31793179 Acoustic Research ARRS05G

mdavej · Post by **mdavej** » Wed Nov 14, 2012 9:29 am

Anyone thinking of getting one of these because it looks like a clone of its European JP1 cousin the URC-7556, don't. Although it is UEI, it has no JP1 potential AFAICT. No pins or pads, only holes. I haven't opened it up to see if pins could be added, but I have no interest in trying. I like the styling, but that's about all it has going for it.

EDIT: Turned out to be pretty easy to add pins after all. See below.

sqelch · Post by **sqelch** » Fri Nov 16, 2012 5:05 pm

Well it was easy as pie to open it up and solder on the pins. I am a noob, so I got a lot to do to figure it out. But as far as you saying "it has no JP1 potential" i gotta say you are wrong. IR reads the remote the codes in the devices box all match the codes i manually entered. i am gonna get a thread going to see if i can get the button map built or what ever i takes to get it to be fully working.

Post by **The Robman** » Fri Nov 16, 2012 6:15 pm

sqelch, could you give us some more info please. For starters, where did you solder the pins, are there holes already on the PCB or did you have to jerry-rig something? When you download using IR, does IR recognize the remote, and if so, which remote does it think you have?

mdavej · Post by **mdavej** » Fri Nov 16, 2012 10:21 pm

There are holes in the PCB.

squelch, does the URC-7556 RDF not work? I'm very glad to be wrong in this case. If you say it's easy, I'll go ahead and pop it open.

Post by **The Robman** » Sat Nov 17, 2012 2:05 pm

Go on Dave, solder some pins, you know you want to!

mdavej · Post by **mdavej** » Sat Nov 17, 2012 3:02 pm

Dammit. I soldered in the stupid the pins. The board says JP1.4, but it has the same exact signature as a JP1.3 RCRP05B. Even the device code assignments work so far. Very strange.

I'll try to work out the button map and see what differences I can find.

mdavej · Post by **mdavej** » Sat Nov 17, 2012 3:22 pm

The weirdness continues. The RDF is identical to the RCA except that the DVR button is AUX on this remote. Even the extender works perfectly. So it looks like they took an RCA a put it in a different case for Acoustic Research.

So this makes things pretty easy. Should we even bother with a different RDF/Map? How do we handle this duplicate signature?

Aside from the PITA of soldering in pins, I like this remote better than the RCA. It looks better, the buttons are bigger and have a nice click. But they are hard to find. The only place I've seen them is from THIS guy on ebay where I got mine. I have a feeling this model is so rare, it's not worth the effort.

EDIT: Found them HERE on Amazon as well.

Post by **The Robman** » Sat Nov 17, 2012 4:02 pm

I think the process is to save a copy of the RCA RDF under a new name with a link to the new image and include any button modifications (eg, DVR -> AUX).

mdavej · Post by **mdavej** » Sat Nov 17, 2012 4:19 pm

No problem with that part. I was wondering about when you plug in the remote and download. I guess RMIR/IR will ask if you have an RCA or AR like it does with the 15-133/134/135 which all have identical signatures.

Although the buttons are identical, the RCA has more than the AR (i.e., AR is missing the PIP buttons and a few others). So the next decision is whether to rename these to phantoms or just leave them as is.

In any case, I should have a new RDF/Map/Image posted soon. I'll also post a dump so we can confirm they really are identical.

Post by **The Robman** » Sat Nov 17, 2012 4:43 pm

I just ordered one for myself

mdavej · Post by **mdavej** » Sat Nov 17, 2012 8:34 pm

All done. 3FG confirmed dumps are identical (thanks, 3FG). HERE are the RDF/Map/Image plus an RDF for the extender.

I ended up just adding a "ph_" to all the unused buttons that became phantoms. Still needs some testing though.

Post by **The Robman** » Sat Nov 17, 2012 9:51 pm

Guess it's time to move this thread back into the JP1 side.

sqelch · Post by **sqelch** » Wed Nov 21, 2012 5:43 am

omg You are fast. Thank you for your work.
I found this one at a salvage store they at least 25 of them at 5.99 each, it was in Brewer Maine at Mardens. I wish would have grabbed more of them. I realy like it even without knowing how to use JP1.