The 555 schematic i posted is complete. It is only connected to the PIC through the 2 power rails. The 555 part is actually working and appears to modulate correctly. The receivers detect the IR now where they wouldnt when the emitters were unmodulated.

This 555 design is aparently an astable circuit but its not like any ive used before. I found the design for it on the internet and it was specificly designed for driving IR emitters.

I did notice something strange. With only the 555 section of the circuit running (including 2 IR emitters) the 5V regulator is getting very hot (too hot to touch).

Even though my picoscope clearly shows that the voltage doesnt vary by more than about 0.5V either side of 5V i think its possible that the 555 circuit is actually a monostable one but its designed to short something out which causes it to reset and act like an astable. This would account for the hot regulator and the PIC acting strange

Edit: I did just notice. The only thing missing from the schematic are 2 resistors that go from the output to each of the 2 IR emitters.