It was a 15 year old teenager. Some runaway kid who got involved in some syndicate perhaps. He was taken away by his family and I don’t think he just spent a couple of days in jail.

I wanted to have a security camera installed at the back side of our house. Probably one of those cameras with infrared capability so it can see at night. I can just add in a bunch of infrared LEDs to “light up” the area and make it more visible. I’ve seen some plans on the internet on how to do just that. Basically they’ve just built this square matrix of LEDs and wire them up, add some resistors to limit the current and there you go, a nice DIY infrared light source.

The good thing about infrared is that is shows on camera, but the unsuspecting burglar doesn’t see any light at all.

The new baby is finally here! What an exciting day! We came home from the hospital yesterday and put the little one into his crib. He seems to love his crib and his cute nursery. While I was so excited to get him into his bed, I realized that not having him in the room made me a little paranoid. The next day I went to www.allhomesecurity.com and found a security system for our house. I am hoping this will help my thoughts of thinking someone took him. I know it is unlikely for someone to quietly sneak into our home and take our child without making a peep. However, this is all I could think about when I was trying to sleep that first night back. I never realized I could love a little being so much and I want to feel he is in a safe environment and a safe place. I am finally starting to feel that way and finally starting to adjust to the schedule of a newborn. Wish me luck on this unexplored adventure.

Bring on the IR repeater. An IR repeater basically receives the IR signal from your remote and re-broadcast it. This device has a receiver which detects the signal from your remote, and a transmitter. Usually there is a long cable in between the receiver and transmitter. With an IR repeater, you can put the receiver outside the room, and the transmitter inside a room so you can basically use your remote even behind closed doors.

This specific IR repeater works at 38khz. Some IR receivers operate at 40Khz so you need to check your remote to make sure it operates at that band. It might be possible for it to work on a 40khz signal specially if the cable tv set top box has a receiver has a bandpass filter that lets 38k to 40khz signal to pass through. But still, it was designed for 38khz IR systems and therefore it’s best to use it for systems that operate at 38khz.

On the other hand, there are some other uses for this. I’m thinking of pranks. You can probably try and fool your friends while they watch TV. Watch a scary movie and then you can go out of sight and just point the remote at the IR repeater. Or you can probably think of suddenly turning on your radio/cd player. If you’re a hacker, you can actually buy an IR receiver that operates in 38Khz, connect it to a microcontroller, some relays, and you can turn on/off your light or desk lamps.

There’s a lot of possibilities with this IR repeater.

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