[mythtv-users] Serial link - how ?

Jon Waite jon at jonwaite.com
Thu Feb 5 23:17:14 EST 2004


> No clue here, but have you looked in the contrib directory of 
> the mythtv source tarball? There are some goodies in there 
> that may be relevant, but I'm not certain if there's anything 
> specific to your hardware.
Nope, thanks for the pointer, I've been following your guide when setting
Myth up so I've never seen the Myth source code :)

> Hauppauge uses the somewhat obscure RC-5 IR protocol, shared 
> only by a few others (Philips/Maganavox, Marantz). I don't 
> quite follow what you're trying to do with the serial IR 
> receiver... It sounds like you need a serial cable from your 
> computer to your sat boxes to control them...
> > I had a look through the configuration files on lirc.org 
> and couldn't 
> > find either model on there either, or anything that really looked 
> > equivalent - so I've got no idea what codes to send out on IR and no
> > (apparent) way of capturing these either.
> man irrecord

Yup, irrecord works fine... With the Hauppauge remote, but gets nothing from
the Sky remotes - I think I may have been a bit to clever for my own good
here. The serial IR receiver I built following not getting anything captured
from the Hauppauge receiver from the Sky remotes is this one:
http://www1.jaycar.co.nz/productView.asp?ID=KC5366 - which because it
includes a PIC programmed to decode the signal (RC-5 from the documentation
with the kit), is ignoring the Sky remote signal. Looks like I need to build
the 'simple' IR receiver from the lirc site and hopefully that will capture
from the Sky remotes so I can work out what codes I'll need to send to the
STB's. Been out this afternoon and picked up the components to do this so
will give it a go and see what happens.

> Now I think I understand what you're doing with the serial IR 
> thingy. You're trying to build your own IRBlaster, correct?
Yup (if I understand what an IRBlaster is correctly anyway). I just want to
work out the codes being sent by the Sky remote so I can build a suitable
emitter. Next question though - is Lirc capable of driving two independent
outputs (on different serial ports) so I can change channels on both
Satellite boxes independantly ? - hmm, maybe that belongs in the lirc list.

> > I'd hate to have got this far only to find out that I have 
> to manually 
> > switch channels every time I want Myth to record something.
> There's a way! I just haven't a clue what it is. ;-)
Me neither... Yet... But I'm not going to let it beat me :)

Thanks for the response Jarod, I think you've definitely given me a way
forward, and thanks again for your hard work on the MythTV setup guides,
great stuff and much appreciated.

Jon.



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