PC1 controls PC2, sends signal to external equip.

[Ron]

Hi Sylvain,

As far as I know Keyboard plugin and TCPIP plugins work together without problems. Maybe you can point me to the article that you read about this problem.

You can make one girder (or use by using the tcpclient2.exe) send events to an other girder.This other girder would then do whatever you program it to do.

RedRat is nice, I do not know if it is the best. Cause i do not have the smarthome. Beware Girder (as far as i know) does not have support for smarthome, so you'd have to find a way to control smarthome from girder ( sometimes the commandline will work)

[sdumas]

I want to make sure I can do the following and that I have all the necessary pieces of software and hardware.

If I want to do the following :

I want a laptop with a touchscreen to control another PC which is hosting PowerDVD, PowerVCR, MusicMatch, Dscaler and other fun applications as well as sending IR signals to external equipment such as a Receiver and Laserdisc Player.

I read quite a bit on the forum and other sources such as AVScience and came to the conclusion that it can be done with the following:

The HTPC (PowerDVD, Dscaler, etc) would have girder with the TCP/IP server plugin installed. The Laptop would have the TCP/IP client in order to send signals to the HTPC.
I would use a RedRat2 or Smarthome "IR Redirector" to control my external equipment on the HTPC. I would use the MagicTouch touchscreen on my laptop as well as some Talisman add-on for ease of use.

Now this is where it starts to get fuzzy.

It is said that the TCP/IP server/client can not be used with the Keyboard plugin. If that is the case, how do you send signals to the different applications to perform the desired commands.

The way I understood the concept is that the TCP/IP client would send a command to the TCP/IP server which in turn would trigger another command to a specified application. Example: If I established a connection to the TCP/IP server, I could send the command "P" which would pause PowerDVD. If I send a command like "blabla.exe" it would execute that command too.

Am I right in my assumptions, or am I totally in the boonies?

Also, is the RedRat2 the best IR Repeater in town or the Smarthome is better. Is the Smarthome device a standalone device, or, you need to add all bunch of gizmos to it so it can run properly?

Thanks!