I recently had someone ask me how to add an extra IR Receiver to the RS Media in order to improve remote reception from behind. Here is how to do it.

First off, you are going to need to following things, or an appropriate substitute.

Materials

---

• IR Receiver, any IR Receiver will do as long as it meets the two primary requirements. it must be able to receive 39.2kHz signals, and it must be capable of functioning at 3.3volts. This receiver will probably meet those requirements.
  
• some wire, any colour will do, but red, brown and black would be good choices
  
• some heat-shrink tubing suitable for use with the wire you chose
  
• duct tape
  
• a RS Media that you don't mind cracking open
  

Tools required

---

• A soldering iron
  
• wire cutters
  
• heat-gun (for the heat-shrink tubing)
  
• hot-glue gun
  
• screwdriver
  
• scalpel

Instructions

---

Step One, Identify which pins on the IR receiver are VCC (power), GND (ground) and OUT (decoded signal), you have to check the datasheet for your receiver to find these. Solder the wires to the legs of the IR Receiver. If you have wires in the colours I suggested, solder the following colours to the following pins, Make a note of which wire is which. Red to VCC, Brown to GND and Black to OUT. Cover the pins and solder joints with heat-shrink.
image #1

Step Two, Open the RS Media's head by undoing to 4 screws that hold it together. Once the head is open remove the rear panel and put it aside for later. unplug the IR receiver from the shown socket. Remove the two screws that hold the circuit board and eye assembly to the face plate, the face plate should come away with the IR receiver still attached.
image #2 image #3 image #4

Step Three, Carefully pry up the plastic tabs that hold the pins in place and remove them from the plug. CAREFULLY strip away a 1cm section of wire from the wires close to the plug for the IR receiver, and strip the same amount off the ends of the wires to the new IR receivers. Tin the exposed wiring with a soldering iron, join the wires Red to Red (VCC), Brown to Brown (GND), and Black to Black (OUT), by twisting them together and then solder them together. slip a suitable length of heat-shrink tubing over the join, make sure there is still enough room to insert the pins back into the plug. Insert the pins back into the plug.
image #5 image #6

Step Four, Place the IR receiver onto the rear panel from the head that you put aside earlier, and glue it in place with the hot-glue gun. Wait for the glue to cool and harden before covering the back with the duct tape.
image #7 image #8 image #9

Step Five, Reattach the face plate to the eye and camera assembly. reassemble the head, making sure that the neck is correctly attached and positioned as shown. If you don't get it back together right, the head may sit at an odd angle.
image #10

Step Six, All done. Test reception from behind.