After seeing our communications via light post , reader [Chris] dropped this handy little link in our inbox. A very good tutorial about using infrared to enable communications between 2 pic micro controllers.
The tutorial covers all the parts you will need, physical wiring and schematics with notes detailing each section of the circuit. It then goes on into basic IR theory, and a simplified push button circuit you can make to see that it is, in fact, working. Once you get the exercise built on some breadboards, he does some software and get some results from it all.
Now in the end this little device was hitting in the neighborhood of 9600 baud, but had to be pretty darn close to each other with a direct line of sight. These are often accepted as a couple of drawbacks to IR technologies. IR, which has never really vanished, is in use on a lot of devices though. The more you know the better off you are.
Join us after the break for a quick video!