Hello electronic specialists,
this "problem" has been addressed already two times here in the forum one time in nilskilz thread: Amplifying IR LED with Transistor
and then in Cessna172's thread:
IR LED Amplifacation
However It doesn't really seem that any of both came to a working solution at the end.
So, sorry for coming up with it again.
I am already through attempts with a MOSFET IRLZ34 and a transistor amplifier with a TIP120.
Using the MOSFET example circuit @SteveMann provided, signal from an ESP32 S2 Mini, powered with 5V,2A power bank I am getting these peak values:
busV,shuntV,loadV,mA,mW
0.87,0.04,0.87,6.50,6.00
the results with a TIP120 / 1000uF capacitor circuit are:
busV,shuntV,loadV,mA,mW
0.87,0.97,0.87,9.90,10.00
You may notice that I didn't add a resistor to the LED in the circuit, however that IR LED can handle 3A for 10 microseconds and I replaced it with a cheap yellow one for visibility reasons.
Well yes, I may burn the LED, however that at least means I finally passed high current to it. 
I will adjust the resistor then of course but I guess that should be around 0.5Ohm.
So why I am only getting ~ 10mA instead of >= 1A?
The IRRemote sequence is 29ms and the switching time of the 274-3 diode is 0.5 microseconds.
3 posts - 2 participants