[mythtv-users] determining power state of firewire cable box <solved>

Sam Logen starz909 at yahoo.com
Tue Jan 6 21:52:48 UTC 2009


--- On Wed, 12/31/08, William <william_munson at comcast.net> wrote:

> From: William <william_munson at comcast.net>
> Subject: Re: [mythtv-users] determining power state of firewire cable box
> To: starz909 at yahoo.com, "Discussion about mythtv" <mythtv-users at mythtv.org>
> Date: Wednesday, December 31, 2008, 5:40 AM
> Sam Logen wrote:
> > Hi everyone,
> >
> > I've got a motorola DCH-3200 attached to my mythtv
> setup via a firewire cable.  The way I've set up my boot
> process, it primes the firewire port before mythtv starts
> up.  However, if the DCH unit is powered off when the
> machine turns on to record, then the priming process hangs
> and I won't be able to enter mythtv.
> >
> > I've downloaded and compiled the latest
> "6200ch" from svn.  I noticed that this script has
> the capacity to toggle the power state of the cable box.  So
> I modified its source to include my box's vendorid, then
> compiled it.  Toggling the power of the cable box with
> "-w" works, but all it does is toggle.
> >
> > That means that if the box is on, "-w" will
> turn it off instead.
> >
> > So if I was to set the machine to power on for a
> recording (and I'm not the only person to use the cable
> box at times), I'd still have to 
> 
> Here is the real problem... I would suggest renting another
> cable box 
> and hiding the one for mythtv where it wont be turned off
> accidentally. 
> Put the other one at the tv set for when you really really
> must watch 
> live tv. Or even better, put both on your myth box so you
> can record and 
> watch at the same time. I doubt I could go back to a single
> tuner box 
> again, too many shows on at the same time.
> 
> > manually check the power state of the cable box to
> make sure that it powers on in accordance with my scripts,
> and not power off instead.
> >
> > Is there a simple way to query the power state of the
> cable box via the firewire connection, so that if it returns
> a value meaning the box is off, it can power it on with the
> 6200ch "-w" switch?
> >
> > Thanks,
> > Sam

OK, I probably just discovered what Mythbuntu users probably take for granted, the mythprime program, written by 'majoridiot'.  It automatically finds and primes the correct cable box, and adding the '-P' switch, will turn it on first ONLY if it is already off.  Only issue is that the cable box needs to be on an unencrypted channel to prime properly, and that can be set with the '-c' switch.  So it's all good, and I hope this info will help others too.

Get it here:
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/majoridiot

Sam



      


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