[mythtv-users] Channel Changing using serial port on DCT-2244

[jim Peters]

I have a Motorola DCT-2244 with an active serial port, I am trying to
get Mythtv to change channels using it. I have downloaded the
pre-compiled binary on this page
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/MythTV_External_Channel_Changer and
followed the instructions for a serial channel changer. With the
pre-compiled binary I can change the channel on my set top box from
the command line and it works fine, $ channel 204 , and it changes to
channel 204. I have put the binary in /usr/local/bin and added
"channel" in myth backend setup for the external channel change
script, but when I try to change the channel from the frontend it
doesn't work. On the TV screen I see the reason, it is trying to
change the channel to 96.0 (the qam channel no. of channel 206)

I also found a file in
/usr/share/doc/mythtv-backend/contrib/channel_changers called
"dct2000serial.tar.gz" I extracted this and as per the readme I copied
"changechannel.py" and "crcgen.py" to /usr/local/bin and changed the
external channel change script command to point to it. I don't no if
there is anyway to check this one from the command line but it doesn't
do anything when I try to change channels from the frontend, and I see
this in the backend log ;
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/local/bin/changechannel.py", line 36, in <module>
    import serial		# pyserial (http://pyserial.sourceforge.net/)
ImportError: No module named serial
2009-03-22 17:48:50.495 ret_pid(10740) child(10740) status(0x100)
2009-03-22 17:48:50.500 ChannelBase: external tuning program exited with error 1
2009-03-22 17:48:50.504 TVRec(10) Error: Failed to set channel to 23.
Reverting to kState_None
2009-03-22 17:48:50.508 TVRec(10): Changing from WatchingLiveTV to None

Any help on getting a channel change script to work, either one of
these or another one altogeather, would be appreciated
Thanks,
jim