IR Transmitter

[archived]

Back with some more basic questions...

I'm asusming that the cases that come with IR on them a) connect to the IRda header on the m/b in most cases and b) can't transmit a control signal to other equipment. i.e. if I want to control other equipment I'll need some sort of dongle to do so (and further, that Pluto or whatever package it uses has some facility for transmitting the correct codes either from a database or via training).

Is that more or less correct? The existing documentation about LIRC and IR in general seems to assume some base level of knowledge that I apparently don't have.

Thanks

Colin

[archived]

IRTrans and Tira are both USB transmitter/receiver that we support natively.  Additionally we embedded the LIRC project which includes several transmitters and/or receivers including some homebrew models.  on the Wizard, devices, media director's page, there is a pulldown to choose the infrared receiver you are using.  Then choose the remote controls you will use.  We optimize Pluto to work with our native IRTrans and Tira drivers using a Windows XP media Center remote.  All screens are navigable with this.

on the Wizard devices, AV equipment page, you can add all your other hi-fi equipment and choose as the controlled via the IR transmitter.  We already have over 100,000 infrared codes for devices from over a thousand manufacturers.  Just add your AV equipment and confirm the codes work.

you can also buy a case from ahanix.com (see the Dvine 5) that has an IRTrans and VFD built-in.  however note that it only has the receive portionof IRTrans.  So you can use a remote control to control the media director, but if he wants to be able to control other AV equipment you'll need a separate external transmitter, either an IRTrans or Tira USB, or a global cache GC 100 ethernet based

[archived]

That pretty much confirms what I suspected. I've looked at the ahanix cases and they do look very nice. I've also been looking into the cases reviewed at http://www.anandtech.com/casecooling/showdoc.aspx?i=2309 for other options.

It looks like I'll be building a COM port transmitter (which will probably provide more flexibility in positioning anyway).

Thanks.

Colin

[archived]

aaron.b,

I just stumbled across PlutoHome and found this post regarding native support for the irTrans and Tira.

I am the developer of the USB-UIRT, which has a similar feature set to the Tira, with a few more features. Who would I contact for implementing native support for the device (I assume DCE would not be the best way to go).

Thanks,

Jon

[archived]

Hi Jon,

I can help with that.  It's actually very easy because we have a common infrared base class that all IR Devices support.  So creating a new device is a matter of running DCEGen, which auto-generates the device and a c++ project, and then adding in the header that it's derived from public IRReceiverBase, public IRBase.  I can do it with you--it's a 5 minute job, and I'll give you the class.  The base class even handles converting RC5/RC6 to raw pronto, if your device requires it.

Then there will be a function:    SendIR(string sCodeInProntoFormat); that you need to implement to send IR, and another function ReceivedCode(string sCode) that you call when you received the code.  In the case of Tira, they have a C++ api anyway.  So there was only 20 lines or so of new code for Pluto, and it only took an hour or two to finish it.  If you also have a C++ library that compiles under Linux it should be just as easy.

Then we'll add the code to our master SVN and it will be automatically built and packaged as part of our normal release, like Tira and IRTrans.

The hard part is we don't have a USB-UIRT, and I'm assuming you don't have a PC with Pluto installed.  Assuming you do have a Linux PC, I can try to send you just the Router binary--that's all you really need to test.  It requires a database backend, but we can open a port on our firewall to let you connect to ours.  Then you can test the device against one of your USB-UIRT's without having to install the full pluto system.

When you want to set something up, then On our website, click 'live chat', and ask to be transferred to me.  I'll call you and can send you whatever files you need.

[archived]

Oh, and BTW, if you're a Windows programmer, all our code compiles and runs on VS.net too.  Even though our release version is Linux based, some of our developers prefer Windows, so you can also run the windows version of the router and a windows version of the USB-UIRT if your code is also cross-platform c++.

[archived]

Thanks, I'll do that... I'll also get a few devices sent out to you

-Jon