TSOP as momentary pushbutton switch

The Raspberry Pi can start up from a halted state by momentarily touching GPIO3 to GND. This works well with a momentary pushbutton switch, however I’d like to use the IR Receiver Diode (TSOP38238) instead so it can be started up with a remote control. What’s needed to make this work?

You’re going to need more than just an IR receiver diode to do what you’re looking to do, at a minimum you’re going to need a micro controller that monitors the receiver diode for the specific command you want to use to turn the Pi back on.

With a little bit of code, you should be able to do this with the receiver diode and a [3.3 volt Pro Mini.

The Pro Mini would be programmed to listen to the receiver diode and when the correct sequence is received it would pull one of it’s I/O pins low for the appropriate amount of time.](https://www.sparkfun.com/products/11114)

Chris - Thanks for the reply. I’m looking to turn the Pi on with any directed IR signal. It does not need to be a specific IR signal, however should not be triggered by sunlight. Any further guidance or suggestion on how to do it with bare components appreciated.

The problem you’re facing is that these output data, they don’t simply turn on or off when they receive a signal. You’d have to try it out to see if it works but you might find that the data happens too fast for the Pi to recognize as a low signal like you’d get from a button press.

The data is quick and looks like this:

NecIrRemote_0.png

You could build a remote that sends an empty carrier and then you might be able to use the receiver diode to detect that but you’re still looking at using a micro controller to generate the signal. You might be able to generate an empty carrier signal with a 555 timer and skip the micro controller but then you’re looking at more work than using a micro controller alone.

Heck, it might work with just the receiver diode alone, you’d need to experiment to see but I think it would be a lot more reliable if you used a micro controller to process the data and output a nice long low for the Pi to see.

OK, thanks. I hadn’t had much luck including adding a capacitor and diode which is why I was seeking advice in the forums.