It's true that LEDs can help illuminate your life in all kinds of ways. You can use them to light your home, your garden, your pool; they're used in cars, on planes, streetlamps and in almost every civic application you can think of. But LEDs can also emit light waves that are invisible to the human eye: infrared waves. Infrared (IR) LEDs are most often the types of lights used in remote control devices and in security systems across the globe, including covert devices used by the US Military.
Infrardeče LED diode se običajno uporabljajo v varnostnih kamerah, ki omogočajo kameram, da zajemajo dnevne in nočne slike. Infrardeči svetlobni valovi so človeškemu očesu nevidni, vendar jih oddaja vse, kar oddaja toploto, na primer človeško telo ali še{0}}topel avtomobilski motor. V nasprotju z očali za nočno opazovanje, ki preprosto zaznavajo infrardečo svetlobo, infrardeče kamere zaznavajo in oddajajo infrardečo svetlobo glede na razpoložljivo svetlobo okolice. Infrardeče kamere imajo običajno senzorski sistem, ki lahko spremlja raven svetlobe na posnetem območju. Ko se raven naravne svetlobe zmanjša, bo senzor izračunal, koliko infrardeče svetlobe je potrebno za osvetlitev slike, in infrardeče LED diode se bodo ustrezno vklopile. Moč IR LED trakov se bo postopoma povečevala, dokler se popolnoma ne zatemni, pri čemer bo slika prikazana v 100-odstotni IR svetlobi. Edina pomanjkljivost IR tehnologije je, da si lahko slike, posnete v IR, ogledate samo črno-bele.
Infrared LEDs are also used in most remote-control devices; an infrared beam carrying instructions in binary code is sent from the remote control to the device (your television or your child's Tonka truck), which receives these commands and performs the action given.
