JP1 Remotes

[ryanmc]

i'm having trouble finding how to use the data from digitrace to program my jp1 remote

[mtakahar]

I didn't recognize "digitrac" until yesterday when I actually used "digitrace" myself. You are talking about the program discussed in this thread: http://www.hifi-remote.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=3569, right?

It's not going to be easy to explain in a few sentences (or even several paragraphs.) You would have to wait for someone writing a program that either bridges the output from digitrace or reads the data directly from the device through the parallel port and pass down the data to the decoding dll.

Hal

[The Robman]

Ryan,
I take it that this means you have created a working device then, and if so, did you make the RF, IR or IR&RF version. Also, which OS are you using?

Btw, I edited the thread to say "digitrace".
_________________
Rob
www.hifi-remote.com
Please don't PM me with remote questions, post them in the forums so all the experts can help!

[ryanmc]

[mtakahar]

[ryanmc]

That would be great

[mtakahar]

I've uploaded it here.

This is working on my 1.3GHz Celeron laptop running XP SP2, so it probably works for you, too. (Not sure if this works on 98/Me.)

You need the porttalk driver (perhaps you've already had it for the digitrace program) and JRE or JDK 5.0 (1.5.0) installed.

Anything other than the "Start Capture" button haven't been implemented yet.

Hal

[johnsfine]

Thanks. I've been meaning to try building something like that myself. I really need some sort of tool on a PC that calls DecodeIr for directly received IR signals.
Hopefully I can find the time very soon to use what you did (I assume much less time than inventing it myself).

[mtakahar]

Yeah, I figured you didn't have time, and it's way too bad if this Tommy's great creation had to go waste because of lack of a software.

I forgot to mention about the I/O port setting. It'll use whatever you set up for IR.exe. I'll add explicit port settings along with other tweaking options, though.

Hal

[mtakahar]

[johnsfine]

I'm crawling toward being able to try this.

1) I tried http://java.com (as directed by Hal's directions) and it locked up my internet access, hung part way through loading that page and both before and after I tried closing that browser instance I had no internet access even through other programs. Rebooted and tried a different browser, same results. It was starting some sort of Java applet that did something seriously wrong with my older version of Java.

2) Tried Hal's program with my existing older Sun Java. It failed.

3) I went instead to java.sun.com (where I got the Java SDK long ago). After a few wrong clicks from their confusing top level page, I found the link to get the newest Windows Java SDK. I installed that.

4) Hal's program now starts.

Following Tom's instructions I measured some printer port pin voltages with and without a 1K load.
Control pins 1 and 14 both went from 3.37 down to 3.20
Data pin 5 went from 3.32 down to 3.15
Data pin 8 went from 3.32 down to 3.16

That makes pin 8 the lowest resistence by Tom's formula and his instructions taken literally would say to pick that one. But I'm sure I'm better off with the slightly higher voltage rather than slightly lower resistence.

Next I need to solder three wires to connect the IR sensor to a DB25 connector. I think it's easiest to add it to my JP1 cable's DB25 connector so I don't need to plug and unplug things. (I never got around to soldering the whole RF sensor kit and at this point I'm more interested in IR than RF). Given my lack of soldering skills, who knows what will happen.

[mtakahar]

[johnsfine]

I hope I didn't confuse anyone by saying "Java SDK". Most people will only need the smaller JRE.

I got the larger JDK because I occasionally do RemoteMaster development and I hope to understand and tweak Hal's code in this project.

If you only want to run it, not modify it, you only need the JRE.

Also, I'm on a different computer now than the one I had that problem on and I just tried java.com and it went right through that applet, no problem, played some annoying music and gave me access to the download buttons. I hate web pages with sound when I just want information or a download. But anyway it worked (despite the same obsolete Sun Java previously installed on this machine as the other). So the problem might have been very specific to that machine.

[johnsfine]

I wasted money on one of those "cold heat" soldering tools. I couldn't get it to melt more than a spec of solder, and none at all when in contact with the wires I wanted to solder. There were no instructions, so maybe I was using it entirely wrong.

I then switched to my old soldering iron and did a really sloppy job of soldering the 6 connections (both ends of three wires). But somehow it works.

Then I had lots of confusion over how to get PortTalk installed in a way that Hal's program could use it.

Then it all worked.

I misunderstood the UI and thought I needed to start and stop capture for each signal, but soon discovered otherwise.

It's pretty inconvenient as it stands now because it's too slow and it doesn't seem to deal with macros.

After you press and release the remote key, there is a long pause before the result appears. I need to dig through Hal's code and figure out how to tighten that.

I was really hoping PC decoding would show me whole macros, even when they're too long for an OFA remote to learn, maybe even if the frequency shifts within the macro. I'd also like to see how many frames there were of each signal. A big part of my purpose for direct PC capture and decode is to find out exactly what a remote is sending when a tricky macro doesn't perform as expected and/or I'm debugging some tricky protocol executor.

IIUC, Hal's program detects and reduces the first clear repeat pattern and then loses the rest.

I realize other people may just want to know what some original remote is sending, so they will prefer it the way it is (detect and reduce a repeat pattern just as a learning remote would).

Hopefully I can customize my copy, now that Hal has gotten me started.

I also have a bunch more soldering to do. My JP1 cable was too messy (from past inept kludging) to add 3 wires to, and I didn't want to risk it. So I started with another DB25 connector. But plugging and unplugging it will be too much trouble. I have resistors and diodes and a 10 pin header (that I think I can cut to JP1 size) so I'm going to try to solder JP1 components onto the DB25 I used for this.

[mtakahar]