IR receiving devices.

["Matt Norman \(Home\)" <matt.norman@xxxxxxx>]

A different topic:

I bought an infra red splitter from letsautomate, which seemed reasonably
priced.  I thought that I could make my own leads up with ir-leds on the
end
for the distribution, but was then horrified at the cost of the receiver
modules. (ie Xantech 480B-00 "Dinky Link" Rectangular Infra-Red
Receiver is
about £100)

Does anyone know whats so special about the receiving devices that makes
them so expensive?
Is it just a case of connecting a IR/receiving led (such as maplins UK81C)
with a power supply or is there something special inside?

My company recently bought a load of HP4050N's for metered laser printing,
these all came with a little irda plug in device that allowed you to print
via infrared.  As this bypassed the accounting mechanism we havent
installed
that part and have several to experiment with.  I was sort of hoping that
as
it is in quite a nice case I could tap into it as a receiver somehow.

Matthew