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FLIRC and Plasma TVs.. what's the magic sauce needed?


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I have the skip1s paired with a flirc and have been having no end of trouble., Missed presses on the Skip, phantom presses that the flirc happily runs with, etc.. It's made the slip1s+flirc unusable for me. 

After some amount of trial and error, I think I've traced the issue down to the TV itself. It's a plasma based one.

I run the flirc app on a media pc connected to the TV and open "device log" with "Enable IR debugging" enabled. The logs shows phantom signals being received by the flirc. I'm not touching the skip at all at this point. Sometimes the interference seems to flood the flirc. 

If I RDP in (this allows this test), connect to the same session as above, turn off the TV, the interference noise goes away. Almost completely. Turn back on the TV; interference flood. Turn off TV; quiet. (even with the TV off there is a bit of noise, but not the flood while it is on).

Apparently, in reading through some of the posts here, I'm not alone in this problem, especially where Plasma is present. I don't understand.. if my old Harmony IR hub didn't have the same issue connected to the same devices, why would the flirc? 

Is there a noise cancellation/reduction option in the flirc app/firmware that can filter out all of the TV noise?

Edited by revin
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11 hours ago, revin said:

I have the skip1s paired with a flirc and have been having no end of trouble., Missed presses on the Skip, phantom presses that the flirc happily runs with, etc.. It's made the slip1s+flirc unusable for me. 

After some amount of trial and error, I think I've traced the issue down to the TV itself. It's a plasma based one.

I run the flirc app on a media pc connected to the TV and open "device log" with "Enable IR debugging" enabled. The logs shows phantom IR signals being received by the flirc. I'm not touching the skip at all at this point. Sometimes the IR seems to flood the flirc. 

If I RDP in (this allows this test), connect to the same session as above, turn off the TV, the IR noise goes away. Almost completely. Turn back on the TV; IR flood. Turn off TV; quiet. (even with the TV off there is a bit of noise, but not the flood while it is on).

Apparently, in reading through some of the posts here, I'm not alone in this problem, especially where Plasma is present. I don't understand.. if my old Harmony IR hub didn't have the same issue connected to the same devices, why would the flirc? 

Is there a noise cancellation/reduction option in the flirc app/firmware that can filter out all of the TV noise?

what profile are you using on skip and is it using built in profiles on Flirc?

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Posted (edited)

I have 1 activity; devices are TV and Media Center PC. TV is the LG. Media PC is Flirc -> Kodi.

However, I've been doing some more digging, especially around Plasma TVs and IR interference. LOADS of forums in different devices with this in common.  In reviewing many of the "fixes" (worked for them, not for me) and suggestions, I came across one that sounded strange, but plausible. This post [Does plasma radiation interfere with IR signals? | AVS Forum] suggests putting masking tape over the IR receiver to filter out the plasma noise. Apparently it filters out the indirect noise, while still letting the direct IR through. "The tape is translucent enough to allow the actual remote ir signal in but opaque enough to cut done plasma interference sufficiently to avoid confusing the equipment."

Guess what.. it bloody works. With a simple peice of masking tape over the flirc IR receiver it drops the interference by at least half, maybe more. Mutiple layers might also work, but what I did was to be more strategic in the placement of the PC itself. I've positioned it deeper in the TV cabinet, yet still have LOS to the skip1s when I am using it. 

This now works flawlessly. No  more skipped button pushes. No more phantom pushes. There is still some IR noise received by the flirc, but not enough to have it translate and forward those events to the PC.

In a nutshell; masking tape over the flirc receiver and better placement of the PC (and thus the flirc itself) to make it less susceptable to plasma noise from the TV.

Hope this helps others.

Edited by revin
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