It's and FCC vs. CE thing. No uniform global frequency standard.
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Well, there are a very limited number of standards to design for since all the countries of interest for sales are members of the ITU and have adopted band use plans that provide many options for low power wireless signaling without licenses.
There is existing off the self monolithic modules which are type accepted into Asia, EU, US and all other major markets.
I built my own using simple and legal UHF modules that are very small, the chips themselves are .5 cm on a side. There is no technical or regulation reason preventing building wireless signalling links. The actually circuits involved with light signaling and detection are more involved due to higher noise, lower power, no discrete channels with IR light, lower noise detectors and more modulation recovery sharping needed to clean up the pulses, normal restrictions on signalling data rates.
A single RF unit is each device would be use in every country, with very simple county selection with a single solder jumper to set them to the country they are sold in. That is done with hundreds of types of consumer products now, some very cheap devices.
The RF links, if data is coupled directly inside the unit to the transmitter, are simpler, longer ranged and capable of sending data reliably at much higher data rates, not to mention the reduced cost compared to IR signalling. Another major advantage is the natural channelized nature of RF links, dozens or hundreds of different channels can be used with high levels of discrimination between them. IR noise pollution can make IR systems useless even without multiple emitters in the same vicinity.
Obviously it will be a standard feature soon in any competitive camera/flash unit.
Why pay $150 for a remote receiver when it can be built in for less than $10 and if the IR subsystem was eliminated, there would be a net savings.
