What is this thing?

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I took apart a giant projection TV and there were a bunch of these lining the screen mount. (lemmy.world)

submitted 9 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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I feel like they probably have something to do with light level detection or infrared signal receiving but I genuinely have no idea. They could just as likely be part of the sound system for all I know.

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago (1 children)

What kind of projection? DLP? LCD?

What’s confusing to me is the diode. It almost looks like a freewheeling diode for an inductive load, but I can’t imagine what that would be.

Could also be ESD protection, but I wouldn’t expect a large IR photodiode to need much ESD protection.

Also if it’s truly a passive component like a receiver, I’m surprised there isn’t any local components for filtering or amplification.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago (1 children)

The diode is a zener- it basically clamps the voltage.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zener_diode

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago

Yeah, but trying to figure out what it’s for in this circuit. I suppose it could just be ESD.