[mythtv-users] Telewest and redeye IR blaster

Gary Dawes gary.dawes at gmail.com
Sat Nov 11 09:03:07 UTC 2006


On 11/11/06, Robin Neatherway <robthebob at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I've just got my telewest cable box (Atlanta 4200) set up with the
> redeye serial blaster using the simple program that comes on the
> website and was wondering what other people used in general. It seems
> very inefficient to power up the blaster every time (waiting 2 seconds
> for it to do so) before sending a single command and switching off.
> Wouldn't it be better to have a daemon that listened for text on a
> pipe and just sent it straight out to the ir blaster, with Myth
> calling a shell script that did this?
>
> What setups do other people use, especially with the Redeye system?
>
> Thanks,
> Robin
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> mythtv-users at mythtv.org
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>

I've got a telewest SA4200 as well, and I just use a simple homemade blaster
with bits from maplins based on the simple transmitter circuit of
www.lirc.org, and connected to Com1. Bits only cost about a couple of quid.
I use the SAE8000 remote conf again off lirc.org.

I also use a modified version  of channel.pl which I've listed below, called
directly from the external channel_change command field in the db. works
really quickly and smoothly 99.9% of the time. i had a bit of a struggle
getting it all to work at first, but once I cracked the timings and
placement of the transmitter which is about an inch in front of the cable
box aimed just about the standby light, it just fell into place.

I did find though that I had to send a couple of commands first which seem
to "wake" the box up ready for the channel numbers, which you can see from
the following code

Cheers

Gary

channel.pl

#!/usr/bin/perl
# make sure to set this string to
# the corresponding remote in /etc/lircd.conf
$remote_name = "SAE8000";

sub change_channel {
        my($channel_digit) = @_;
        print $channel_digit;
        system ("irsend SEND_ONCE $remote_name $channel_digit");
#        system ("irsend SEND_ONCE $remote_name $channel_digit");
#        system ("irsend SEND_ONCE $remote_name $channel_digit");

#        sleep 1;
}

$channel=$ARGV[0];
#sleep 0.3;
system ("irsend SEND_ONCE $remote_name ch+");
# '#system ("irsend SEND_ONCE $remote_name CHDN");
if (length($channel) > 2) {
        change_channel(substr($channel,0,1));
        change_channel(substr($channel,1,1));
        change_channel(substr($channel,2,1));
} elsif (length($channel) > 1) {
        change_channel(substr($channel,0,1));
        change_channel(substr($channel,1,1));
} else {
        change_channel(substr($channel,0,1));
}
system ("irsend SEND_ONCE $remote_name select");
system ("irsend SEND_ONCE $remote_name select");
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