Serial control of Sony 10HT?

[Mark F]

Welcome to Girder!

I'm the Serial.dll plugin developer.

I would *REALLY* like to get to the bottom of this. You are the 4th or 5th person who cannot make the serial plugin talk to a device due to some sort of wiring/handshaking mix-up. This is *NOT* your fault, it is mine. I just can't seem to figure out why one program can talk to your projector and the Serial Plugin can't.

Do you happen to have a RS-232 break-out box that you could place in the signal path? If so, could you compare the lines that are raised/lowered by the PJSerialComm program VS the Girder Serial Plugin?

You may have already tried all of this but just to be sure:
Set the handshaking to none
Build and use a Girder command that turns off DTR and RTS through the Serial Plugin
Try sending your projector data again

I don't know the format of the serial stream that you need to send to the projector. Is this information available on-line? Could you supply a URL please? :)

[Mark F]

I've sent you a PM. :)

[paul_mullen]

Is anyone using Girder to control a Sony VW10HT through the rs232 port? I have had success in getting commands to the projector with a program from www.neriks.com and also with PJSerialComm from Sony. Actually PJSerialComm lets you build commands and test them for a bunch of Sony projectors. I also downloaded the protocol manual for the projector. I was able to build and test the commands successfully from the PJSerialComm app. I then tried to put the command in Girder, but no luck. I tried all different combination of settings in the serial plugin but couldn't get it to work. I have a feeling I'm just not entering the command correctly or have the settings wrong. Any help, ideas, or places to look would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
Paul

[paul_mullen]

Mark,

Thanks for the reply and also this plugin. It seems to work great with my Denon AVR5800 receiver. I've just done some minor testing with it, but no problems with it have shown up. The projector uses a null modem cable and the program from Sony builds a hex string for the command. Here is a clip of a command I created with PJSerailComm and used it's File -> Save As function. It saves it as a .txt file for loading back into the program.

A5|01|00|01|00|01|03|00|01|00|01|17|00|90|08|00|06 |40|54|2E|00|00|00|B1|5A

I tried this without the lines in between and with and without spaces between the hex pairs. I'm also trying to attach the .pdf file from Sony. The link from where I got it doesn't seem to be working. Hopefully with your experience you can make more sense of it than me. I was only able to read the command matrix to fill in the program. If you need that program I can email it to you as well. Unfortunately I don't have an rs232 break out box. Thanks again for the help.

Paul

[paul_mullen]

Thanks Mark,

I emailed you the program.

Paul

[paul_mullen]

Mark,

After responding to your email, I decided to play around with the settings in Girder some more. As I said in my email, I'm pretty new to Girder and also any type of serial communication. Under the Handshaking drop down I noticed DTR/RTS power, which you mentioned the other program was doing something with. I selected it and changed the other settings to what you mentioned in the email

Baud rate - 38400
Parity - Even
Word size - 8
Stop bits - 1
Transmit - Translate hex -> bin

I put the hex string with no spaces generated by the Sony program minus the line spacers and IT WORKED!

I still need to do some more testing with the other commands as one of them worked right away and another didn't (I think it may be what I generated from the other program causing the probelm there though). Does this make sense with what you saw from the logger?

I'll let you know for sure once I test, but THANK YOU so much for the help and the excellent plugin.

Paul

[Mark F]

Cool! This makes a lot of sense.

I believe you can use any handshaking mode except hardware. The most important parts are the other settings (baiud rate, etc.).

I'm glad this is working for you. :)

[paul_mullen]

SUCCESS! That was it Mark. I now have control of my Sony 10HT and Denon AVR5800 through Girder and the serial plugin. Thanks again for your help and patience.

Paul

[mihooper]

Paul,

I'm right in the middle of tyring to do the same thing (serial control of Sony 10HT). However, I started by trying to use VPLControl as the control application. I have been trying to target the various buttons and drop down menus by sending a command (captured parameters). Some work, others don't. The biggest problem is the variation in the captured parameters. I give up!

I'd love to get a copy of what you've done with the serial port. Can you email it?

thx

Mike