JP1 Remotes

[godot]

I will explain what I want to achieve and perhaps someone can suggest the best way to get there.

I have a moderately old Sanyo TV, a VCR, a DVD, a DVR, an RCA video selector box, and a OFA 8910. The TV has two video inputs I'll call V1 and V2. Pressing the TV/VID button on the TV's remote cycles from TV mode to V1 to V2 and back to TV. I've Googled to try and find discrete codes for selecting the TV video inputs directly (without the need to cycle) with no success.

I'm using the 8910 extender with IR and RemoteMaster and I have all the codes for all my devices.

The biggest sticky issue is that my TV only has two video inputs, but I have three source devices (VCR, DVD, DVR), hence the RCA video selector box (which does have discrete input selection codes).

Currently I have the RCA selector box connected to the TV's V1 input and all my source devices connected to the RCA box inputs.

MY GOAL: I want to be able to select a device by pressing a key on my OFA and have both the TV video input and the RCA selector box video input set properly for that device. I hope it can be done.

Help Mr. Wizard!

[Capn Trips]

It's not really clear how much you have already sorted as far as JP1 capabilities yet, so I will give you a broad outline, and if you need specific guidance how to accomplish a particular step, you'll have to read through the various readme's and search the fora for specific items.

First, what you want CAN be done, most easily by using macros. The 8910 allows you to assign macros to the device buttons, which allows you to, for example, assign the DVD button to:Power on your receiver and select the DVD input, power on your TV and select AV1, power on your RCA AV switcher and select the DVD input, and power on your DVD player and assign the remote to MOSTLY operate your DVD player, but set the volume keys to operate your receiver (or TV).

If you know how to set up macros, you're set, if not, it's pretty easy in IR.exe using JP1.

Your real challenge lies in reliably getting to the video 1 input. I see three possibilities:
(1) You NEVER use any other input, and just leave your TV on Video 1 forever. You then never need to change it. This is only good if you do NOT use your TV tuner (like you rely on a satellite or cable box);
(2) If you cannot avoid needing the TV tuner, then one possible workaround for discrete Video input selection is as follows. Many TVs will automatically shift to tuner mode if you send a Channel + or - signal, or if you type in a channel number. If yours behaves this way you can set up a macro that goes (for example) {Channel+, TV/Vid} that will put your TV in Video 1 mode, and another macro that sends {Channel+, TV/Vid, TV/Vid} to get you into Video 2 mode. You then use these macros as discrete input selects.
(3) If you have no means of repeatably getting into tuner mode, then your only other possibility would be use of the ToadTog special protocol, which requires use of the extender, but with three possible states, that gets very difficult to set up reliably.

I would recommend that you switch to using the extender, as it provides much greater capabilities, but that's a whole additional learning curve, and what you are asking MIGHT be achievable without it.
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Remotes: OFA XSight Touch, AR XSight Touch
TVs: LG 65" Smart LED TV; Samsung QN850BF Series - 8K UHD Neo QLED LCD TV
RCVR: Onkyo TX-SR875; Integra DTR 40.3
DVD/VCR: Pioneer DV-400VK (multi-region DVD), Sony BDP-S350 (Blu-ray), Toshiba HD-A3 (HD-DVD), Panasonic AG-W1 (Multi-system VCR);
Laserdisc: Pioneer CLD-D704.
Amazon Firestick
tape deck: Pioneer CT 1380WR (double cassette deck)
(But I still have to get up for my beer)

[The Robman]

He is using the extender.
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Rob
www.hifi-remote.com
Please don't PM me with remote questions, post them in the forums so all the experts can help!

[godot]

Capn,

Thanks for the response.

As background: I am already using the 8910 extender through IR to do simple things. I've read the docs and numerous forum posts about ToadTogs and I understand the concepts (I'm a software developer by profession), but it is still very confused in my head.

Regarding the options you laid out:
(1) You NEVER use any other input, and just leave your TV on Video 1 forever.

I COULD do this by using the tuner in the VCR and it may be the only practical possibility because of my (so far) inability to understand the necessary ToadTog implementation.

(2) If you cannot avoid needing the TV tuner, then one possible workaround for discrete Video input selection is as follows.

Unfortunately my TV does not function in this manner.

(3) If you have no means of repeatably getting into tuner mode, then your only other possibility would be use of the ToadTog special protocol, which requires use of the extender, but with three possible states, that gets very difficult to set up reliably.

I had assumed this would be the case, but I wanted to hear it from someone with more experience.

Regarding ToadTogs:
I had hoped I could avoid the tristate complexity because I really only need to move between two states on the TV; TV-mode and Video 1. For this discussion I will assume I have two keys setup with macros to select TV-mode or Video 1 on the TV. Further, let's leave out the extraneous, additional complexity of the RCA video selector box for now.

I though it might be possible to create one ToadTog so that when in TV-mode it would activate TV/VID once to set Video 1 as the input source.

Then, when pressing another key to go back to TV-mode, a ToadTog would programmatically send the TV/VID keycode twice to cycle back to TV-mode.

Am I missing something obvious that makes this impractical?

Once again, thanks for your prompt response.


-- Godot

[Capn Trips]

[Curmudgeon]

I have something similar setup.

First use a single toadtog to just record the TV's state, either TV-mode or Video 1. When my TV turns on it always goes to TV-mode so I always start from a known state. In my power on macro I set the state of the toadtog to TV-mode. If your TV operates in this manner you will have to do the same. If the TV remembers what mode it was in last time when it powers on you don't have to worry about this step.

So now the toadtog knows which mode the TV is in. Now you put a macro on each of your device selection buttons on the 8910. Obviously by pressing the button you know what state you want to put the TV into. These macros then check the toadtog to see if the TV is in the correct state. If the state is correct then it does not change the TV. If the state is wrong then it runs the appropriate macro to get from the current state to the other one. The macro on the device selection button can then select the appropriate input on your RCA video selector if required. The last step of each of the macros is to set the toadtog to the appropriate state.

After you get this working I would build in some way of manually getting each device and the toadtog into a known state because things will get out of sync every now and again.