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I have an Acer Travelmate 8200 notebook with Windows 7. The notebook has a built-in IrDA Fast Infrared Port (on the front panel) which is activated in the BIOS. Windows did auto-detect the IrDA port and automatically installed WHCQ-signed drivers for it and shows it as working: Device manager lists it as "IrDA Fast Infrared Port" under the Category "Infrared devices".

The IrDA FIR port hardware comes from National Semiconductor (Hardware ID: NSC6001), this company is also listed as the driver author. However, the company now seems to be part of Texas Instruments.

Now the question: Just how do I read Infrared signals with this correctly installed device?

I tried WinLIRC (http://winlirc.sourceforge.net/), but it can't find the device. And also the question and answer How to use IrDA adapter as serial port? here on Superuser did not help me - the guy there seems to look only for a driver, which I have already, while I seem to look for a tool to access the driver, I believe. It seems I need to map the device to a Serial port to make it work for WinLIRC, but how would I do so? I already tried creating a serial port manually in the Device manager and set the I/O addresses to the IR port, which did not work.

On the Asus support website for this notebook I did not find any software related to the infrared port. The port is listed in the manual as a feature, however, so there must somehow be a possibility to access it.

I also tried IrCOMM2k driver (http://www.ircomm2k.de/English/index.html), which seems not compatible to Windows Vista and above. It installs without errors, but it does not do anything (also the config panel in the device manager is not showing up).

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I used to sell Packard Bell Remote Control with the infrared receivers. Infrared are just "dumb" receivers. WinLIRC is a software that interprets those signals and executes commands associated with those signals. For example, the infrared receiver accepts a signal from the TV remote, and WinLIRC will change the channel on you TV tuner, go to the next track on WinAmp, etc.

IrDA is not the same protocol and is actually more sophisticated. It is bidirectional where infrared is just receiving data.

There may be IrDA to infrared translators... but the usable distance for IrDA is much shorter than infrared. In practice, it wouldn't work that well due to distance.

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  • So, I can't use the IrDA port to just look at my remote control signal for fun? OK, but how do I get the IrDA port working at all (for it's original purpose)? I have the driver, but what software can acces it?
    – Foo Bar
    Sep 13, 2014 at 18:09
  • You need another device with irda. An old palm pilot or perhaps another laptop to transfer files between each other
    – Sun
    Sep 13, 2014 at 19:38
  • Here's another thread that may help you. It's been years since I stopped selling the Packard bell remote. Things may have changed, but it wasn't possible to use IrDA like a tv remote infrared receiver.
    – Sun
    Sep 13, 2014 at 20:36
  • Assuming I have another IrDA device: What software would I need to make it work? Or does it just work in Windows, like plugging in an USB drive: "An IrDA device was detected, open in Explorer to transfer files?" ?
    – Foo Bar
    Sep 14, 2014 at 9:05
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    On the Palm end, when I wanted to send a print job, I sent it to IrDA. Then when I pointed the Palm to the HP printer, it would receive the print job and print. Here is an example on how to exchange files between a Windows Mobile and a Windows laptop.
    – Sun
    Sep 14, 2014 at 16:15

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