JP1 Remotes

Hi Greg,

I just checked it out again - the integration of RM with it is really cool - I don't know how I missed that - that feature alone is what makes me agree with you that it is the way things should go in the future. Unfortunately, I am absolutely no good with high-level languages. I might take a look just for fun, but I have no experience to lend.

I can't currently use it for my remotes for two reasons - the lack of special protocol and non-upgrade protocol support, and communications issues in Linux. For the first, I am just assuming that is why I can't load my upgrade - when I try to load it, nothing shows up at all. Here is my .IR file: http://www.hifi-remote.com/forums/dload ... le_id=6216

I'll take a look to see why that IR file won't load. At first blush I see some problems in the RDFs, (there's no device type aliases for the VCR device type) but there's probably more to it than that. Also, RMIR does have support for special protocols, althought it may be incomplete. Not sure what you mean by 'non-upgrade protocols'. But why do you think that's a problem?

For the second problem - I have a 'Tommy' USB interface. The light blinks, so it recognized the interface - but then I get 'No RDF file matches null'. I suspect this may be the same as the problem that binky fixed for me that got IR working with Wine and Tommy's interface. Details of that change are here:
http://www.hifi-remote.com/forums/viewt ... 5&start=45

So you're trying to use RMIR under Linux? Cool. Would you be able to help out with the Linux JP1 interface shared libraries? That would be a big help.

gfb107 wrote: I'll take a look to see why that IR file won't load. At first blush I see some problems in the RDFs, (there's no device type aliases for the VCR device type) but there's probably more to it than that. Also, RMIR does have support for special protocols, althought it may be incomplete. Not sure what you mean by 'non-upgrade protocols'. But why do you think that's a problem?

I was just guessing based upon the features I use and the non-implemented features you listed in the original announcement of RM-IR. I now see that that is probably not the case as you added a lot since that announcement.

So you're trying to use RMIR under Linux? Cool. Would you be able to help out with the Linux JP1 interface shared libraries? That would be a big help.

Yeah, and it seems to *almost* work. Not sure what you mean by shared libraries - you mean the communications library for JP1.0? The only JP1 interface I have is a USB interface (and my Linux computer doesn't have a parallel port) - but if there is anything I can do to help let me know.

Thanks,
xnappo

xnappo wrote: Yeah, and it seems to *almost* work. Not sure what you mean by shared libraries - you mean the communications library for JP1.0? The only JP1 interface I have is a USB interface (and my Linux computer doesn't have a parallel port) - but if there is anything I can do to help let me know.

That's right, the communication libraries (.so files in Linux, .dll files in Windows) for JP1 (parallel and USB) and JP1.2/3 (USB/Serial). The versions included with RM/IR are out-of-date, and I no longer have a system for building and testing any of Linux ports.

xnappo,

I need an rdf file that matches your .ir file. I've tried the version from Version 1.28 of the RDFs zip. I also tried the one in Atlas JP1.3 Extender V2.04.

gfb107 wrote:xnappo,

I need an rdf file that matches your .ir file. I've tried the version from Version 1.28 of the RDFs zip. I also tried the one in Atlas JP1.3 Extender V2.04.

Hi Greg -- yeah that RDF has been changing a lot. Here you go:
http://www.hifi-remote.com/forums/dload ... le_id=6218

Regarding the communications DLL/library - so it sounds like the dll that binky fixed for my for Wine is the same source code for the .so for RM-IR? I can definitely try to compile it and test it out (as well as the USB 1.0 library if that will work). Where is the source code? I didn't see it in the 'source' area.

Thanks,
xnappo

xnappo,

Your RDF needs an updated DeviceTypeAliases section: Once you've made that change, RM v1.88 should be able to load your IR file.

After loading your IR file, you should edit each device upgrade (other than the special protocols) and load the device upgrade file for it.

Then save as an RMIR file.

gfb107 wrote: After loading your IR file, you should edit each device upgrade (other than the special protocols) and load the device upgrade file for it.

Then save as an RMIR file.

Cool, works like a charm. The device integration with RM is very cool - again I don't know how I didn't notice that before!

Where is the source for the communications library?

Thanks,
xnappo

gfb107 wrote: That's right, the communication libraries (.so files in Linux, .dll files in Windows) for JP1 (parallel and USB) and JP1.2/3 (USB/Serial). The versions included with RM/IR are out-of-date, and I no longer have a system for building and testing any of Linux ports.

I'm switching to Linux, so I have an interest in this being supported and tested. Is there any way that I can help? I have a couple of Ubuntu 8.10 systems that can build and test the Linux version. My jp1 interface is the simple parallel port version.

Steve

First thing to do is just to make sure you can upload and download under Linux. Then start using it to see if there's anything you are currently using in IR that RMIR doesn't support.

What remote(s) do you have, and do you use any advanced features (timed macros, fav key, clock set, upgrade overflows, ...)
I tend to implement features that RMIR users are missing rather than simply work down a list of known unimplemented features.

For all the comm. libraries, I'd also like to know if we need a 64-bit version to run under 64-bit Linux. Is that something you could try, and if needed port to 64-bit?

I did try it, just to see if I could download from my remote. I mainly use the old style 6131 with the beta version 2 extender. I also program the 6131n remotes with a hardware modification to separate the audio and cc buttons. I don't use them, but my brother is pretty addicted to them, so I can't break them. I haven't tried to use it more extensively, because I got the impression that the Linux version was unmaintained and probably wouldn't work. But I can certainly try it if you expect it to work. I don't use timed macros, fav key, clock set, or upgrade overflows (whatever they are). I normally use RM to make my upgrades, so I'm pretty familiar with that. Currently, I'm using the 32-bit version of Ubuntu, but I expect to go to 64-bit at some point. I don't suppose it's an emergency to get 64-bit yet.

Steve

Upgrade overflow is not something that you "use" but it is a feature built-in to recent versions of IR which allow you to load upgrades exceeding the "allocated" amount of upgrade memory. It simply automatically moves excessive upgrade data to unused Keymove/Macro or Learning memory areas. It is usually transparent to the user, but just in case there may be unforseen problems, IR annotates the screen with a yellow-font disply of memory usage when this occurs.

Try to load a bunch of upgrades into an IR file and you will see when the upgrade memory "overflows" what the IR memory display looks like. (I have no idea how RMIR deals with this).

RMIR doesn't currently handle upgrade overflow.
It will successfuly parse an IR file, or a download from a remote, that has overflowed upgrades, but it won't properly notify you that there are too many upgrades for the upgrade area, nor will it overflow them correctly.

I'm going to have to stick with IR and Wine, which I did finally make work. I had trouble communicating with the parallel port with RMIR, but that may have been due to my playing around with the parallel port. But there are larger problems. I need to be able to modify the Dish Network Combo protocol to change the repeat count, since that can't be done in RM. I couldn't see a way to do that with RMIR. I'll try it later when it gets more mature. Thanks.

Steve

Explain to me what you need to be able to do, or how you do it in IR, and then we'll see about making it work in RMIR.

Hi Greg. As Elizabeth discovered in this thread,

http://www.hifi-remote.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=8153

I need to use the Dish Network Combo protocol and modify the repeat count byte to get it to work. When I loaded an IR save file in RMIR, I didn't see any way to edit the binary to adjust the repeat count byte. Is there a way that I didn't discover to edit that byte?

Another area of concern is the parallel port access routine. The source doesn't seem to be available and you've mentioned that the version supplied with RM is out of date and apparently relatively untested. However, I did get it to download from my remote. Also, I tested loading an IR file and uploading to a spare remote, which also seemed to work. At least that's my experience.

Steve