Posted: May 05 2004 at 17:15 | IP Logged

Well...the RR3 is here..took 5 days....got the pyramids a couple of days ago.....I'm all set to play.....

I'm new to the IR game so it'll be fun.....I have all the software and drivers installed for the RR, including the SDK...so I'm off to dinner and will probably get back to bed late :)

Posted: May 05 2004 at 23:12 | IP Logged

It's going great....I had a bit of a problem and had to uninstall the SDK, reinstall the runtime, then reinstall the SDK to get Powerhome to recognize the Redrat3...but after that everything was peachy....

One of the things I'd like to be able to do is to do an "All shutdown" type event at say, 1am....but how do you tell if a TV or VCR is on or off?  I could wind up turning things on instead of off by issuing a POWER IR command, couldn't I?

That would be damn irritating at 1am in the morning I would imagine.....

Other than that I've been having fun......such a nice tool to have.

Posted: May 05 2004 at 23:25 | IP Logged

There are "discrete codes" that can be sent that are just for on or off (not a toggle command). I'm not sure what would be required to get the RR3 to send these. I can do it with a real programmable remote.

Maybe Dave knows?

I can help get you the codes if you tell me the make/models.

Posted: May 06 2004 at 10:48 | IP Logged

Pete,

Welcome to the world of IR control !!!

You've hit upon one of the most common but vexing problem concerning controlling your IR equipment.  There are solutions however.

The easiest, as Tony indicated, is to try to locate the discrete codes for your IR equipment.  http://www.remotecentral.com is a good place to start.  One of the nice things about PowerHome and the RR3 (or RR2 now for that matter) is that you can use Pronto style codes directly.  Once you locate a discrete code (the most popular format is Pronto), just copy and paste it into PowerHome and you're good to go. 

However, you won't always find discrete codes for some of your equipment.  The next solution is to use PowerHome to track the state of the equipment.  The drawback here is that you MUST only control the equipment using PowerHome.  If you were to turn a piece of equipment on when PowerHome thinks it's off, well you know the rest.  I use this method in combination with discrete codes.  I don't use an IR remote at all anymore and instead control all of my equipment using an X10 palmpad remote.  This gives me the added advantage of being able to control the equipment from any room since its RF instead of IR.  To utilize this solution, you basically declare a global variable that acts as a flag for whether the equipment is currently on of off.  I use 0 to represent off and 1 to represent on.  I then have a trigger on "IR Out" that toggles the GV everytime the "Power" code is sent.  Last I create a couple of macros for the equipment...one to turn the equipment on and one to turn the equipment off.  These macros just check the state of the flag and sends the "Power" command if it needs to and jumps out if it doesnt.  If you need help trying to implement this or would like more info on how I can control 10 pieces of equipment with a palmpad, just let me know.

The last way to do it isn't cheap...they make sensors for just this purpose that can signal when a piece of equipment is on or off.  These sensors vary in configuration depending upon the type of equipment to be sensed.  For televisions, they have a sensor that senses the high voltage field of the CRT.  For things like A/V receivers they have a sensor that plugs into one of the receivers switched outputs.  In any event, you would need some kind of controller that can read these sensors.  This controller would then be interfaced to PowerHome and depending upon whether its on or off, PowerHome can then send the signal appropriately.  This solution has the advantage that it doesn't matter if PowerHome turns something on, an IR remote turns something on, or it's manually switched on.

Another possible solution that I have not played with is to use the new IR recognition capabilities of the RR3 in combination with solution 2 to track the state.  This way, you could control the equipment using an IR remote or with PowerHome, but not manually.  The only problem here, is that any IR directed at a piece of equipment would also have to be directed to the RR3.  I could see this potentially getting messy.

Hope you enjoy your new toy and let me know if you have any questions or problems.

Dave.

Posted: May 06 2004 at 21:10 | IP Logged

Okay...so what exactly do I download from remotecentral?  The *.CCF files?  They seem to be binary in nature and I don't see an import option to import them into the IR section.....sorry if I sound stupid.....like I said I'm new to IR....

I like your idea about using a palm pad...trouble is...with 5 girls (yes, you can feel sorry for me!), ranging in age from 12 on up to 47 (my wife), I have a hard enough time getting them trained on the remotes we have.  I'd have to come up with a really simplistic system that I know works....

Posted: May 06 2004 at 22:48 | IP Logged

Pete,

The link below will take you directly to the discrete codes area of remote central.

http://www.remotecentral.com/cgi-bin/files/rcfiles.cgi?area=pronto&db=discrete

From there try to locate your equipment.  If they have a discrete code, try copying and pasting into PowerHome to see if they work.

The first several tries, I could not get the discrete codes to work even though I knew they should...so I had to tweak them a little bit.  Trouble was, is that they were a little to short for the RedRat so I had to make them repeat a couple more times.

If you find yourself having to do this, here is a quick little primer.  If you look a the Pronto codes, you'll start to see some patterns.  First, they all consist of blocks of 4 hex digits separated by a space.  These first 4 blocks are of signficance.  You'll see that the first block is always 0000.  Not sure why, just know thats the way it is.  The second block will typically be around 0067 and is the carrier frequency for the IR.  The third block is the number of on/off pairs for the main IR sequence.  The fourth block is the number of on/off pairs for the IR repeat sequence.  After that, the remaining blocks are basically on/off pairs signalling how long the IR should be on and how long the IR should be off.  Dont be overwhelmed, an example is coming .

Below you will find the discrete "ON" code for a Sony Minidisc deck as taken from Remote Central:

0000 0067 0000 000d 0060 0019 0018 0019 0030 0018 0030 0018 0030 0018 0018 0018 0030 0018 0018 0019 0030 0018 0030 0018 0030 0018 0030 0018 0018 03ac

If you look at the first 4 blocks, you'll see the first block is indeed 0000, the second is 0067 (the frequency), the third is 0000 (number of on/off pairs for main signal), and the third is 000d (number of on/off pairs for repeat signal).  You'll see that this code does not have a main signal.  This is typical of a fair number of remotes and the same IR code is just repeated multiple times if the button is held continuously.  Now the fourth block is 000d which is equivalent to 13 in decimal.  That means that we should have 13 on/off pairs for the remaining blocks or 26 total blocks.  If you count them, that is indeed what we have.

Now, to make the IR signal repeat twice, we can do 1 of two things.  We can double the 4th byte which would be 001a and copy and paste everything from the fifth byte on, essentially doubling our IR code.  Or we could copy and paste everything from the fifth byte on (same as the first example) and instead of doubling the fourth byte, just placing 000d in the third byte.  The main thing to remember is that the number of on/off pairs must exactly match what is in the 3rd and 4th bytes.  Since I was in a hurry and didn't want to break out the calculator to double the 4th byte, I just did the latter method of increasing the IR.  My final result is below:

0000 0067 000d 000d 0060 0019 0018 0019 0030 0018 0030 0018 0030 0018 0018 0018 0030 0018 0018 0019 0030 0018 0030 0018 0030 0018 0030 0018 0018 03ac 0060 0019 0018 0019 0030 0018 0030 0018 0030 0018 0018 0018 0030 0018 0018 0019 0030 0018 0030 0018 0030 0018 0030 0018 0018 03ac

This was enough to get the signal to work in my case.  The codes on remote central are in Pronto format and designed to be used with a Pronto remote.  When you press a button on an actual IR remote and hold it, it will repeat.  We don't have that luxury using computer controlled IR controllers and therefore must usually diddle the code a little bit so that we have some repeat built in for us.

Let me know how it goes and if you need help working with the codes, just paste them here and we'll work through it.

Dave.

Posted: May 06 2004 at 23:03 | IP Logged

'kay...thanks Dave.....I get it......BTW amonst trying to do all of this I am also destroying my basement office and getting rid of my huge office desk in favor of a much smaller workstation and shelving.  That'll give me more room for my router, toys, printers, and other stuff.

So I've got lots to keep me busy this weekend....and I think somewhere one of my girls is getting confirmed.....I might have to check on that.....hmmm...

Posted: May 07 2004 at 05:17 | IP Logged

Interesting.....I programmed my Scientific Atlanta DVR by "Learning" it with Powerhome and the RedRat3...apparently the RR3 uses XML...doesn't look anything like the HEX in your samples....I assume intended for the RR2?

Here is a sample of just the POWER button in the the SQL export....

insert into equip values ('OFFICE DVR','SCI ATLANTA','EXPLORER 8000',50,38,1,1,'OFFICE');

insert into ir values ('OFFICE DVR',1,'POWER',4,4,252,96,0,0,0,12632256,'<Decode>6F820E</Decode><?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-16"?>
<ModulatedSignal xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">
  <UID>rhaxaXrNIEW3nCZVxZlqYg==</UID>
  <ModulationFreq>53333</ModulationFreq>
  <Lengths>
    <double>3.3785</double>
    <double>0.8235</double>
    <double>2.534</double>
  </Lengths>
  <SigData>AAABAgECAQEBAgECAQIBAgECAQEBAQEBAQEBAQECAQEBAQEBAQEBAQECAQIBAgF/AAABAgECAQEB
AgECAQIBAgECAQEBAQEBAQEBAQECAQEBAQEBAQEBAQECAQIBAgF/</SigData>
  <NoRepeats>1</NoRepeats>
  <IntraSigPause>37.923</IntraSigPause>
  <ToggleData />
</ModulatedSignal>',10);

Posted: May 07 2004 at 10:33 | IP Logged

Pete,

You should still be able to just paste the Pronto style code in and have it work.  The RedRat3 supports its native XML, RR2 codes, and Pronto codes.  Below, you'll find a copy and paste I did from another thread....

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

You'll also want to check out the redrat3 section in the pwrhome.ini file.  The default settings are:

[redrat3]
SaveDecodeInfo=yes
EnableRC=no
SaveSignalType=0
LengthMeasurementDelta=200
ModFreqPeriodsToMeasure=2
EndOfSignalTimeout=150

The "SaveDecodeInfo" setting determines whether PowerHome saves an incoming IR remote control string when a code is learned.  If you want PowerHome to fire triggers when IR is received, you'll need to have this turned on and relearn any IR codes.

The "EnableRC" parameter determines whether PowerHome will listen for incoming IR signals from the redrat3 and will fire an appropriate trigger if a match is found.  If you're not using this feature, then you should leave it off since the RR3 could generate a lot of signals in response to noise (flourescents, sunlight, etc.)

The "SaveSignalType" parameter determines the format PowerHome will save learned IR signals from the RR3.  A '0' value will cause PowerHome to save the signal in the native RR3 XML format.  This would be the most compatible.  A value of '1' will have PowerHome save the code in Pronto format.  A value of '2' will have PowerHome save the learned IR in the original RedRat2 format.

The remaining three parameters deal with the RR3 directly and an explanation of their purpose can best be found in the RR3 SDK documentation.  My defaults are different from the RR3 defaults and seem to be what worked best during experimentation using a number of remotes that I have at my disposal.

As you may have found out by now, I added extra code to PowerHome to enable the RR3 to play and save original RR2 codes.  In addition, I allowed for the playing and saving of Pronto style codes so you can go to places like remotecentral.com and just download codes without having to learn them.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Hope this helps...keep us posted on how it goes .

Dave.