Just found a shocking fact that Android API document on ConsumerIrManger.transmit method is wrong!
KitKat has realised its own Infrared blaster API, which is incompatible with legacy Samsung private API. So I was working on Android Infrared Library to make it adapted automatically on both Samsung private API and Kit Katofficial API.
After I finished the coding according the document, I found the app broke on my Galaxy Note 3 with Kit Kat. It works perfect when running on Jelly Bean.
And I figured out an issue that it takes longer time to transmit the same seqeunce when I upgraded API. (When IR blaster is working, the LED indicator on the phone turns blue. And I found the time of indicator turning blue is significant longer than before.) And my IRRecorder cannot recognize the sequence sent by my phone any longer.
After spent several hours, I figured out the reason. The pattern was encoded in a wrong way. But I’m pretty sure that I strictly followed the API document.
So I get a conculusion that the ConsumerIrManager implementation on Samsung Note 3 is different to what described in Android API document. However I’m not sure the reason is that the Android document is lying or Samsung implemented the driver in a wrong way.
Here is the technical details of the issue and its solution:
IR Command is trasmitted by turnning the IR blaster LED on and off for a certain period of time. So each IR command can be represented by a series of time periods, which indicates how long the led is on or off. The difference between Samsung API and Kit Kat APi is that how the time is mesured.
carrierFrequency The IR carrier frequency in Hertz.
pattern The alternating on/off pattern in microseconds to transmit.
According to the Android Developer Refernece), the time in KitKat is measured in the unit of microseconds.
But for Samsung, the time is mesured by the number of cycles. Take NEC encoding as example, the frequency is 38kHz. So the cycle time T ~= 26us. BIT_MARK is 21 cycles, the period of time is around 26us x 21 ~= 546us.
So ideally, regardless of lead-in and lead-out sequence, to send the code 0xA in NEC encoding, Samsung API needs 21 60 21 21 21 60 21 21; and Kit Kat API needs 560 1600 560 560 560 1600 560 560.
But accroding to my experience, the Android Developer Reference is wrong. Even in KitKat, the time sequence is also measure by number of cycles instead of the number of microseconds!
So to fix the issue, you need some mathmatical work. Here is the conversion formula:
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