LinuxMCE Forums

General => Installation issues => Topic started by: lmwashere on November 16, 2009, 06:40:07 pm

Title: Different behavior from 8.10B
Post by: lmwashere on November 16, 2009, 06:40:07 pm
Well I completed my 8.10B install, well sort of. These things tend to be a work in progress. In any case, I am having an issue with controlling my dish box. In 7.10 and 8.10A, I have had spotty luck with it. Usually I have wound up just doing reinstalls (mostly for other reasons) and eventually it winds up working properly. The issue is that when I press the live tv button, it should turn on my dish box and tune to the last channel that myth was on. This seems to be the default behavior, but sometimes after an install it doesn't send the power on or select commands. The commands should be "power on, 1, 2, 3, select" with the digits being the last channel which was watched. When it works properly I see 5 flashes from my USB-UIRT when I hit the live tv button and the tv and receiver are already on. Now I am only seeing 3.

If I turn the dish box on manually prior to pressing the live tv button, I can see what the flashes are. They are the channel buttons. LMCE will change channels fine. I have the settings in the IR properties section set to terminate the channel numbers with select and to always use 3 digits.

It is set up with discrete on-off commands. I used the select button as the on command because select will turn the box on.

Now for the really interesting part. If I am not sending numerical inputs, I have to send the command twice to the dish box to get it to respond. This applies to the select button, guide button, whatever. This is true if I am using the test ir codes function on the web page or if I am using the orbiter. I was thinking that if I increased the number of times that the command was sent then it would solve this issue, but it doesn't seem to. The information I have for my dish remote tells me that I should set LMCE to send each code 5 times. This as I said works for the numerical input. I have tried increasing it all the way to 25 times each however and gotten no change in the response to the other commands.

All that is to say that it is the combination of the power on and select commands which have actually turned my dish box on in the past. The dish box stays on the same channel it went off on and myth remembers this as well, so channel syncronization is not an issue.

So my question is: is there any way to convince LMCE to send the power on command when I hit the live tv button and then hit the select button after trying to tune the channel? That is without doing another re-install.

I have tried switching the channel changing script to one that I found in the myth forum, however that just seems to make myth in LMCE very angry. Then it grumbles and complains constantly. Here is that script, notice it is nothing like the built in LMCE script. The idea was though that it was set up to send the select command after sending the channel.

#!/bin/sh
REMOTE_NAME=DISH_1  # Define my remote name here
for digit in $(echo $1 | sed -e 's/./& /g'); do # Accept input from MythTV
irsend --device=/dev/lircd1 SEND_ONCE $REMOTE_NAME $digit # Send the output to Lirc
sleep 0.4 # note, you may have to tweak the interdigit delay up a bit # Wait for next digit
done # got last digit from MythTV
irsend --device=/dev/lircd1 SEND_ONCE $REMOTE_NAME select # Add a select to speed up channel changing.
sleep 0.4
irsend --device=/dev/lircd1 SEND_ONCE $REMOTE_NAME cancel # Get the Dish OSD off the screen, it annoys me and I don't want it on my recordings.


I am adding a pic of the IR properties page so the settings are easy to view.

Thanks in advance for any advice.
Josh
Title: Re: Different behavior from 8.10B
Post by: lmwashere on November 22, 2009, 12:40:53 pm
So I have tried 2 re-installs, no joy on either one. Not sure why LMCE is not turning on the dish box. It is operating all of my other av equipment properly as far as turning it on and off. I think I have figured out a workaround though. I might be able to set the dish box not to turn off, but then that is an egg sucking work around as one of the benefits of automation is the energy savings.

If anyone has any ideas, they would be MOST appreciated.

There is one difference that I can think of between the way I had things set up before and now. In the connection wizard on the admin site, I have audio and video pipes running from the dish box to the second input on my tv. The reason for this is so that I can use the dish box without running it through myth when I want to watch something from it's built in dvr. This does away with the delay involved when running it through myth. I would not think that would cause this issue though. Could LMCE be assuming that the dish box is already on because of this? If that is the case, why would it not send the select command after the channel digits?
Title: Re: Different behavior from 8.10B
Post by: lmwashere on November 29, 2009, 05:56:31 pm
The solution it would seem, is to select the the VIP211K out of the dish network receivers section. It would seem that they use the same IR codes. According to several other posts that I have read most of the new Dish boxes use these same codes, so this should work for most people who are having trouble with getting Dish boxes set up.

Josh