JP1 Remotes

A good example of why programming a remote for someone else does not work is recently I set up a 9960 for my son who lives 900 miles away from me. Since I did not have the same devices as him I could not test anything and in fact some of the upgrades didn't work and best I can tell because of that none of the macros would work. Now I will be working over the phone with him to make him jp1 savvy enough that he can get it the way he wants it.

If he were a real customer believe me he would not be very happy right now.

I enjoy doing and learning this stuff. My thought was someone who's not up to the task might benifit from such a service.

I do agree that post support is a pain especially with macros.

I kind of expected the answers you guys have posted. I was thinking along the lines of a custom programming service where the users specify their requirements and then give estimates based on easy/hard it is to do and whether the protocols for those equipments are already available or have to be created from scratch and how many macros/functions they need.

I would think that there's a set of common macros that would probably satisfy 95% of the users. For instance device macros that turns on all and set everything up for a dvd-movie session. Another one would be to watch tv from satellite or cable, one for listening to cd music and one to turn all components off.

(I'm just throwing ideas around. I'm not saying any of this is feasible)

In the other hand, Rob and all you experts here are already giving free technical support all the time on this forum anyway so helping a customer wouldnt be all that different.

Except that here we're helping people to help themselves and we're under no obligation to continue giving free support to someone, but if that person has paid you to upgrade a remote for them, they would feel like they're entitled, even if they just paid you $20 or so.

Way back in the beginning, I did offer an upgrade service, and after doing about 3 remotes for people, I had had enough.

The closest thing to an upgrade service that I will do now is when I see a post from someone who says that they don't have the original remote for a specific device and an OEM replacement is too expensive, in a situation like this, if there is a JP1 upgrade available, I will offer an upgraded remote to the person. The difference here is that their expectations of the upgrade are no higher than what your expectations might be for a built in code.

afaa wrote:I would think that there's a set of common macros that would probably satisfy 95% of the users. For instance device macros that turns on all and set everything up for a dvd-movie session. Another one would be to watch tv from satellite or cable, one for listening to cd music and one to turn all components off.

When you consider all the problems we see with signal duration and overall macro speed in an unextended remote, that 95% more than likely become 5%!

In the other hand, Rob and all you experts here are already giving free technical support all the time on this forum anyway so helping a customer wouldnt be all that different.

Like Rob said, we can stop at anytime here without any real repercussions (it's really easy to ignore posts!).

JP1 is really easy when you come right down to it. Sure, some advanced devices and/or protocols can be intimidating (even to some of the experts), but with over 17,000 registered members at the Yahoo site, nd close to 1800 here, how hard can it be?

My $.02 ... I'd like to incorporate a generic config file similar to the 194.txt and FromRob.txt but for an extender.

It would have many keymoves and macros with enough notes so that the user can see some real examples.

Hi Rob, just wanted to know if the list of remotes is up to date as i am interested in buying some please advise me of what you have as of 29/06/04 . thanks , frankieb.

Yes it's up to date.

I have split off the Hauppauge discussion into it's own thread:
http://www.hifi-remote.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=2395

Rob,
1. Good price for 8910. Is the price the same when you have it ? Will there be more? Any with green lights?
2. Do you also sell ultra(?) cable and does it really win the laptop's -3.25v vs remote's 5-6v battle?

I am hoping to get some more URC-8910s and if I do they should be the same price. I've only ever seen one URC-8910 with a green backlight in my life, and that's a prototype remote that OFA sent me back when the URC-8910 first came out, so it's unlikely that I'll get any with green backlights, but you never know.

I only sell the Simple cable. The only reason I even carry the Simple is so that people can do "one stop shopping", I actually get the cables from Hovis. So, if you need an Ultra, you should get it from either Hovis or Filebug. I really don't know if it cures the laptop voltage issue, but that is why it was invented, so I'm guessing it does (I've never owned an Ultra myself).

I split off the ultra interface discussion...
http://www.hifi-remote.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=2443

Are you going to be selling remotes on ebay again? If I can't fix mine, I think the modified 6131 for replaytv you sold here on ebay would work perfectly.

thx

Rob seems to be selling them directly from here. See the first post in this thread. At the time I wrote this post, he has 1 modified URc-6131 availble, for $23 + shipping.

hitenparmar wrote:Are you going to be selling remotes on ebay again? If I can't fix mine, I think the modified 6131 for replaytv you sold here on ebay would work perfectly.

thx

The idea behind the ebay listings was primarily to bring in new customers that wouldn't otherwise find the remotes here. I'm not expecting my ebay customers to necessarily be JP1 users.

At any rate, I've just about run out of URC-6131s at the moment, though I am trying to get some more ordered, so you won't be seeing any more ebay listings until I get a fresh supply.

But like Greg said, you can order them directly from me rather than going through ebay. When you buy them thru ebay, the s/h costs reflect the fact that I have to pay ebay for the listing.

Sent you an e-mail and got an "out of office" reply. I was hoping you might check that e-mail so that we can complete a transaction to ship on Monday.

Thanks

ps: it was about one of your Kameleons


TJ