Girder and Sony 777es

[rtarver]

I now have my shiny new 777es sitting on the floor in the media room with a serial cable sticking out the backside (I'm about to stick in a different backside). Three days of struggling with both the 777es plugin and the serial plugin have gotten me nowhere. I currently have my HK receiver working fine through the serial plugin.

If anybody has a .gml file that they are using for serial control of a 777es I would greatly appreciate a peek at it. If not, then maybe some help with the 777es plugin. Basically any help at all would be appreciated.

The serial plugin says that commands are being sent to the sony. The 777es plugin simply says command failed.

Thanks for any and all suggestions.

Russ

[Promixis]

Russ,

Is there a Sony program to test your setup and serial connection?

What HK receiver? I didn't think we had a serial extension for one?

[rtarver]

Mike,

Like most hardware with a serial port... the manufacturers don't supply much help. I'm using an HK AVR325. I found the protocol over at remotecentral I think. It was fairly straight forward to simply use the serial port plugin. Sony didn't supply anything either. In fact, the manual says that the port is for 'future use'.

I found some code at sourceforge, but can't see to get anything working.

Thanks,

Russ

[Promixis]

Sony DVP-CX777ES RS232 controller

This program will allow you to control your Sony DVP-CX777ES unit via its RS232
port connected to the serial port of your computer.

Important - you must use a null-modem cable to connect the CX777ES to your computer.
A straight-through cable will not work.

There are other RS232 commands that are not implemented in this program (because
I did not have a use for them.) These extra commands can be located in the
included XLS file.

There is a product called the Escient Fireball DVDM-100 that can somehow extract
some kind of key information from each DVD in the CX777ES which it uses to
lookup the DVD in its database. If anyone has any information on what this key
is (e.g. product code, bar code, etc) and, more importantly, the RS232 command
used to request this information, please let me know by using the following contact
form:


do you have a null modem cable??

[rtarver]

Yep,

Picked one up the day after it arrived. Somebody posted here somewhere that they had figured out the serial connection rather than the 777es plugin, but there was no further information on that.

Russ

[Promixis]

if you search here on 777 you will find a few posts. mduckett was working on a g4 plugin.

would you mind uploading you HK serial lua file and gml to here as a zip file?

http://www.promixis.com/uploads_list.php

[m1duckett]

Yep, the original plugin is definitely not going to work on G4.

If santa is good, I might be able to get a *beta* uploaded tonight.

-Mike

[m1duckett]

Merry Christmas!

Ok attached is an alpha version of the Sony 777ES plugin.

The zip file contains three files:

Sony777ES.dll goes into plugins folder
Sony777.xml goes into the plugins/UI folder
Sample777.gml goes wherever you want to load it from.

Make sure to restart Girder. Make sure to enable the plugin.

When configuring the plugin make sure to select the correct COM port. There is a bug, the dialog always displays COM1, regardless of the previous value. Check the following HKEY the see if the stored value is correct (i.e. mine says COM3)

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Promixis\Girder\4\Plug ins\Sony777ES\Player1

I think its a good idea to restart Girder here now. I am not sure if the "enable/disable" events command resets the plugins as it did in 3.3.

I tested the Power ON and Power OFF commands as well as the LEFT, RIGHT commands. I assume the remaining ones work too. I was not yet able to test the DISC DIRECT command. I assume it works.

The logger will log

"Sony 777ES Plugin Succeded initializing Sony Com port[COMx]" when the com port is opened correctly. Otherwise there will be other log noise.

Let me know how it works out.

-Mike

[m1duckett]

Version 1.0.2 posted - to install unzip into Promixis directory



Fixed
-----

* selected COM port not saving config issue
* catch-22 with configuration and plugin loading
* added additional log messages


Only player 1 is functional (future feature is to support multiple changers)

[FearTheDentist]

Hmm...the plug-in is communicating with my changer sort of, but something's wrong. When I start G4 the changer powers on, and the logger shows the port successfully initialized, but when I try to trigger an event I get the error Warn:Event is NULL and nothing happens. Any ideas?

[m1duckett]

Are you by chance hitting "Test event" on the action itself (i.e. F5)?

This does not work like it did in 3.0, the event is null so the code logs the warning.

If you trigger the action via another event, then the action should fire. There is an example of this in the sample777.gml file.

Look in the "TEST" folder at the first "Scripting" action. Then find "MikeTest" under the "Down" action. Pressing "F5" on the "Scripting" action should successfully trigger the "Down" action and send the event to the jukebox.

-Mike

[FearTheDentist]

Got it, works great! Thanks!

[ellisr63]

So is this working fine now? I'm going to get rid of my Sony cx985 changers and go the 777es route if it will work. Are there any problems now or does everything work ok?
tia,
Ron