I am trying to use a transistor to switch a button on a remote control, by bypassing the remote control button for the collector and emitter of the transistor.
I am running a program on the pi to turn the button on and off every 0.5 secs, by turning on one of the GPIO pins every 0.5 secs. I know this program works, because if I connect the output pin to an LED it turns on and off spot on 0.5 secs.
But when I put that same pin onto the base of my transistor, it seems like the 0/low that I give out of the pin doesn't seem to register, either that or there is some sort of delay in the transistor switching off.
If I use the 0.5 sec for both on and off, the remote light just stays on permanently, until I kill the program (upon which after a few seconds the remote light flickers on/off about 6 or 7 times but much quicker than half a second. I have NO idea why this is happening!!)
I'm thinking of possibly putting a pull down resistor to try and help the 0/low output from the pin hit the transistor a little quicker and hopefully switch it off more instantly.
Does this sound right? Is there possibly something obvious I'm overlooking? I'm quite new to the electronics side of this.
I'm using a 2N3904 transistor.
I've tried putting a pull down resistor (made from the 3 resistors I have lying around, in series) but the values are only totalling about 250 ohms so it's not having the same effect as it would if I put, say, a 10K resistor in.
I've also tried switching the raspberry pi's own pull down resistor to on, with no effect (though I don't really know how to test if that's working or not)
