JP1 Remotes

SGordon · Joined: 05 Apr 2006 Posts: 6

I recently purchased a URC-9950 (OFA/UEI/Mosaic) remote, and I've spent the past couple weeks trying to get it all set up the way I want it. I've been browsing various remote sites, but information on this thing seems to be severely lacking.

It has a mini-headphone jack on the side, supposedly for interfacing with the PC. I did a quick search on here for Mosaic and I saw posts for a URC-9990, but nothing on URC-9950. I checked the battery compartment and there don't seem to even be holes for the 6-pin connector I've seen references to. Before discovering this forum, I went to Radio Shack and bought a min-headphone/serial cable that looked like it would work, that is normally used for interfacing radio scanners to a PC, however it has a "mono" end on it (one black band), so maybe that's the problem (it didn't work).

So I'm wondering if anyone knows if this thing is JP-1 compatible via the stereo headphone jack on the side ? If so, what kind of cable one would use. And if not, if anyone can provide any info on this remote, I'd really appreciate it.

Thanks,
SGordon

The Robman · Posted: Wed Apr 05, 2006 8:26 pm Post subject:

No. This remote uses technology that has been completely abandoned by UEI. They were never able to get the headphone jack port to work.
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SGordon · Joined: 05 Apr 2006 Posts: 6

Well, rat farts ! Thanks for the quick reply.

On their website they have this thing where you can go in and select wav files made of screeching tones, which are then picked up by the remote to send it new codes. However, there is nothing to indicate what device code are included in the wav file. It's basically a try it and see what you get.

Any idea of the format of these wav files and if so, how to generate them yourself ?

Thanks,
SGordon

The Robman · Posted: Wed Apr 05, 2006 9:07 pm Post subject:

Actually, we have someone in the JP1 group who's an expert with the UEI WAV files, so he might be able to look into this at some point, but right now he's busy with the JP1.2 remote effort.
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SGordon · Joined: 05 Apr 2006 Posts: 6

Cool, thanks Rob.

Meanwhile, I've spent the past couple hours digging around on here, searching for further information to see if I can learn this stuff on my own. As I understand it from reading other posts, I should be able to use the IR program to export to wav. I still had one of the wav files I'd downloaded from the mosaichelp.com site, so I thought I'd try importing it into IR and playing with it to get a better feel of how this might work. Problem is that it says it can't find an RDF file for remote USM0. Drat ! I'm guessing that's encoded in the wav file to identify which remote it's supposed to work on.

So, how hard is it to make an RDF file ? I opened up one of the included ones in notepad to take a look and it seems to basically be assigning labels to a bunch of hex values, then a layout map of where each of those values is in relation to the others (by rows maybe ?). The one I looked at (URC-9960) I got a feeling might be for a hard-button remote as opposed to a touchscreen, but I'm guessing a touchscreen one would work much the same way. Is there some kind of reference guide for them that I've missed that might help me make my own ?

Thanks,
SGordon

The Robman · Posted: Thu Apr 06, 2006 7:16 am Post subject:

If you still have some Mosaic WAV files, load them up to the Diagnosis Area here and post a link to them in this thread.

The first thing that you would need to figure out are the keymaps. There's a keymap for each device mode (eg, VCR, TV, CD, etc) which defines which buttons are used and in what order they appear. You need to know this info before you can create an RDF. In your case, what you wold need to do is create a bunch of dummy upgrades, load them into the remote and then see on which buttons the functions ended up.

You're going to need quite a bit of expert help in order to do this. I don't really have the time myself, so I'm hoping that one of the other experts jumps in and volunteers.
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aberguerand · Posted: Thu Apr 06, 2006 9:05 am Post subject:

Hello, I think I am the "WAV" expert Rob mentionned above. I did not get from your postings whether you have actually been able to upgrade your remote via WAV file or not. That should probably be the first thing to try before investing time in creating a RDF.
I can help identifying what's inside your WAV files if you upload them (zipped Exclamation

) to the diagnosis area. Unfortunately, I am not one of the RDF experts that Rob mentionned later, so other help will be required here.
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Alain

The Robman · Posted: Thu Apr 06, 2006 9:46 am Post subject:

Just FYI, I have sent an email to UEI to see if I can get some of the info that we would need that way, which would save us some time.
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The Robman · Posted: Thu Apr 06, 2006 11:00 am Post subject:

According to the folks over at UEI, the Mosaic uses a very similar chip to the one in the Slingbox so I have cloned one of the Slingbox RDFs as a starter RDF for you here...

http://www.hifi-remote.com/forums/dload.php?action=file&file_id=3022

I'd like to have Alain look over the WAV file that you downloaded before you try loading any new upgrades into the remote though.
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Rob
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Please don't PM me with remote questions, post them in the forums so all the experts can help!

The Robman · Posted: Thu Apr 06, 2006 11:13 am Post subject:

I decided to go to the OFA web site myself and download a WAV file, which you can find here...
http://www.hifi-remote.com/forums/dload.php?action=file&file_id=3023

I filled it to the brim with setup codes, the final list is here...

Device / Setup Codes
Audio Amplifiers 0226 0353
Cable Converters 0542 0549 0422 0444
CD Players 0245 0376
Home Automation 0252 0318
Digital Audio Tape 0319 0330
Audio Cassette Decks 0171 0174
Laser Disk Players 0203 0213
Video Accessories 0325 0337
Audio Amp/Tuners 0235 0241
Satellite Receivers 0147 0184
TVs 0349 0353
VCRs 0295 0322
Digital Video Disks 1158 1168

Here's a second WAV file where every device type is accounted for...
http://www.hifi-remote.com/forums/dload.php?action=file&file_id=3024

Device Downloaded Setup Codes
Audio Amplifiers 0854 0855
Cable Converters 1228 1247
CD Players 0760 0766
Home Automation 0154 0184
Digital Audio Tape 0319 0330
Audio Cassette Decks 0171 0174
Laser Disk Players 0598 0607
Miscellaneous Audio 0086 0096
Video Accessories 0325 0337
Phonographs 0634 0669
Audio Amp/Tuners 1390 1397
Satellite Receivers 1541 1551
TVs 1339 1347
VCRs 1966 1988
Digital Video Disks 1158 1168
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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!

The Robman · Posted: Thu Apr 06, 2006 12:03 pm Post subject:

OK, I've tried importing the WAV files into IR and I can see the format.

The first 4 bytes are always "FF FF 45 4D"
The next 2 bytes are the total length of the all upgrades.
The next 2 bytes are always "44 44".
The next byte is the number of upgrades in the file.

Following that are the upgrades themselves, in the following format...

1-byte: total length of upgrade (device and protocol together)
1-byte: offset to start the protocol (00 if not present)
2-byte: setup code
multi-byte: the device upgrade
multi-byte: the protocol upgrade (if present)
2-byte: checksum (SUM of byte 4 thru the end of the data)

Unfortunately, IR cannot handle the data in this format, so there isn't a way for you to create a WAV file with upgrades at this time.
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Rob
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Please don't PM me with remote questions, post them in the forums so all the experts can help!

aberguerand · Posted: Thu Apr 06, 2006 12:06 pm Post subject:

The WAV file looks standard, except that devices and protocols are interspread, instead of being in separated areas.

I can see that :

- Upgrades start at address $0004
- Half signature is 'EML2'
- DevType 0 =TVs
- DevType 1 =Cable Converters
- DevType 2=Video Accessories
- DevType 3=Satellite Receivers
- DevType 4=VCRs
- DevType 5=Audio Cassette Decks
- DevType 6=Laser Disk Players
- DevType 7=Digital Audio Tape
- DevType 8=Digital Video Disks (tells how old this remote is Wink

)
- DevType 9=Audio Amp/Tuners
- DevType10=Audio Amplifiers and Miscellaneous Audio
- DevType11=CD Players (hey, that should be Compact Disks Wink

)
- DevType12=Phonographs
- DevType13=Home Automation
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Alain

The Robman · Posted: Thu Apr 06, 2006 12:21 pm Post subject:

The layout of the data is almost identical to the layout used for the EEPROM in the Slingbox. As the Slingbox only handles one upgrade at a time, we decided to modify RM to export the binary files that it uses.

Even though IR could be used to create the WAV files for this, IR isn't programmed to handle this layout and I don't think it's worth modifying it just for this one remote.

Maybe we could develop an application that would take a text file which contains all the upgrades as input and creates the WAV file from it? There could be a few standard fields at the top of the file for things such as the signature and the fixed data, but the rest of the file could just be the upgrades in th standard format that we use to copy them from KM and RM over to IR.

What do you think Alain, is that something that you could put together?
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The Robman · Posted: Thu Apr 06, 2006 2:30 pm Post subject:

I've created a zip file that contains a small WAV file and a text file in the format that I described above...
http://www.hifi-remote.com/forums/dload.php?action=file&file_id=3025
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Please don't PM me with remote questions, post them in the forums so all the experts can help!

SGordon · Joined: 05 Apr 2006 Posts: 6