JP1 Remotes

Hi gang, I'm new here and would love to be able to get this thing to work! I'm using a URC-8811.

Here are some screen shots:

batteries in, cord down


batteries in, cord up


batteries out, cord down


batteries out, cord up


Am I doing something wrong? I have verified the address of my port on the computer. Any tips/info is appreciated. Thanks!

Are you using a homemade cable, or did you buy it from one of the vendors?

The title of the thread tells you it's an 8811 (so JP1 ready without modification). I also often forget to look at the title, so duplicating that info in the question helps.

The fact that batteries in, cord up gives a different result from the other three cases rules out most failure causes. It certainly can't be the diode wrong in the JP1 cable or the parallel port address wrong in the software.

I don't understand the hardware quite well enough to be certain, but I think you can deduce from those results that the failure with batteries in and cord up is due to that being the backwards orientation for the cable.

It's likely that the problem is voltage incompatibility, but I'm not sure how to confirm that or fix it beyond trying both with and without batteries. The next thing I'd try would be brand new batteries.

What model PC is this? Do you have access to any other model PC?

Another thing worth checking is the BIOS settings for the parallel port. In a few cases, changing those has fixed similar problems.

I've edited the original post to show the remote.

Following up on the voltage thing, sometimes it works better to use old batteries funnily enough as this lowers the voltage in the remote. Sometimes it's necessary to use a dummy battery in place of one of the regular batteries to further reduce the voltage.

(A dummy battery can be a dead battery wrapped in tin foil or a large paper clip, basically anything to complete the circuit using just three batteries).

Back to my question about the cable. If you made it yourself, did you use 1k or 10k resistors? (You should use 1k)

Did you use a regular signal diode or a Schottky diode? (a Schottky is preferred).

Are you using a laptop computer? If so, it's especially important to use a Schottky diode.

Thanks for the responses guys, I appreciate it. I'm using brand new batteries, but will try some older ones as suggested. My computer is a desktop PC running WinXP Home Edition. I bought the remote and cable from bluedo.com as part of a package with the JP1 cable. I'll swap batteries and report back. Thanks!

I also have the 8811 and a JP1 cable from BlueDo. The first time I tried to connect I got the same messages. My problem (and probably yours) was that I hadn't plugged the cable into the remote the right way. I only had three pins engaged. The female fitting on the cable will go on just fine with the 1,2,3 holes lined up with the 4,5,6 pins, but with no contact being made with the 1,2,3 pins. Make sure all six pins are engaged. The cord should lead away from the remote.

Mark