I know about things like infrared repeaters, phone apps, etc, that can allow you to use your remote from a farther distance away. But in this case, I just want my regular remote to work from farther away. Given a typical TV IR remote, is there a way to make the IR LED shine brighter so that it can be used from farther away? Some sort of IR booster that can be added to the remote? Although I don’t know electronics, I can do some simple soldiering and rewiring.
[I don’t want to use repeaters because it would be hard to put them where this TV is. And the person using the remote has dementia and would struggle to learn something other than “point the remote at the tv”. Even using a different remote will be problematic since they don’t want to use anything other than the real remote.]
The thing that comes to mind is make sure the signal path is clear, and no other IR interference is happening from another device, also perhaps remove/break the cover off of the IR emitter, and/or on the receiver on the TV to remover any opaqueness that may block some of the light. Also you can try to use a magnifying glass over the receiver or even perhaps a mirror, I have not idea if that would work, but I would try it if you have those things handy.
Seems like an easy solution would be to replace the remote with a new universal remote. The OP didn’t mention if the person with dementia has problems operating the remote in general, but if so there are simple remotes like this one which I got for my mother.
Many years ago I needed to encase an IR remote control in an industrial housing that could survive being run over by a truck. I ended up using IR plastic that was 1/4" thick, so basically the same stuff that’s covering your IR emitter, just a heck of a lot thicker. Even at that thickness, the IR attenuation was minimal.
Breaking the cover off of your IR emitter is not going to help you any. It’s like taking the plastic cover off of a flashlight to make the flashlight brighter. Unless the cover is severely scratched and damaged, it won’t make a noticeable difference.
This isn’t actually for me, so I won’t have all the details until I see my coworker again. It was at a work function and he was taking about how his relative has a patio TV that she watches when in the backyard. He said they’ve bought her other universal remotes, but she refuses to use them. I don’t know how big the backyard. Normal size, I guess.
How’s your aim? Might be able to reduce the led dispersion with some optical element around the housing. Or maybe a better led/small low power ir laser soldered in instead of the led. Honestly this is spitballing.
You would also probably need to beef up the driver for it, unless the driver is built into the LED. You could also parallel additional LEDs, as beowulff suggested. Again, you’d need to adequately drive the LEDs, and fitting them in might be a challenge depending on the design of the remote.
Depending upon the angles involved in this backyard setup, you might be able to accommodate the “point it at the TV” requirement by adding in a remote IR receiver cabled in, and just *X *amount of distance closer, along the usual line-of-fire angle of incidence. IR remotes have a pretty broad dispersion; i.e., you don’t need to be pointing it directly at the TV, just close enough for government work. But again, the devil’s in the details – neither you nor we seem to have the necessary geometric info.