ur74a?

bevhoward · Post by **bevhoward** » Mon Aug 15, 2005 6:54 pm

Anyone familiar with the X10 UR74A programmable/learning remote?

The reason I ask is that it is inexpensive ($20) has built in RF that includes the ability to program the different housecodes for the x10 button (something that can't be done with X10 ir signals)

There is a single chip on a pad surrounded with 8 solder pad holes although the spacing between the rows is larger than the JP1 spacing.

The chip info was very hard to read but _appears_ to be

atmel 432
2401gan (could be 24C1gan)
6127 a

The circuit board id's the chip as "U2"

Image of the board and button pad at

http://BevHoward.com/stuff/UR74A.jpg

tia,

Post by **The Robman** » Mon Aug 15, 2005 7:56 pm

You don't actually state it, but I'm assuming your question is "can this remote be hacked to use JP1?"

If that is your question, then the answer is "no". We often get people asking if this remote or that remote can be hacked to use JP1 and unless the remote is made by UEI, the answer is always "no".

Remember, we didn't invent JP1, we just reverse engineered our way into it. Basically, we're using functionality that was built into the remotes on purpose, it just wasn't intended for end user use.

classicsat · Post by **classicsat** » Tue Aug 16, 2005 10:29 am

It looks like a standard 24C16 I2C EEPROM. IR will likely read it to the dump screen, but likely fail trying to process it.

The pads around the IC that is there is for a DIP package EEPROM, rather than the SOIC one installed.

* I know IR should be able to read non JP1 EEPROMs, as I have done it to reverse engineer an EEPROM on a USB device.

bevhoward · Post by **bevhoward** » Tue Aug 16, 2005 8:19 pm

>> can this remote be hacked to use JP1? <<

The question was actually if it had been looked at by anyone else since, from my limited knowledge, the remote itself appears to be very similar to the other URC remotes including instructions and the code tables which seem to closely match the URC manuals.

Because of it's small form factor, what seems to me to be a good layout and low cost plus it's RF capabilities though it might be of interest.

I had the same thought about the dip layout, but didn't feel qualified to comment on a chip, however, did think that a using dip socket as a programming connector might have been a possible design intent.

If any of the hardware experts here would be interested, will donate the unit for your tinkering pleasure as partial payment for what I have learned here... no strings attached.

Post by **The Robman** » Tue Aug 16, 2005 9:03 pm

The remote that I was thinking of (the UR24A) is made by X10 or IBM, so it's not a UEI remote. But, if you say the setup codes are similar to standard UEI setup codes, I could be mistaken, maybe the UR74A is a UEI remote.

Could you post some examples of codes that are the same? Or if you have a link to an online version of the user manual, even better.

Post by **The Robman** » Tue Aug 16, 2005 9:08 pm

OK, I used Google to find some info about this remote, and the code list doesn't look like UEI codes.

Here's the manual...
ftp://ftp.x10.com/pub/manuals/ur74a-om.pdf

Here's the code list...
ftp://ftp.x10.com/pub/manuals/ur74a-codelist.pdf

And here's a pic...

roger1818 · Post by **roger1818** » Tue Apr 11, 2006 9:18 pm

The Robman wrote:The remote that I was thinking of (the UR24A) is made by X10 or IBM, so it's not a UEI remote.

If you check out the following link you will find the following quote:

http://www.x10.com/support/faq_privacy.html

In 1988 X10 started manufacturing universal remotes for Universal Electronics, Inc. (UEI) under the One-For-All brand. We expanded this business to the point where we were manufacturing 1 million remotes a month. We now make remotes for many OEMs and have the best IR code library in the business. X10 are now one of the biggest manufacturers of universal remotes in the world.

From this it looks like X10 makes UEI's remotes including the One For All brand. You are right though that the device codes are quite different (X10 uses 3 digit codes). It looks like X10 also makes remotes for RCA since their codes look very similar. I am not sure if this helps at all, but it is interesting.

Post by **The Robman** » Tue Apr 11, 2006 9:46 pm

While X10 may have made some remotes for UEI back in 1988 (and I have a Radio Shack 15-1919 from that era, which comes with an X10 base unit) they certainly don't make their remotes today.

The OFA brand is made exclusively in China by a company called "Computime", and their US brand (CT Global) distributes them here. Computime also makes alot of the other UEI remotes, but not all of them, as they do farm out some remotes to other vendors.