ReplayTV 5000 extender with RemoteMaster

FlipFlop · Post by **FlipFlop** » Sun Oct 02, 2005 6:38 pm

If I try to use the ReplayTV 5000 Extender with RemoteMaster, it assigns the "Power" buttons as key moves instead of as a standard button. As a result, I can't get power to work, unless I use up one of the other buttons for power. When I use KeymapMaster, I can assign the "Power" command to the "power" button and it works properly there.

Is this a known problem with RemoteMaster, is there a fix, or am I not doing something right? (This was my first attempt at using RemoteMaster, so maybe I missed something.)

Post by **The Robman** » Sun Oct 02, 2005 7:28 pm

Hi FlipFlop, I don't know the answer to your question, but I just wanted to say "Hi" and welcome to the JP1 forums.

For those that don't already know the Flipper, he's a long time member of the ReplayTV forum over at AVS and he's the one helping people figure out how to add new remote codes to their Replay boxes.

gfb107 · Post by **gfb107** » Mon Oct 03, 2005 6:47 am

Please upload your RM (.rmdu) file to the Diagnosis Area, then come back here and post a link to it.

This is most likely a minor issue with the RDF, that can be fixed easily.

FlipFlop · Post by **FlipFlop** » Mon Oct 03, 2005 6:57 am

I don't have any special RM file, as it does this with all .rmdu files I tried. Just set the remote type in RM to "ReplayTV 5000 Extender" (either 1.1 or 1.2). Then try to assign a button to the Power button (top right button on the remote). You can see on the remote layout that that button is not highlighted with an orange circle, which implies it is not assignable. If you do assign something to the power button, it shows up in the output as a key move.

gfb107 · Post by **gfb107** » Mon Oct 03, 2005 7:41 am

Bear in mind that I am not familiar with the Replay 5000 remote. So, I'm going to ask some questions about the remote, and about the RDF for it.
Most of these questions you will not be able to answer. Hopefully some of the other experts here will be able to answer those.

When I look in the RDF, I see a number of things having to do with power.
In the [General] section:

Code: Select all

PowerButtons=$03,$02

What does this mean? This is not documented in the RDF3Spec.doc.
In the [Buttons] section:

Code: Select all

TV[Power]=$03,
ReplayTV[Power]=$02,
"device button":Power=$A8,

This last button in the only one that appears in the ButtonMaps section.
It's keycode is $A8, which means RM thinks it is a shifted key, with base keycode $28, which is the "Zones" button. But, because the Zones buttons isn't declared before the "Power" button, RM doesn't establish a connection between the two (this part is a bug in RM).

Post by **The Robman** » Mon Oct 03, 2005 8:16 am

The R5k remote is one of those remotes that isn't a true universal remote, all of the buttons control the main device (ie, the ReplayTV) except for the volume buttons which control a TV. There are two buttons that look like device buttons (labelled TV and Replay) but they are really "POWER" buttons for each device. In other words the "TV" button is really the TV-POWER button and the REPLAY button is really the REPLAY-POWER button.

IIRC, the extender treats the REPLAY button as the universal "POWER" button, and it treats the TV button as the universal "SHIFT" button.

The numeric buttons become the universal device buttons, in other words...

shift-1 might be TV
shift-2 might be VCR

etc

gfb107 · Post by **gfb107** » Mon Oct 03, 2005 8:40 am

Interesting.

I still don't know how to help FlipFlop, though.

With just the Power button assigned, I can get RM to generate the same upgrade as KM. The problem, I think, is that FlipFlop is doing this on the Layout panel in RM, and assigns the Power function to the "ReplayTV[Power]" button instead of the "Power" button (which again RM treats as shift-Zones). FlipFlop is doing this, because that's the physical button he wants to use.

FlipFlop · Post by **FlipFlop** » Mon Oct 03, 2005 9:10 am

gfb107 wrote:The problem, I think, is that FlipFlop is doing this on the Layout panel in RM, and assigns the Power function to the "ReplayTV[Power]" button instead of the "Power" button (which again RM treats as shift-Zones).

That is what I missed! I was trying to assign the "power" function on the Layout tab. If I assign the "power" function to the "power" button on the Buttons tab it works as expected.

Thank you!

Post by **The Robman** » Mon Oct 03, 2005 9:11 am

gfb107 wrote:The problem, I think, is that FlipFlop is doing this on the Layout panel in RM, and assigns the Power function to the "ReplayTV[Power]" button instead of the "Power" button (which again RM treats as shift-Zones).

That's just it, there isn't a "POWER" button on this remote, there's just the pseudo device buttons: TV and REPLAY.

I just checked how IR displays things for this remote and the SHIFT button is user definable. With extender 1.2 it defaults to 3 (ie, TV button), with extender 1.0 it defaults to 2 (ie, the REPLAY button).

As the "power" button is included in the keymaps, UEI used a pseudo-keycode for the "power" button in this remote (the hexcode is A8). This is somewhat similar to how the device buttons are handled in the RCU810, if you want a point of reference. This pseudo-keycode gets converted into the physical keycode for the TV or REPLAY buttons when the setup code is assigned to one of those buttons.

I just fired up KM, loaded an upgrade and changed the remote to the R5k remote. There was a function assigned to the POWER button which was added to the upgrade itself, no keymove was generated. I can't try it RM at work to see what it does.

gfb107 · Post by **gfb107** » Mon Oct 03, 2005 11:11 am

Ok, so RM is working correctly, if not intuitively.

When using the R5K remote, it looks like the power function is assigned to the ReplayTV[Power] button. But internally, the power function is actually assigned to the Power button, which is a phantom button.

So, FlipFlop needs to assign the "power" function to the Power button, not to the ReplayTV[Power] or TV[Power] button. Until I fix the bug already identified in RM, or he tweaks his copy of the RDF to move the definition of the Power button after the definition of the Zones button, he can only do is on the Buttons panel. Once fixed, it could be done on the Layout panel, but he would have to switch to "shift", and then use assign it to the Zones buttons.

To complicate things further, the keycode for the phantom "power" button happens to look like a shifted Zones key. This isn't an issue for the unextended remote, which has no shift (we need to change the RDF to indicate this), but