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Eric W
Joined: 08 Jun 2004 Posts: 6
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Posted: Tue Jun 08, 2004 8:54 pm Post subject: Linux MythTV PVR w/ Nice Tracker Wireless keyboard |
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Hello All....I'm a newbie so I'm sorry if any of this has been covered before. I've done a bunch of reading but I'm still a little unclear on some stuff. Here is the deal:
I've got a Linux MythTV PVR that has a Nice Tracker Wireless keyboard (http://www.directron.com/ack573.html) hooked to it. I would love to get my Radio Shack 15-2116 remote to emulate some of the keys. The remote is able to learn key-stokes with the IR learn function, but as expected I run out of memory after about 22 keys.
I have my cable and IR up and running, however I'm a bit stumped as to what to do now since I can't seem to find any config info on this site (or anywhere else). When I view the "Learned signals" with IR, most of the buttons only give me raw data without any info in on the top (protocol, device, EFC, etc.). Without the EFC info and such, I'm at a loss.
Am I missing something? Or am I supposed to be stuck here? I was hoping that I could simply do 2 passes at downloading the learned signals and somehow combine them into an upgrade code. I've read the documentation but they I don't think it discuss this.
Any help would be greatly appreciated....thanks in advance! |
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The Robman Site Owner
Joined: 01 Aug 2003 Posts: 21279 Location: Chicago, IL |
Posted: Tue Jun 08, 2004 10:20 pm Post subject: |
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Q1. Do the signals that you learned actually work?
Q2. Please post the IR memory file so one of us can take a look at it.
NOTE: Please post a link to the file once you have loaded it, but please read the sticky thread that explains how to post links to Yahoo files first. _________________ Rob
www.hifi-remote.com
Please don't PM me with remote questions, post them in the forums so all the experts can help! |
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Eric W
Joined: 08 Jun 2004 Posts: 6
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Posted: Tue Jun 08, 2004 11:29 pm Post subject: |
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The Robman wrote: | Q1. Do the signals that you learned actually work?
Q2. Please post the IR memory file so one of us can take a look at it.
NOTE: Please post a link to the file once you have loaded it, but please read the sticky thread that explains how to post links to Yahoo files first. |
Thanks for having a look...I really appreciate it.
Q1: Works perfectly, just not enough memory for all the keys
Q2: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/jp1/files/Diagnosis%20Area/2116_wireless_keyboard_IR.txt
Thanks!
Eric |
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The Robman Site Owner
Joined: 01 Aug 2003 Posts: 21279 Location: Chicago, IL |
Posted: Wed Jun 09, 2004 11:33 am Post subject: |
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OK, some quick preliminary research into these signals shows that it uses a tricky format where one of the burst pairs starts with an OFF time (rather than the standard ON time). Just like the last time we saw a signal like this, when the first pair in the stream starts with an OFF time, they insert an extra ON burst between the leadin pair and the first data pair.
Here's my preliminary findings, along with the binary for the 15 buttons learned. At first glance there appears to be a 3 bit device code followed by an 8 bit command code, a 1 bit toggle (that changed for each repetition), then a 4 bit checksum.
leadin = +1800 -1200 (+450)
1 = +450 -600
0 = -600 +450
leadout= -75000
000 00000000 0 0000
000 00000000 1 0001
000 01000000 0 1000
000 01000000 1 1001
000 00100000 0 0100
000 00100000 1 0101
000 01100000 0 1100
000 01100000 1 1101
000 01001000 0 1001
000 01001000 1 1000
000 00110001 0 0101
000 00110001 1 0100
000 01110001 0 1101
000 01110001 1 1100
000 00001001 0 0011
000 00001001 1 0010
000 00010001 0 0001
000 00010001 1 0000
000 01010001 0 1001
000 10000001 1 1111
000 01010001 1 1000
000 01010101 0 0101
000 10000001 1 1111
000 01010101 1 0100
000 00110110 0 1001
000 00110110 1 1000
000 00010111 0 1101
000 00010111 1 1100
000 00001111 0 1111
000 00001111 1 1110
000 00110000 0 0110
000 00110000 1 0111 _________________ Rob
www.hifi-remote.com
Please don't PM me with remote questions, post them in the forums so all the experts can help! |
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bwade_913
Joined: 18 Jan 2004 Posts: 20 Location: Boulder, CO |
Posted: Wed Jun 09, 2004 3:19 pm Post subject: Re: Emulating Keyboard IR |
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Eric W wrote: | Hello All....I'm a newbie so I'm sorry if any of this has been covered before. I've done a bunch of reading but I'm still a little unclear on some stuff. Here is the deal:
I've got a Linux MythTV PVR that has a Nice Tracker Wireless keyboard (http://www.directron.com/ack573.html) hooked to it. I would love to get my Radio Shack 15-2116 remote to emulate some of the keys. The remote is able to learn key-stokes with the IR learn function, but as expected I run out of memory after about 22 keys.
I have my cable and IR up and running, however I'm a bit stumped as to what to do now since I can't seem to find any config info on this site (or anywhere else). When I view the "Learned signals" with IR, most of the buttons only give me raw data without any info in on the top (protocol, device, EFC, etc.). Without the EFC info and such, I'm at a loss.
Am I missing something? Or am I supposed to be stuck here? I was hoping that I could simply do 2 passes at downloading the learned signals and somehow combine them into an upgrade code. I've read the documentation but they I don't think it discuss this.
Any help would be greatly appreciated....thanks in advance! |
Hello Eric,
If you go to the Yahoo file site and look under Device Codes --> Keyboards, you'll see that there are several IR keyboards with upgrade files available. I use the Liteon keyboard with the Airboard file. Your choices are to either purchase a new keyboard or hope that someone reverse engineers the one you have so that an upgrade file cn be created. Personaly, I'm wishing for Qtronix support.
Good luck,
Bret |
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Eric W
Joined: 08 Jun 2004 Posts: 6
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Posted: Wed Jun 09, 2004 3:35 pm Post subject: Re: Emulating Keyboard IR |
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bwade_913 wrote: |
Hello Eric,
If you go to the Yahoo file site and look under Device Codes --> Keyboards, you'll see that there are several IR keyboards with upgrade files available. I use the Liteon keyboard with the Airboard file. Your choices are to either purchase a new keyboard or hope that someone reverse engineers the one you have so that an upgrade file cn be created. Personaly, I'm wishing for Qtronix support.
Good luck,
Bret |
Thanks Bret...that was my worry. I've owned the Liteon in the past (got rid of it) but I wasn't happy with it. The keyboard I have is perfect (IMO) for PVR's so I really hate to change it. I think there might be a long road ahead of learning and tinkering.
Silly me for thinking it would be as simple as combining two or three passes of downloaded learned signals and just "piecing" them together.
Thanks all. |
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bwade_913
Joined: 18 Jan 2004 Posts: 20 Location: Boulder, CO |
Posted: Wed Jun 09, 2004 11:17 pm Post subject: Re: Emulating Keyboard IR |
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Eric W wrote: | bwade_913 wrote: |
Hello Eric,
If you go to the Yahoo file site and look under Device Codes --> Keyboards, you'll see that there are several IR keyboards with upgrade files available. I use the Liteon keyboard with the Airboard file. Your choices are to either purchase a new keyboard or hope that someone reverse engineers the one you have so that an upgrade file cn be created. Personaly, I'm wishing for Qtronix support.
Good luck,
Bret |
Thanks Bret...that was my worry. I've owned the Liteon in the past (got rid of it) but I wasn't happy with it. The keyboard I have is perfect (IMO) for PVR's so I really hate to change it. I think there might be a long road ahead of learning and tinkering.
Silly me for thinking it would be as simple as combining two or three passes of downloaded learned signals and just "piecing" them together.
Thanks all. |
In theory we shouldn't actually be using the keyboard once we have the remote working correctly, so it shouldn't matter how good it is. It doesn't work out that way in practice.
I'm running MythTV using FC1 and Gnome Desktop. I've discovered that GD has the ability to define custom hot-keys so it's possible to use a single remote key press to kick off an application without having to open a terminal first or define a complicated macro in the remote.
One of the problems with the Liteon/Airboard solution is that there aren't codes for the mouse pointer available so you have to use learned signals instead. This is preventing me from using the 15-2117 extensions because they don't support learned signals.
Cheers,
Bret |
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Eric W
Joined: 08 Jun 2004 Posts: 6
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Posted: Thu Jun 10, 2004 12:24 am Post subject: |
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Hey Bret,
I'm not sure I will ever totally ditch the keyboard. I think that 95% of the time I will use the remote but occasionally use the keyboard for things like like mythgame. When I finally get a HDTV I'll probably use it to pull up the occasional web site as well and I would use the keyboard then too.
I have an IR sensor working through my PVR 250 card so my remote does work. I've pretty much setup the remote according to Jarod's guide. The reception of that IR sensor is not as good as the sensor that comes with the keyboard....so that is one of my motivations. Additionally, I would like the "cleaner" implementation of just using the keyboard IR receiver for both remote and keyboard but that's just my OCD taking control.
I'm glad to see a fellow MythTV user here though!
Cheers |
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jon_armstrong Expert
Joined: 03 Aug 2003 Posts: 1238 Location: R.I.P. 3/25/2005 |
Posted: Thu Jun 10, 2004 3:41 pm Post subject: |
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Eric,
Give this a try. I think what Rob called a "toggle bit" is a bit set for the key press/release command. The key press is the Zero bit, the key release is One. This is pretty typical of all the keyboards that I have seen. The good news is that that isn't really important. And hard wiring that in a protocol can be counter productive. If you need a ctrl-alt-del you really need the ctrl-press, alt-press, and del-press for it to work
I see this protocol as 17 bits. A start bit (a zero) 15 data bits, and a parity bit as Rob figured out and a stop bit (a One). In Protocol builder I treated it as one bit of fixed data of two 8-bit bytes of variable data and handled the stop bit in the lead-out
This is what the PB protocol looks like in John Fine's new irp format:
{38k}<-624,468|468-624>(1820, -590,0:1:Byte1:8,Byte2:8,442,-75000)
Rather than have the protocol calculate the parity bit that PB can't do, you can calculate it (if you really wan't to try all possible commands but for a keyboard that doesn't really serve any purpose).
So test the following Device and Protocol upgrade Cable/1776. Be sure to delete all the learned commands first. If I'm right this will work as well as the learned commands.
Upgrade Code 0 = 6E F0 (Cable/1776) Nice Tracker Wireless keyboard (KM v8.22)
A1 00 80 00 3B 00 0A 29 00 00 08 08 04 04 0C 0C
09 09 06 25 0E 2D 01 23 02 21 06 FE 01 EF 02 ED
0A A5
End
Upgrade Protocol 0 = 01 A1 (S3C8+) Custom Protocol for Cable/1776 Nice Tracker Wireless keyboard (KM v8.22)
3D 92 12 8B 13 8D C4 10 01 08 00 EA 01 24 00 EA
01 24 92 7C 03 8E 01 24 8D 01 46
End _________________ -Jon |
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johnsfine Site Admin
Joined: 10 Aug 2003 Posts: 4766 Location: Bedford, MA |
Posted: Thu Jun 10, 2004 4:05 pm Post subject: |
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jon_armstrong wrote: |
Rather than have the protocol calculate the parity bit that PB can't do, you can calculate it
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I haven't read this thread too carefully, so excuse the slightly out of context reply, but it should be easy to make RM compute the parity bit in situations like this. |
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jon_armstrong Expert
Joined: 03 Aug 2003 Posts: 1238 Location: R.I.P. 3/25/2005 |
Posted: Thu Jun 10, 2004 5:44 pm Post subject: |
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johnsfine wrote: | I haven't read this thread too carefully, so excuse the slightly out of context reply, but it should be easy to make RM compute the parity bit in situations like this. |
Is that using the XorCheck in protocols.ini?
From the notes:
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# XorCheck(bits,destOffset,seed,count,sourceOffset,step)
# computes an xor check field within fixed data from other fields
# within fixed data |
I realize most things in the DeviceParms work the same way in the Command Parms but I hadn't thought about it that way _________________ -Jon |
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The Robman Site Owner
Joined: 01 Aug 2003 Posts: 21279 Location: Chicago, IL |
Posted: Thu Jun 10, 2004 6:51 pm Post subject: |
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I should also add that I haven't completely nailed down the forumula for the checksum yet. I've got it so that 95% of the bits calculate correctly but there's a couple of bits that are still wrong.
Jon, what did you make of the extra data stream in the middle of the ZERO and PAUSE signals? _________________ Rob
www.hifi-remote.com
Please don't PM me with remote questions, post them in the forums so all the experts can help! |
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jon_armstrong Expert
Joined: 03 Aug 2003 Posts: 1238 Location: R.I.P. 3/25/2005 |
Posted: Thu Jun 10, 2004 7:23 pm Post subject: |
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The Robman wrote: | Jon, what did you make of the extra data stream in the middle of the ZERO and PAUSE signals? |
My guess is that it is a "hold" command that is the same for all buttons. But it did look like it was longer than the other frames. IIRC, another Keyboard that I decoded works that way, so certain keys can do repeats. _________________ -Jon |
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The Robman Site Owner
Joined: 01 Aug 2003 Posts: 21279 Location: Chicago, IL |
Posted: Thu Jun 10, 2004 8:26 pm Post subject: |
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It was the same length as the other commands, with the same lead-in time and the same checksum.
Eric, could you re-learn the ZERO and PAUSE buttons, along with a sampling of some of the other buttons please? _________________ Rob
www.hifi-remote.com
Please don't PM me with remote questions, post them in the forums so all the experts can help! |
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jon_armstrong Expert
Joined: 03 Aug 2003 Posts: 1238 Location: R.I.P. 3/25/2005 |
Posted: Thu Jun 10, 2004 8:32 pm Post subject: |
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Also, just learn with a sharp tap on the keyboard (don't hold the key down) _________________ -Jon |
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