCOMM, Tiny TP, IrOBEX, IrLAN and IrSimple
• RC5