JP1 Remotes

Over the last few days I have been experimenting with my three XSight remotes (Lite, Plus, and Colour). After an upload or download, RMIR displays the amount of buffer remaining, from which one can deduce the total amount of buffer present in the remote.

I was quite surprised to see that the Colour has a massive 512 KBytes of memory. In contrast, the Lite has a meagre 16 KBytes. The interesting one is the Plus, which also has 16 KBytes of memory.

Now the Plus supports 12 devices using its 16K. So if the Lite also has 16K, can it also support 12 devices? I currently have 6 devices defined in my Lite, and the "Add device" selection is greyed out on its display, so it is not currently possible to add a 7th device.

So that is the question. I recollect seeing in other threads that some remotes support more than their advertised number of devices, and that RMIR can make available these extra devices. Can RMIR do the same for the Lite?

Thank you.

-- from CyberSimian in the UK

You are mixing concepts, the amount of memory doesn't have a direct correlation to how many devices a remote supports. What you read about in some other remotes is based on this: UEI will sometimes release several different but similar remotes, where there might be a 6 device, 8 device and 10 device version, for example. To keep things simple, they will use the same programming in each remote, where it's just the physical design that is different. What this means to a JP1 user is that, even though they have the 6-device version of the remote, they have the same programming as the 10-device remote, so their remote supports 10 devices. To use the 4 hidden device modes, they would have to create macros which contain one of the missing device buttons.

Memory size is only relevant if you are adding lots of new setup codes as upgrade, and/or programming lots of keymoves or macros, and/or learning lots of buttons.

The devices on the XSights are "soft devices", ones selected by scrolling down a screen display. Even if the Lite is in principle capable of supporting 12 devices, to change the displayed list would require changing the firmware, and that is not something RMIR can do. So unfortunately no, RMIR cannot extend the Lite to a 12-device remote.

As for the Touch/Color, those remotes have an entirely different operating system, not used by any other UEI remote. They contain two different processors, an ARM one and a Samsung one, and the RAM is a third chip separate from both processors. The Lite/Plus have a single MAXQ processor with the RAM being within the processor chip. There is no meaningful comparison to be made between their capabilities based on their very different RAM sizes.

mathdon wrote:Even if the Lite is in principle capable of supporting 12 devices, to change the displayed list would require changing the firmware, and that is not something RMIR can do.

I suspected that that might be the case, but I thought that it was worth asking. Thank you for explaining the situation (and to Rob too).

-- from CyberSimian in the UK