Serial Remote Control

[rob_the_techie]

:confused: I'm trying to read the remote serial stream into Hyperterminal so I can build a custom hardware interface to a 4DTV satellite reciever. Can anyone provide me with a reciever brand / baud rate-parity-no. bits, etc. that will work?

I'm using a Series 2 DT Tivo. I've spent hours looking on the web and hours trying to find a combination on my own. So far I see characters, but nothing that looks right.

[trscott]

New to the thread, but very interested in the same topic. What do you expect this stream to look like? I wouldn't have expected it to be ASCII. I assume there is a low level protocol for IR remotes that is very compact. ASCII seems like it would be pretty wasteful for what they need.

My take on this is that I don't really care what the encoding is. If I can record what the TIVO sender outputs for a given command, and turn it into what the 4DTV remote sends for the equivalent function, it should work. An oscilloscope would be the way to tell what the baud rate looks like. If the character strings aren't human readable (and I don't know that they will be, but I could be wrong), you'll never know when you've got the right data rate, cause it will always look like something at any wrong data rate. With the scope, you should be able to tell how long the bits are and see some sort of character length. With a bit of study you will be able to figure out what it is using for handshake, start/stop protocol, parity, etc. It might well be IRDA, or maybe there is some other standard protocol for remotes. Might be able to find something with a generic Google search for things like "IR data stream for TV remote" and things like that.

But again, once you've got the right data rate, you don't really need to "read" it, just mimic it.

I have wanted to do the very same thing, and even bought a new scope for it, but I've been too busy working and going to school and other stuff to get around to this project.

Cheers! Good luck and let me know if you make some progress...

[classicsat]

The remote blaster output isn't RS232, it is typical IR code, depending on the code used. I suggest you study up on how IR codes work.