I'm working on a media center PC and I want to keep everything inside the case, so no outside IR receiver. To achieve this I took apart an HP MCE IR receiver I got off ebay for about 5 bucks, but I can't figure out what one of the parts on it is. I've identified the IR receiver and the busy LED, but the other part I've circled on the picture i can't figure out what it is. I've googled it and searched hardware modifying websites to see what I can find, but to no avail. Maybe Massassi can help me.

Here's a couple different angles of it:

Can't tell, picture is blurry.

Kind of looks like another light to me.

Tried to get a bit of a better picture.

Don't know what that is, but it doesn't look too important.

Looking through some pinouts and schematics for other ir receivers, it looks like it may be a resistor or IR reflector of some kind. My main reason for wanting to know what it is is to know if I need it to be in sight of the remote along with the IR receiver or if I can leave it inside the case and move the receiver where I need it to go.

Guess I'll find out soon enough. Thanks.

Why not use a Bluetooth remote?

It's still difficult to tell from the blurry picture. It's not a resistor, I'll tell you that much. It almost looks like it could be some kind of resettable fuse or breaker, but I have no idea what something like that would be doing in an IR receiver. It could also be some kind of funny diode. It really looks more like an LED than anything else, but I've never seen an LED in that type of configuration. But again, hard to tell.

You can almost certainly leave it out of sight. The photodiode is the only thing that ever needs to be visible, in my experience. Why not test it by covering up that part?

I'm 99% certain that's an emitter. Looks to me like it's an IrDA port.

Oh! Yeah, I can see it now. It looks similar to the emitter in this picture. The bulge looked like a hole or something, rather than a lens.

Yeah, it looks like it's definitely an emitter. Thanks everyone.

I would use Bluetooth, but I can't find any Bluetooth remote controls except for the PS3 one. Not that I'd be against using the PS3 remote, it just wouldn't fit the theme of the PC I'm working on. <_< >_>