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Posted: Tue Oct 17, 2006 10:06 am
by Capn Trips
MajorWoody wrote:I learn successfuly 5 remotes into ReplayTV 5000 with extender.
TV KV-32HV600, AMP Onkio TX-DS787, DVD1 Sony RDR-GX7, DVD2 SONY DVP-NS7700, ReplayTV 5080, Remotes: RM-AV3000, 2x 9910, ReplayTV 5000
Look, I'm not impugning your integrity, nor your intelligence. I'm just trying to help explore every possibility. Many times a remote will learn signals "good enough" to work and decode, despite possible imperfections in learning technique, but then one comes across an OEM remote and component that are not quite so "forgiving" of these imperfections.

With your extra explanations, I agree that technique seems to be an unlikely culprit.

I agree with John at this point. I see two possible courses of action:
(1) Faster but more tedious for you - build a handful of NEC2 Device 0 upgrades and test every OBC from 000 through 255; or
(2) Less tedious, but will take much more time - mail your OEM remote to John and wait for him to capture and analyse the signals using CaptureIR (or build your own CaptureIR hardware and do this yourself, which is probably still more time-consuming than option (1) and equally tedious from the building perspective).

I'm still curious about the 9910 having such difficulty learning these seemingly straightforward NEC signals. I wonder if your 9910 has a minor fault of some sort.

If you have your IR image stored, it might be worth trying if an MFR reset of the 9910 makes it better, and then see if it learns these signals any better.

Posted: Tue Oct 17, 2006 11:47 am
by MajorWoody
That was my last choice to buy TSOP1738 and build IR detector.

As soon as I have data from IR detector (GetIR) I post it in the diagnostic area.

Thank you everybody for help.

Posted: Tue Oct 17, 2006 12:31 pm
by johnsfine
Is http://www.newark.com/ the only practical source for the TSOP1738?

I had trouble navigating their site. I couldn't figure out what shipping charges are for small orders and I could find the TSOP1738 specifically, but I couldn't find it by category.

There should be a page of IR detectors. I want to test CaptureIR with several different IR detectors. So far I've only tested it with two similar (to each other) non-demodulating IR detectors.

I'm pretty sure CaptureIR would work with a demodulating IR detector such as the TSOP1738. But I'd like to test that.

Before ordering from newark.com I wanted to figure out what are all the things I want there in order to combine shipping. I assume they have some other IR detectors, etc. But the site is hard enough to navigate that I haven't had time.

I'm not too sure how GetIR behaves, but I think CaptureIR would give you much more understandable output. I'm also not sure where the hardware documentation for GetIR is. If you tell me what hardware design you're using, I'll tell you how to use CaptureIR software with it.

Posted: Tue Oct 17, 2006 4:21 pm
by The Robman
I have created 7 upgrades that cover the complete range of possible OBCs for NEC2 device 0. I have also created an IR file that contains all of those upgrades.

You can load the IR file into your URC-9910. You can then test each button in each device mode to see what they do. The two volume buttons and three of the arrow buttons in the first upgrade (2001) should use the right codes, the rest will be random.

I have also included the KM files, just for reference purposes, you don't need to actually use these in your testing.

As you test, when you discover that a button does something, you should make a note of which button it was and which upgrade you were using (ie, the setup code number that displays on the screen, 2001-2007). We can then use this info to build you a proper upgrade.

http://www.hifi-remote.com/forums/dload ... le_id=3719

Posted: Wed Oct 18, 2006 7:14 am
by MajorWoody
Thank you Rob! I will try it tonight.
-Mike

Posted: Wed Oct 18, 2006 7:44 pm
by MajorWoody
Rob, you are remote control GURU! Thank you!

-------------------------Summary of my research -----------------------------------------------------------------

1) I got error during upload: DeviceIOControl Failed in I2CError

2) Files 1 and 2 had effect on tvisto. I provided notes in each file function tab. Please use KM to read it.

3) File 3 never loaded due to error.

4) Files 4,5,6,7 have no effect on TVISTO in regular or play, modes.

5) where I can send my tvisto remote so you can make better sense of it?

please check file in diagnostic area http://www.hifi-remote.com/forums/dload ... le_id=3723

Posted: Thu Oct 19, 2006 1:24 am
by Capn Trips
Well, you should now be able to combine the KNOWN functions from the tested upgrades into a single KM file and upload it to your remote and use it!

Observations:
There are 2 right arrows, but no up, down or left arrow;
You have a Previous track, but no Next track;
You have a Play/Select, and a Select/Play (?)

If you look at the functions that work (once you combine them all in a single upgrade, look at the "Code List" worksheet and select "Sort by OBC" in the upper left-hand Corner), they are all in the range of OBCs 000-031 and 064-078. That pattern suggests that test file number three, which likely had some more of the 079-095 OBCs assigned, might hide some of the functions you still lack.

WHY that file "didn't load" is unclear. If you followed Rob's advice, you just loaded his combined IR file that had ALL of the upgrades. If you foillowed a different sequence, please explain what you did.

Were you unable to load test upgrade 3 into IR?
or were you unable to upload from IR to the remote with that upgrade installed?

If you provide more details on the sequence of events you followed and pop-ups or displays on your remote that you got, it may help explain some of your difficulties.

Posted: Thu Oct 19, 2006 7:07 am
by MajorWoody
OK, I had few mistakes entering keys pointed by Capn:

There are 2 right arrows, but no up, down or left arrow; Up arrow is Up arrow and Down arrow is Down arrow from Test File 1.
You have a Previous track, but no Next track; Sleep key is Next Track, 5 min forward ( Test File2)
You have a Play/Select, and a Select/Play (?) ; To buttons have the same effect on TVISTO ( Test File 1) Play is Select and Play, and Select works as Select and Play keys.

WHY that file "didn't load" is unclear.
I used Rob's file tvisto-test.ir in IR.exe. After I clicked upload button on IR, IR gave me error message "DeviceIOControl Failed in I2CError". May be Rob can explain what this message mean? Each time I clicked upload button I have got the same message. So, some times RM created device CBL 2003 some times not. But while pressing key in CBL 2003 device switched to other codes, I do not know why.

Were you unable to load test upgrade 3 into IR?
Some attempts to load IR with CBL:2003 were successful but TVISTO did not react on any button presses from that mode.

I uploaded Test 1 and 2 files with addition of missed keys: http://www.hifi-remote.com/forums/dload ... le_id=3723

Rob,

Could please explain your choice of main NEC2 device / sub device. I would never guess that it can be zero.
Regarding 9910 learning TVISTO remote keys. I think TVISTO team purposely made remote signal sequences too long and NEC1/NEC2 at the end so that their protocol cannot be hacked by learning remotes.


-Mike

Posted: Thu Oct 19, 2006 7:27 am
by johnsfine
MajorWoody wrote:I used Rob's file tvisto-test.ir in IR.exe. After I clicked upload button on IR, IR gave me error message "DeviceIOControl Failed in I2CError". May be Rob can explain what this message mean? Each time I clicked upload button I have got the same message. So, some times RM created device CBL 2003 some times not.
I don't know IR.exe error handling, but from that description I think the process of writing to the EE failed part way through on each attempt.

I also don't know why it would fail. A few guesses are:
1) bad batteries in the 9910.
2) Timing problem in IR.exe (maybe something adjustable)
3) USB driver problem
4) Interference from something else running on the PC at the same time
MajorWoody wrote:But while pressing key in CBL 2003 device switched to other codes, I do not know why.
If that upgrade is missing or bad (due to EE being only partially written) then the remote will select a default setup code after failing to select that one.
MajorWoody wrote:Could please explain your choice of main NEC2 device / sub device. I would never guess that it can be zero.
What's wrong with zero?
The main device for NEC can be any number from 0 to 255. From your learned signals we know 0 is correct.
The subdevice can be blank (it should be blank for these) or any number from 0 to 255.
MajorWoody wrote: Regarding 9910 learning TVISTO remote keys. I think TVISTO team purposely made remote signal sequences too long and NEC1/NEC2 at the end so that their protocol cannot be hacked by learning remotes.
VERY unlikely:

1) Didn't you find some valid OBC number for NEC2 (with the above testing) for functions you earlier failed to learn from the original remote?

2) Typically a 9910 can learn signals much longer than NEC2. I still don't understand the learning failures. I doubt they are something the TVISTO team could understand or predict.

3) Why would they want to stop you from using a universal remote with their product?
MajorWoody wrote: 5) where I can send my tvisto remote so you can make better sense of it?
If you want to physically mail the remote plus return postage, I'm the one best equiped to figure out what signals it sends. Get my email address from my profile and send an email. I'll send back my mailing address. Tell me if you plan to use any method other than ordinary mail (such as UPS, FedEx, or anything that needs a signature), in which case I need to give you my work address instead. Even without signature request UPS and FedEx have a rotten track record for delivering to my home address. For any signature request, home address won't work.

But I thought you planned to get the TSOP1738 and capture the signals yourself. If you're doing that, tell me when you're ready and I'll post the latest version of CaptureIR.

Posted: Thu Oct 19, 2006 8:19 am
by MajorWoody
John, TSOP1738 is coming over ups today I will try to do my weekend research, if it will be over my head I will mail TVISTO remote then.
As for mail provider I will use UPS.
Except 2 9910 at present I do not have other learning capability.
CaptureIR is working on my PC. So then, I need to build IR detector.

I am very interested know how out of 256 combination of Main Device Rob's choice was ZERO. Could you please elaborate on your choice of Main Device and Sub Device? ( I would not sleep tonight, if I do not have answer to this question )

Thank you,
-Mike

Posted: Thu Oct 19, 2006 8:46 am
by johnsfine
MajorWoody wrote:John, TSOP1738 is coming over ups today
Did you also get some part to provide power to the TSOP1738?

I don't recall what was said about hardware for GetIR.

Maybe you can directly use another pin of the parallel port for power.

I've mainly seen discussion of the TSOP1738 as a serial port IR device for LIRC. There everyone seems to use an additional component to regulate power for it. Serial ports normally have voltage too high to power the 1738 directly. A parallel port may have voltage too low to power it directly.
MajorWoody wrote: CaptureIR is working on my PC. So then, I need to build IR detector.
The CaptureIR I'm using now allows you to select any status or data pin of the printer port for the input data. I'm not sure why Tommy selected a data pin for the initial design of CaptureIR hardware. A status pin seems less likely to have problems.

Anyway, building an IR detector for CaptureIR consists of connecting the three wires of the IR detector you bought (TSOP1378) appropriately to power, ground, and whatever data or status pin you select for the data signal.

Hopefully you have something which tells you which is which among the three pins of the TSOP1378.
MajorWoody wrote: I am very interested how out of 256 combination of Main Device Rob's choice was ZERO. Could you please elaborate on your choice of Main Device and Sub Device? ( I would not sleep tonight, if I do not have answer to this question)
I thought I had already answered that.

I don't know whether Rob looked at your learned signals and saw what I saw or whether he just looked at my description of what I saw.

Either way, the good learns were all NEC2 protocol, device 0, no subdevice. DecodeIR.dll figures that out and IR.exe displays it. You don't need to know anything about the internal structure of NEC2 to simply read that from the decodes.

The bad learns all had timing data that was truncated well short of the length of an NEC signal. But it went far enough to determine that if it is NEC, the main device must be zero. In addition to NEC1 and NEC2, the Aiwa and 48-NEC protocols also start that way and there may be other protocols I've never seen or I've forgotten that start that way.

If you had just those truncated learns I'd be inclined to suspect 48-NEC or some other longer form more likely to be a problem for the learning firmware in your OFA remote. But since you have valid learns for NEC2 I think all the learns are NEC2. That is now supported even more with the results of testing the upgrades Rob provided.

Rob of course could see the same thing in those truncated learns that I saw, if he looked at them. There are obscure things I think I can deduce from some other learned signals that I think the other experts couldn't deduce. But seeing the beginning of NEC device 0 in your truncated learns is easy for an expert at Rob's level.

Posted: Thu Oct 19, 2006 8:50 am
by Capn Trips
(1) .rar files are not commonly used, and it does not help us help you when you use a not commonly used format. If one cannot look at the file, one is less inclined to figure out how to open it;
(2) Are there TWO right arrows? or is one of those a LEFT arrow?
(2) Have you created a SINGLE KM upgrade, combining all of the functions that work and discrading those that do nothing? If not, do so. In KM's Functions worksheet, the NAMES of the functions in column A can be edited by you. Delete those functions (and OBCs) that do nothing, and rename the functions that DO do something with the function names you currently have in your notes column (H). Type in the functions and OBCs from one upgrade to the other and voila! You have a single upgrade with all of the working functions.

I would then suggest you add the OBCs from 079 to 095 as unnamed functions and test them anyway.

(3) If you look way back at your learned signals, most were the same, but a few (annotated further up this thread) were clearly decoded as NEC2 Device 0 Sub-device (blank). So THAT'S why Rob used NEC2, Device 0, and blank subdevice in building these upgrades.

Posted: Thu Oct 19, 2006 12:18 pm
by The Robman
johnsfine wrote:I don't know whether Rob looked at your learned signals and saw what I saw or whether he just looked at my description of what I saw.
I did both, mainly because I wanted to see what went wrong with the signals that were not captured correctly.

First off, some background (for Mike's benefit). IR signals are made up of "burst pairs" that represent ONEs and ZEROs. The format used for the 1-device version of the NEC2 protocol is as follows:

dddddddd DDDDDDDD cccccccc CCCCCCCC

where ...
'd' represents bits of the 8-bit device code
'D' represents bits of the 8-bit device code complement
'c' represents bits of the 8-bit command code
'C' represents bits of the 8-bit command code complement

Given that the device code here is 0, the first 16 bits for all of these signals is as follows:

00000000 11111111 cccccccc CCCCCCCC

I noticed that for all of the partially learned signals, the remote captured the first 8 "zero" bits correctly as a "sent once" signal, it then captured the "one" burst pair as a "sent while held" signal. This leads me to believe that the lowest bits of the OBCs for these buttons were all set (for LSB signals, the lowest bits will be on the left), so the signals may have been something like this...

00000000 11111111 11cccccc 00CCCCCC
00000000 11111111 111ccccc 000CCCCC
00000000 11111111 1111cccc 0000CCCC

However, I've never heard of people having problems learning the NEC signal with a device code of zero before (and there are alot of devices that use this signal, though usually with the NEC1 variant).

Posted: Thu Oct 19, 2006 12:18 pm
by MajorWoody
Capn wrote:
(1) .rar files are not commonly used, and it does not help us help you when you use a not commonly used format. If one cannot look at the file, one is less inclined to figure out how to open it;


I change KM test 1 and 2 files to be zip archive http://www.hifi-remote.com/forums/dload ... le_id=3723

Capn wrote:
(2) Are there TWO right arrows? or is one of those a LEFT arrow?
Yep, 2 keys (OBC 027 and 025) responded as right arrow

Capn wrote:
(3) Have you created a SINGLE KM upgrade, combining all of the functions that work and discrading those that do nothing? If not, do so. In KM's Functions worksheet, the NAMES of the functions in column A can be edited by you. Delete those functions (and OBCs) that do nothing, and rename the functions that DO do something with the function names you currently have in your notes column (H). Type in the functions and OBCs from one upgrade to the other and voila! You have a single upgrade with all of the working functions.

As soon as I have free time from work and home duties I will start KM upgrade for ReplayTV 5000 remote.
Capn wrote:
I would then suggest you add the OBCs from 079 to 095 as unnamed functions and test them anyway.
I tested them all in files 3,4,5,6 and 7. These functions had no effect on TVISTO.

Capn wrote:
(3) If you look way back at your learned signals, most were the same, but a few (annotated further up this thread) were clearly decoded as NEC2 Device 0 Sub-device (blank). So THAT'S why Rob used NEC2, Device 0, and blank sub device in building these upgrades.
It is good way to start, but my ONKIO TX-DS787 had two sub devices (108 and 109) for the different key sets. That is what confused me.
[/quote]

Posted: Thu Oct 19, 2006 12:30 pm
by MajorWoody
Rob, I learned all my remotes in the house using 9910 but TVISTO remote is different. I can UPS it to you, so you can learn this remote better and provide definite answer for TVISTO remote keys.

Thank you all very much for detail explanation of remote captured signal sequences!