Upgrade CD-Player with IR-Control

[Ford-Prefect]

Hi everbody,

I have a roughly 20 years old CD-Player at home a Kenwood DPF-1030. Till last year it used to be connected to a fitting Kenwood stereo receiver and could be controlled via an SL16 connection with the remote control of the receiver. Last year I replaced the stereo receiver by an AVR and only kept my old CD player and a record player. With this I lost the functionality of remote controlling that thing. Since I had once to resolder the audio jacks once I remembered that this thing is really old fashioned THT stuff and I thought I might have a look at it.

So I found the manual online and figured out that the DPF-2030 had the remote control capability. Today I cranked that thing up again and checked the PCB whether it has the pads for that thing and indeed I found it. So in principle I am just a few solder joints away of controlling that player with my universal remote. But I can't really find the receiver thing. It's not just some sort of photo transistor, but an IC which does some sort of demodulation I guess. This thing is named RMC401 and the description says its a VHLN63H380A-1. Does anybody know how to find such a thing? I couldn't find online.

Best Ford-Prefect

[Psi]

They are pretty generic 3 pin devices.
99% of them are either 3.3V or 5V, some will do both .

The pins are VCC, GND and OUTPUT.

All they do is process the IR data and strip off the carrier freq. Output is clean digital data.

They come in a few different wavelength versions and carrier frequency too, but if you're going to use a universal remote anyway just pick the most common wavelength and carrier.

So i doubt you need to find the exact one that supposed to be in there.
It's likely any one will work as long as the voltage is correct and you match the pinout.

They are in this category on digikey
https://www.digikey.co.nz/products/en/sensors-transducers/optical-sensors-photo-detectors-remote-receiver/541

[Ford-Prefect]

Thanks a lot. That makes it a lot easier. From the schematics I can see that it's 5 V. I will try to go with this one https://www.conrad.de/de/p/ir-empfaenger-sonderform-axial-bedrahtet-38-khz-5-8-mm-940-nm-35-os-0038n-1567234.html as it's quite cheap and has already the right orientation. I was a bit confused by the solder pads, as the pcb has an extra connection to ground and an floating connection but maybe thats just to hold it in place.
Beside a 10V 100µF electrolytic it seems I need a film capacitor of 1000pF but I am not sure whether I miss something in the description. It says Mylar 1000pf K.

[Ford-Prefect]

A small addon: Is there any reason why I shouldn't just take a ceramic capacitor instead of a film capacitor?

[Ford-Prefect]

I took this one now and it works like a charm https://www.conrad.de/de/p/ir-empfaenger-sonderform-axial-bedrahtet-38-khz-950-nm-vishay-tsop4838-171115.html. Thanks for the hint.

[Psi]

Great to hear that it worked.