Looks Like I Bought The Wrong Remote?

jseymour · Post by **jseymour** » Sun May 20, 2018 10:55 pm

Hi All,

New to the JP1 thing and the forum.

Finally decided to get serious about "remote hacking" and jump into the JP1 thing. Searched. Read. Kept seeing references to the URC-9910. Jumped on eBay. Found a like-new URC-9910 for $25, located nearby. One photo even showed the JP1 connector. Jackpot! Pulled the trigger.

Then went looking for the cable, which, from what I'd read, I thought should be No Problem.

I guess not. All the cables I'm seeing are JP1.2/1.3 cables, and the 9910 is a JP1

(Does JP1.1 == JP1?)

Doesn't look like anybody makes JP1 cables any more? I can solder. Heck, back in the day I taught soldering. Still got a nifty Ungar temp-controlled soldering station and all! But I really don't feel like hunting-down all the parts and messing with it. Besides: Just glanced at the "INSTRUCTIONS FOR BUILDING THE ULTRA JP1 INTERFACE" by Tommy N. Tyler. Radio Shack P/Ns? *sigh* I realize it's from 2002, but... Radio Shack?

Besides which I have serial and USB ports easily accessible. Parallel: Not so much. In fact: Not at all.

It's kinda sorta lookin' like I just threw $25 away?

Btw: Three of the four links in the "Choose the right JP1/JP1.x interface cable - Read this first" are broken. Comes up with "The requested URL /cgi-bin/banners.cgi was not found on this server." And if you follow "INTERFACES FOR JP1 (EEPROM) REMOTES -> 3. Serial Port -> DIY instructions are here -> NOTE: This design is obsolete, use the "click here" link below to reach the new design." and click on "click here", you get "The file you selected does not exist."

This is not starting out smoothly

Post by **The Robman** » Mon May 21, 2018 7:10 am

Try this...
http://www.hifi-remote.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=17185

mdavej · Post by **mdavej** » Mon May 21, 2018 8:52 am

The 9910 (circa 2002) was a great remote nearly 20 years ago, and still is. But things have changed a lot since then, not just the interfaces. It's unfortunate you based all your decisions on 20 year old information, but we do try to steer you to current information when possible. Problem is we don't go back and edit all those old web pages.

JP1 remotes from this century are listed here:
http://www.hifi-remote.com/wiki/index.p ... emoteChart

This is my favorite at the moment:
http://www.hifi-remote.com/wiki/index.p ... t_and_Nevo

It cost less than the 9910 and includes a cable and is far more advanced in most respects.

Read this to understand all the different types of JP1 interfaces.
http://www.hifi-remote.com/wiki/index.p ... Interfaces

We're at the mercy of UEI when it comes to interfaces. We're constantly playing catch up whenever they dream up a new interface.

If you want to get your hands dirty, this guy just came up with a new Arduino based JP1 interface that would work on your 9910:
http://www.hifi-remote.com/forums/viewt ... p?t=101269

I think I fixed most of the link issues.

Messing with old EEPROM JP1 remotes is a fun hobby, but if you want results with current remotes, please ask us before you buy.

jseymour · Post by **jseymour** » Mon May 21, 2018 10:15 am

Thanks for the follow-ups, guys!

I contacted the seller and she graciously cancelled my order, so that's fixed.

I apologize if my post from last night came across as kind of frustrated and annoyed. I tried to keep that out, but, I see, wasn't entirely successful

(Yeah, I was frustrated and annoyed.)

Re: The 20-year-old info: I should know better by now. I've only been on the 'Net for about ever since it was made commercially available, and was on Usenet before that. (At least Usenet News articles were always date-stamped, though.)

Now what I'm going to do, rather than go off half-cocked, is study here a bit and ask questions before making any further purchases.

A follow-up question, if I may: My desktop/server system is Linux Mint MATE. (Mint descended from Ubuntu, which descended from Debian.) I have a "utility" RS-232 serial cable brought out from the back and both USB2 and USB3 connectors in the front. I've read of a Linux-compatible app for talking to these remotes. Will I be able to do that with, say, the Xsight/Nevo remote? I can boot my venerable old Dell laptop into MS-Win7 Pro if I must, but I kinda try to avoid MS-Windows and prefer not to rely upon it for anything.

mdavej · Post by **mdavej** » Mon May 21, 2018 10:45 am

It's all good.

Xsight/Nevo doesn't use a JP1.x cable at all, rather just a standard USB Mini-B which is included with the remote. Works fine on Linux (as far as I know), Mac and all versions of Windows. Many current "JP1" remotes have USB or Bluetooth interfaces built in and don't need JP1.x cables anymore.

Your cable might work on other JP1.x remotes, but it's much easier to just buy a cable known to work, like this $8 one:
http://www.hifi-remote.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=16200

If you settle on a different remote and can't find the interface type on the chart linked earlier, ask here and we should be able to tell you what kind of cable you'll need, if any.

Also let us know how you intend to use the remote. Nevo can do many things, but it can't do everything some other JP1 remotes can do, like toad-tog or nested macros. We'd need to know at least the brands of the devices you need to control in order to tell you if you need toad-tog or not. Since Nevo has massive amounts of memory, you can get by without nesting macros. Read the FAQ in the Nevo wiki linked earlier for more details on the differences.

I'm not very familiar with Linux, so I can't say for certain if that particular flavor will work. Maybe a Linux user will see this thread and confirm. You could go ahead and download Remote Master and see how it runs.
https://sourceforge.net/projects/contro ... urce=files

Barf · Post by **Barf** » Mon May 21, 2018 11:28 am

I can confirm that RMIR etc runs without problems with Linux, "at least as good as with Windows". I am using Fedora (with Cinnamon) myself, You do not need to be root for accessing the hardware, assuming you configure udev appropriately -- there are a few threads on this.

The only exception is the parallel driver, but you should not use it anyhow.

Also IrScrutinizer runs perfectly with Linux.

jseymour · Post by **jseymour** » Mon May 21, 2018 2:24 pm

mdavej wrote:It's all good.

Xsight/Nevo doesn't use a JP1.x cable at all, rather just a standard USB Mini-B which is included with the remote. Works fine on Linux (as far as I know), ...

Ok. Thanks!

mdavej wrote: Also let us know how you intend to use the remote. Nevo can do many things, but it can't do everything some other JP1 remotes can do, ...

This could become a very long story. Let me see if I can keep its telling down to less than a small novella.

Been using a Home Theater Master MX-500 for years. Still love it. My wife's been using my old Yamaha MRX-100, which recently died. Tried to find something "better" than the MX-500 with which to replace both. Failed. So started buying nicer MX-500s on eBay. Got two on-hand, now, and two eventually on the way. (Glares at a couple eBay sellers...)

Meantime I'm planning to acquire a Silicon Dust HD HomeRun Connect Quatro to receive OTA (four channels) and stream live and recorded content to each of four TVs. For streaming devices on the TVs I believe I've settled on a Xiaomi MiBox. (Android TV.)

The goal is to be able to continue to use the MX-500s to control everything. But I ran into a problem with the MiBox. I found an inexpensive GE/Jasco IR remote that knows Xiaomi, but, oddly enough, the only thing that works, when I try to teach an MX-500 from it, is power on/off

Enter the JP1, or something else I can program from readily-available on-line hex (or whatever) code sets. The goal is to find something I can program that can then be used to teach the MX-500s. That may or may not fix my problem in the case of the Xiaomi device. Perhaps its protocol is something for which the venerable old MX-500 is not prepared. But, I figured, if the experiment was inexpensive enough, why not give it a go?

(As a backup plan I've got a Flirc USB IR device on the way, which would also solve the one particular problem.)

Barf wrote:I can confirm that RMIR etc runs without problems with Linux, "at least as good as with Windows".

Cool. That's good to know. Thanks!

Barf wrote: Also IrScrutinizer runs perfectly with Linux.

Ah, likewise good to know. Perhaps with that I could discover why our MX-500s don't like the Xiaomi IR codes?

mdavej · Post by **mdavej** » Mon May 21, 2018 3:41 pm

Unfortunately for you, our Xiaomi codes are identical to the original. So if you can't learn the original, you can't learn ours either.

If all you want to do is experiment teaching/learning codes, then there are quicker/cheaper ways than the Nevo. The OARUSB04G is only $15 on Amazon, includes a cable and is available immediately. Most Nevos come directly from China (3-4 weeks).

Maybe you'll like the Nevo well enough to replace your collection of MX-500s. I really love its 18 devices, color screen (nice icons and logos) and easy to understand "activity" macros. For my streaming boxes, I have nice icons on my Nevo for all the streaming apps, making it super easy for the family to use. They just press the button for Netflix, DirecTV NOW, Tivo, whatever, and macros do the rest.

jseymour · Post by **jseymour** » Mon May 21, 2018 5:42 pm

mdavej wrote:Unfortunately for you, our Xiaomi codes are identical to the original. So if you can't learn the original, you can't learn ours either.

I know it's a long shot.

If I try it, and it fails, I've always got the Flirc as a backup.

mdavej wrote:If all you want to do is experiment teaching/learning codes, then there are quicker/cheaper ways than the Nevo. The OARUSB04G is only $15 on Amazon, includes a cable and is available immediately.

That may work for me. Thanks!

mdavej wrote:Most Nevos come directly from China (3-4 weeks).

I tried the link on the "Getting Started With Xsight and Nevo" page. No listings from anywhere in China that I can see.

mdavej wrote:Maybe you'll like the Nevo well enough to replace your collection of MX-500s.

Anything's possible

(Wish I'd known about those before I spent all that money on additional MX-500s. Guess I looked/asked in the wrong places.)

(mdavej and I had gotten into a related discussion in another forum, and it was OT. So I'm moving it here.)

mdavej wrote, in the other forum:

...we're talking about two different toggles. There are commands that toggle, like a power command that does the opposite thing with every press - on, then off, then on, etc. And there's the toggle I'm talking about which is a single bit in the waveform that changes state with every press, no matter what the function, presumably to prevent repeating commands when held down.

Ah. Got ya. One would think, though, that if any button used state toggles, it'd be the power on/off button, no? Wouldn't want that turning the power on/off/on/off/on/off/..., certainly?

mdavej wrote, in the other forum, again...

This particular protocol, like MCE and RC5/6, I think has such a bit. Since learning just records the waveform, it doesn't know about this bit. So when you play it back, it only works every other time - press once, nothing happens - press again, the correct thing happens. I suspect that all your learns actually worked, but you have to press twice for them to do anything.

So I tried it. Nope.

I wonder if IrScrutinizer will yield the answer as to what's going on?

Post by **The Robman** » Mon May 21, 2018 5:45 pm

I think the supply of Nevo's has dried up, I just took a look and the $20 ones have all gone. The one's that remain are all over $50 now.

jseymour · Post by **jseymour** » Mon May 21, 2018 6:03 pm

The Robman wrote:I think the supply of Nevo's has dried up, I just took a look and the $20 ones have all gone. The one's that remain are all over $50 now.

So I wasn't imagining it. Ok, then: The $15 OARUSB04G it'll be, then.

jseymour · Post by **jseymour** » Mon May 21, 2018 6:03 pm

Question to all: Does the collected wisdom here have a preference for an IR sensor to use with irScrutinizer? (Thinking the irToy looks like the better bet? Though it appears to be out of stock everywhere, so I guess that's a non-starter for the moment.)

binky123 · Post by **binky123** » Mon May 21, 2018 6:49 pm

You can look at this project by user Barf, http://www.harctoolbox.org/arduino_nano.html, if you are handy with a soldering iron.

jseymour · Post by **jseymour** » Mon May 21, 2018 9:56 pm

binky123 wrote:You can look at this project by user Barf, http://www.harctoolbox.org/arduino_nano.html, if you are handy with a soldering iron.

Thanks, binky. I'd spotted that, already, and had already looked at knock-off Arduino Nano boards on Amazon.

Looks like it'd be inexpensive and fairly easy to get going. Maybe I'll give it a go.

yaworski · Post by **yaworski** » Tue May 22, 2018 12:57 am

Hi jseymour, (it's yawor here, from Flirc forum :)).

Here's how mine looks like:
https://pasteboard.co/HmjGZc6.png

I've used a clone of Arduino Nano, Vishay TSOP38438 as demodulating receiver, Vishay TSMP58000 as non-demodulating one and Osram SFH4546 and SFH4544 IR LEDs. The link above shows a different demodulating receiver but I couldn't find it easily in my country so I've used TSOP38438, as it's electrically compatible with TSOP34438 and it also has the same package size and type as the TSMP58000 so they both look identical (TSOP34438 is bigger).

The gray shrink tube hides three color LEDs, because I've used 5 V ready ones (with built-in current limiting resistor) and they are quite bright, so I've had to do something to make them less annoying :). I'll need to replace them with some smaller ones.

If you want to generate MiBox signals with IrScrutinizer, edit the IrpProtocols.ini file in the IrScrutinizer directory and add following section at the end of the file:

Code: Select all

[protocol]
name=MiBox
irp={36k,290, msb}<2,-2|2,-3|2,-4|2,-5>(1000u,-2,D:8,F:8,C:4,2,^30m)+ {C=D:4:4^D:4^F:4:4^F:4} [D:0..255,F:0..255]
EFC_translation=MSB

Then start the program and you should be able to select MiBox in the Generate tab.
Look at this thread: http://www.hifi-remote.com/forums/viewt ... &&start=60
to find out the parameters to generate correct signals (device and function).

---edit---

The protocol doesn't have toggle bit. It encodes two bits per burst-gap pair but this shouldn't be a problem for a learning remote.