JP1 Remotes

[The Robman]

I just got word that there are a bunch of new OFA remotes due to come out early next year, and they all use the new Motorola flash chip, which means they won't be JP1 compatible until someone can reverse engineer them, and even then it's quite possible that we'll need new JP1 cables to work with them.

So, might be time to stock up on the current models!
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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!

[chico_woodhill]

Rob, do you have any idea how OFA views this group's activities?

Would they (god knows why) try to make their new remotes hard to reverse engineer?

I mean, we all know we've bought bushels of their product ONLY because they're JP1 programmable, but is it possible that the new ones might not be programmable by this group?

[The Robman]

OFA is more of a concept than a company. Until very recently OFA was really a company called Impact Merchandising, but the people who actually make the remotes, Computime in China, have now created a US subsidiary called CT Global that's taking over most of the US operation from Impact.

Impact has a very good view of us, but the people that you're really talking about are UEI.

In the beginning they were pretty nervous about us and they even considered sticking the lawyers on us, but over time they (sensibly) came to realize that we're much more of an asset than a liability. Behind the scenes they have been very helpful and co-operative. They even flew me out to CA to meet with them back in the summer.

But, that being said, they're certainly not going to change their plans because of us. Just like they have done in the past when they switched from the 6805 and 740 chips over to using the S3C8 chip, they have now found an even better MCU chip where they don't need a seperate EEPROM chip because they can write to the flash portions of the MCU.

I'm confident that they didn't do this to break JP1, but they're not going to not do it just because it does break JP1, if you see what I mean.

So, basically it's down to us (and by that I most probably mean Tommy Tyler) to reverse engineer the new remotes and figure out what we need to do to talk to them.
_________________
Rob
www.hifi-remote.com
Please don't PM me with remote questions, post them in the forums so all the experts can help!

[chico_woodhill]

That makes sense. They're producing products for a mass market of which we JP1'ers are a fairly insignificant number.

I'm glad to hear that they've adopted neither paranoid nor combative attitudes towards JP1. It sounds like their business acumen is sharp enough that they now encourage our activities as one of many ways to boost total sales, albeit not solely making a huge difference in the grand total.

The main thing is....I know you guys will see the new units as a fresh challenge and have them tamed in no time. JP1 forever!

[Herbie]

What do we know about the new chip?

I guess we know its a Motorola (Freescale?) chip with flash on board, right? Do we have a part number?

Designing interfaces to stuff like this is part of my "day job" (or at least it used to be, before I became more of a firmware geek).

Is there an active discussion going on anywhere yet? Or should I just drop Tommy Tyler an email and volunteer my services for whenever they're needed?

Cheers.
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TiVo FREAK!
Brutalizing my 15-1994 since 2000, thanks to JP1
Now abusing a 6131m, 2116, and 2104 too!

[The Robman]