I have Alien Bee 800's where I've never heard or seen these units being able to read any infrared (IR)signals from their optical slaves. The only way to trigger them is to have a wireless trigger system set up, have a sync cord attached or have two units close enough together so that one optical slave can see the flash from the other unit. Correction, I might not have understood the question so disregard my post all together as I don't know what near-IR is.