OARUSB04G Questions

[bevhoward]

fwiw, I find myself back in the medical "soup" so it may be a while before I can respond to posts or post additional questions.

Thanks for everyone's help to this point,
Beverly

[kcmurphy88]

While trying to get past the "Code 10" error reinstalling my old DIY JP1.2/3 cable with the new Prolific driver, I ran across this site:

http://www.totalcardiagnostics.com/supp ... e-10-error

"Purpose of this article is to guide you on how to FIX the "Prolific USB-to-Serial" driver issue with common cheap units.

In summary, this article is for: Windows XP, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 8.1 and Windows 10. Works on 32/64-bit."

And it worked like gangbusters. Hopefully it didn't bot my machine.

[Lurker]

I thought I was going to really like this remote, but after a few months of use, I'm not so happy. Questions for other OARUSB04G owners:

I have to change the batteries every month! I have never owned any remote that burned through batteries so fast. Do you experience the same? Anything I can do to improve this?

Every other remote I've used would work well resting on the coffee table pointed towards my components, but not this one. It is unreliable unless I pick it up and point it directly at them. It is as if the table is blocking the signal, but it doesn't appear to be in the way to me. Do I have a defective remote?

[Ed]

I thought I was going to really like this remote, but after a few months of use, I'm not so happy. Questions for other AORUSB04G owners:

I have to change the batteries every month! I have never owned any remote that burned through batteries so fast. Do you experience the same? Anything I can do to improve this?

Every other remote I've used would work well resting on the coffee table pointed towards my components, but not this one. It is unreliable unless I pick it up and point it directly at them. It is as if the table is blocking the signal, but it doesn't appear to be in the way to me. Do I have a defective remote?

My wife and I both use this remote with our living room set up (TV, BluRay, DVR, RPi running OSMC, AV Receiver), and we mostly like it. The extender is excellent, and no special cable is needed to program it. Its biggest drawbacks, in my opinion, are the small number of physical keys and the slow macro execution speed. Those things, especially the macro speed, limits the wife acceptance factor (WAF).

Regarding battery life, I agree. The remote is hard on batteries. Although I like backlighting, I turned it off on our remotes and it helps with battery life. We have to replace batteries every 3 months or so. It works well on rechargeables though, so I always have a set of those ready, and immediately put the dead batteries in the charger when I swap them out.

I've always pointed my remotes directly at my set up, and I've never had any trouble with this one sending the signal to all my components, which are spread out over about 5 feet and are about 10 feet from my chair.

[tranx]

Yes you may have a faulty one. In our experience the OARUSB04G should be up with the better ones for IR power and should work even when the signal has to bounce off nearby flat surfaces.

+1 for the Extender but something which has happened with OARUSB04Gs, but not with our URC 6440's, is that the batteries in one of them has occasionally and unnaccountably gone completely flat.

[Lurker]

Regarding battery life, I agree. The remote is hard on batteries. Although I like backlighting, I turned it off on our remotes and it helps with battery life. We have to replace batteries every 3 months or so. It works well on rechargeables though, so I always have a set of those ready, and immediately put the dead batteries in the charger when I swap them out.

Thanks for your comments. I changed to rechargeable batteries, and it does appear to be reaching my components better. Maybe my problem all along was the cheap batteries I was using?

I have also noticed a couple of times the backlight coming on all by itself when the remote was just sitting quietly on the table without being touched or disturbed in any way. Perhaps this has contributed to the batteries dying so quickly if it has been doing this a lot when I wasn't even around. How do I disable the backlight and/or reduce the sensitivity/duration?

[Ed]

How do I disable the backlight and/or reduce the sensitivity/duration?

There are a couple settings you can change regarding backlighting, documented on p. 22 of the extender manual. That manual is an excellent resource for this remote. It is available as part of the extender package in the file section. My guess is that these settings are possible regardless of whether or not you actually use the extender. You don't use RMIR to change these settings.

The remote can be configured turn on backlighting on "pickup", and the backlighting time out (i.e., how long will the backlight stay on) can be controlled.

Setting the backlighting time out to "0" effectively turns it off permanently. That said, if you use RMIR to make any changes to the remote, you'll have to permanently turn it off again, following the documentation. There doesn't appear (to me anyway) to be a way to turn backlighting off in RMIR.

[mathdon]

That said, if you use RMIR to make any changes to the remote, you'll have to permanently turn it off again, following the documentation. There doesn't appear (to me anyway) to be a way to turn backlighting off in RMIR.

There is at present no way to change the backlight settings in RMIR, but RMIR does preserve the existing settings. So if you download a setup with backlight off, modify it and upload the result, backlight will still be off. But of course if you modify a saved earlier setup, before you turned backlight off, and upload that then it will have the backlight settings from that earlier one.

[Ed]

There is at present no way to change the backlight settings in RMIR, but RMIR does preserve the existing settings. So if you download a setup with backlight off, modify it and upload the result, backlight will still be off. But of course if you modify a saved earlier setup, before you turned backlight off, and upload that then it will have the backlight settings from that earlier one.

Ah, thanks Graham! For some reason, I never thought to download my remote setup to RMIR after I change the backlight settings. My typical approach is to modifiy the existing RMIR file to make changes, then upload them to the remote, so the backlight settings always go back to their defaults every time I make a change.

[Lurker]

There is at present no way to change the backlight settings in RMIR, but RMIR does preserve the existing settings. So if you download a setup with backlight off, modify it and upload the result, backlight will still be off. But of course if you modify a saved earlier setup, before you turned backlight off, and upload that then it will have the backlight settings from that earlier one.

Ah, thanks Graham! For some reason, I never thought to download my remote setup to RMIR after I change the backlight settings. My typical approach is to modifiy the existing RMIR file to make changes, then upload them to the remote, so the backlight settings always go back to their defaults every time I make a change.

The backlight settings worked for me, but of course the very next time I tweaked my setup, they were lost again. I can't possibly remember how to redo backlight settings every time.

Downloading from the remote removed all my comments, etc., and I can't possibly remember what everything means without them. Is there any way to keep both backlight settings and comments?

I guess I'll just put the backlight instructions in my RM comments. This should be good enough to remind me how to redo it after every update.

[Lurker]

Just to follow up, it has been over 3 months since I turned off the backlight, and I have needed no battery changes since then. Thanks again for the help.

Graham, is there any possibility you might someday add backlight settings into RMIR? If so, please add it to your future wishlist.

[The Robman]

The backlight settings worked for me, but of course the very next time I tweaked my setup, they were lost again. I can't possibly remember how to redo backlight settings every time.

Downloading from the remote removed all my comments, etc., and I can't possibly remember what everything means without them. Is there any way to keep both backlight settings and comments?

Did you ever sort this out? If not, it might be possible to transpose all your names and comments from the previous RMIR file to the new one.

[Lurker]

Did you ever sort this out? If not, it might be possible to transpose all your names and comments from the previous RMIR file to the new one.

My solution was to add the backlight instructions to my rmir file comments, to remind me how to redo it every time. This works ok, but it is not ideal.

I did wonder if I could just replace the [Buffer] section in my rmir file with the buffer downloaded from the remote after fixing the backlight, but I didn't try it. Do you think that might work?

[mathdon]

Graham, is there any possibility you might someday add backlight settings into RMIR?

Please try this. Add the following section into the RDF, before the [Checksums] section:

Code: Select all

[Settings+]
Backlight=$DF 2.0.0.2.0 (Off:$2C; 3sec:$22; 6sec:$23; 9sec:$24)

You should then get a new Settings panel in the General tab, with a dropdown for Backlight with the options of Off, 3sec, 6sec, 9sec (which are, of course, backlight timeout values). My testing showed it worked for me, and if it works for you then I will add this to the RDFs for the URC6440 (there are a lot of them ) in the next RMIR build.

I would have posted a complete RDF for you, but I am not sure which RDF you will be using. If you do a download, you can edit the RDF by using the "Open RDF" button on the toolbar (the one with a magnifying glass in the icon). If you then press Save and choose the option "Save and apply changes", they will take place immediately. Otherwise, make sure you edit the RDF with the correct signature for your remote (and extender, if installed). If you do a download and look at the Raw Data tab, it will tell you the signature concerned.

Edit: I know I wrote in an earlier post "There is at present no way to change the backlight settings in RMIR". Even I can't remember all the features I have added over time to RMIR , but I have rediscovered this possibility in the meantime.

[Lurker]

Please try this. Add the following section into the RDF, before the [Checksums] section:

Code: Select all

[Settings+]
Backlight=$DF 2.0.0.2.0 (Off:$2C; 3sec:$22; 6sec:$23; 9sec:$24)

You should then get a new Settings panel in the General tab, with a dropdown for Backlight with the options of Off, 3sec, 6sec, 9sec (which are, of course, backlight timeout values). My testing showed it worked for me, and if it works for you then I will add this to the RDFs for the URC6440 (there are a lot of them ) in the next RMIR build.

I would have posted a complete RDF for you, but I am not sure which RDF you will be using. If you do a download, you can edit the RDF by using the "Open RDF" button on the toolbar (the one with a magnifying glass in the icon). If you then press Save and choose the option "Save and apply changes", they will take place immediately. Otherwise, make sure you edit the RDF with the correct signature for your remote (and extender, if installed). If you do a download and look at the Raw Data tab, it will tell you the signature concerned.

Edit: I know I wrote in an earlier post "There is at present no way to change the backlight settings in RMIR". Even I can't remember all the features I have added over time to RMIR , but I have rediscovered this possibility in the meantime.

Thank you, it works perfectly!

I added the [Settings+] section to RDF "URC-6540 OARUSB04G Extender v1.04". I was then able to adjust the backlight duration like you describe, and my remote does use the setting I chose. Thank you again.

Ed mentioned another setting to enable/disable backlight on pickup. I didn't need it, but add that one too if you can.