Anyone wanting to help?

[Wintermute]

I have been trying (without success!) to get my head round the HEX file written by Jon Rhees, to implement a slightly different version of the UIRT.

Here's what I am trying to do:

I have four main areas within my house. At present, I use an IR distro system to get control signals from the various rooms back to the UIRT, then the Home Server changes channels, changes video sources, switches on and off X-10, bits an bobs.

The problem is granularity. it would be *great* if i could tell which zone an IR signal came from. My home control system doesn't use complex remotes like Pronto, it uses really simple one for all "zapper" remotes..

The way I would like to use this is to have the "power" button on the remote wake up the display device/Audio in the zone where it was used, and switch sources to the house menu (TV out from the Server)

I see the PIC16F84 has plenty of unused pins, and I have been playing around with using these as multiple IR ports.. so, for instance, each zone gets a TSOP IR RX module, and some IR Leds (suitably driven of course) as well as being powered from the central box.

I think I need:

1) Some commented source for the UIRT to help understand *how* it works

2) Anyone trying to do similar things to bounce ideas/issues/developments off of.

Is anyone willing to help?

Ian/Wintermute

[kari]

Just a random thought that struck me: Is there an X10 to RS232 bridge available that can be controlled from the X10 end? If so you might be able to use that and seperate UIRT's in each room. Somewhat expensive, but it would save you some wiring. Also, it would probably require a modified Girder plugin, but that would be the case also if you built one Multi-I/O UIRT.

-Kári.

[Wintermute]

I actually have Cat-5 cable to each zone of the house, so I could just use RS-232 from a multi-port Serial Card.

and, to be honest, this may be a good solution.

I was looking for something a little more "elegant" but perhaps it's time for a brute force solution..

Ian.

[Mark F]

An even LESS elegant solution:

Most of those one-for-all remotes can be told to use specific manufacturers codes for the various devices they control (JVC VCR vs Sony VCR, etc.). Could you configure the remote for each room to use different manufacturer codes for the devices? Maybe the Family room is the Sony room and the remote there speaks Sony codes while the Bedroom is the JVC room and the remote there only speaks JVC codes. At the PC that receives all this stuff, it has to know which code is for which device and zone but Girder is good at this. :)

OK, this is UGLY but it could work. ;)

[Wintermute]

I tried this one Mark, and hit a rather nasty problem:

Lots of manufacturer's don't use discrete unique codes for each bit of kit..

as an example:

Almost all remotes have a "pad" consisting of Volume Up/Down Channel Up/Down and an obvious "select" button. I use this with the mouse plugin to give any remote the capability of controlling the server.

The problem is: the remote for the Phillips 14" TV I use in my kitchen generates *exactly* the same codes as the Sharp TV set in my bedroom for Vol+ and Vol- confusingly "mute" on the Phillips == "AV-1" on the Sharp

The remote I have for my WinTV card in the office (Hauppage) is about 70% common with the Phillips remote.

It's frustrating, and the reason I started to look down the multi-zone solution.

[Robin]

Some of the One For All remotes can be reprogrammed ...

All you need is a simple cable (requires 2 resistors, 1 diode and 2 connectors) and the software available and you can make your own device layouts to suit your own requirements ... This ONLY works for remotes with a JP1 connector under the battery cover !

see http://groups.yahoo.com/group/jp1/ for more information

[mattwire]

I have been looking for a multizone ir reciever for some time. The only commercial one I know of is the slink-e which is rather expensive for my needs.
If a multi-io version of the uirt could be designed I think there could be a fair bit of demand for it.
I see no reason why the girder plugin should need to be altered since all it does is recieve the (already decoded) codes from the pic. Hence the pic could just append a short code onto the ir code to denote the zone from which it was recieved. Thus girder would recieve different codes for the different zones.
I am very interested in a project such as this, having considered inelegant solutions such as multi-serial port adapters etc. However, this fills the computer up with unneccessary hardware and besides I don't have room for lots of cards just for ir control - bear in mind there are also other requirements such as outputs (eg lcds, video, tv-out etc) and in 'multizone' environments there could be a fair number of these as well.