I am having a bear of a time getting the the AT&T settopbox to "turn" back on before the recording. Where you get the press ok to "wake up" the AT&T settopbox. I am using a serial port blaster such as yourself. I was wondering if you could post your change_channel script for the serial IR blaster.

I would much appreciate it, I have something screwed up and it is driving me crazy.

_________________
Backend/Frontend
ASUS M4A78-EM w/8400GS 4G RAM pcHDTV 3000 + PVR500 (1045), 1TB, 250 & 320. Iguana IR USB (running R6)
Frontend_1
Asus M2NPV-VM - 1GB RAM - 40 GB Hard Disk - StreamZap
Frontend_2
Dragon 1.0 w/ 2G RAM - 40 GB Hard Disk StreamZap

The only chg I made to the script is in my last post, i.e. I added the "OK" send. One thing I have noticed is that sometimes the STB doesn't come on right away, in fact, sometimes it starts to come on and hangs which is very annoying. But in the former case where it is slow to come on, because it is slow it then misses the channel chg cmds and ends up recording the wrong channel.

Does yours ever come on or are you simply recording the 'press ok to view AT&T uverse' msg bobbing about the place? If it never comes on, try standing in front of it and hitting 'ok' on the uverse remote - does it come on then? (sounds a bit silly i know but I have noticed that it doesn't always come on).

_________________
Paul O'Flynn

Hi Paul,

What I am seeing is what you are describing. The AT&T box is not always changing channels (especially after the 4 hours).

My IR Blaster is just to the right of the "Record" label on the AT&T box. It does change channels (except for when the "4 hour" sleep function seems to happen).

In some of my recordings (or failed recordings) I am seeing the "press OK" screen. I even created a script (called fix_att.sh) that I have tried running once an hour (10 minutes before the hour so I do not mess up the channel change). The script I was using is below. What I have found
is I still get those "lock up".

I think I am going to try and increase the sleep time from 1.3 to 2.1 and see what happens.


channel_change.sh
___________________________________________________
#!/bin/sh

REMOTE_NAME=VIP1200
cmd="$1"
irsend --device=/dev/irblasterd SEND_ONCE $REMOTE_NAME OK
sleep 2.1

case $cmd in
[0-9]*)
for digit in $(echo $1 | sed -e 's/./& /g'); do
irsend --device=/dev/irblasterd SEND_ONCE $REMOTE_NAME $digit
sleep 0.5
# If things work OK with sleep 1, try this for faster channel changes:
# sleep 0.5
done
;;

*)
irsend --device=/dev/irblasterd SEND_ONCE $REMOTE_NAME $cmd






fix_att.sh file
____________________________________________________
#!/bin/sh

REMOTE_NAME=VIP1200

irsend --device=/dev/irblasterd SEND_ONCE $REMOTE_NAME OK
sleep 0.5
irsend --device=/dev/irblasterd SEND_ONCE $REMOTE_NAME OK
sleep 0.5
irsend --device=/dev/irblasterd SEND_ONCE $REMOTE_NAME OK
sleep 0.5
irsend --device=/dev/irblasterd SEND_ONCE $REMOTE_NAME EXIT
sleep 0.5
irsend --device=/dev/irblasterd SEND_ONCE $REMOTE_NAME EXIT
irsend --device=/dev/irblasterd SEND_ONCE $REMOTE_NAME EXIT
irsend --device=/dev/irblasterd SEND_ONCE $REMOTE_NAME EXIT
# maybe if I send it enough times it will work
#;;
#esac


By the way thanks for taking the time to reply and putting so much effort into getting this remote working. I read your posts and you worked hard at it.

Thanks,

Paul Falinski

_________________
Backend/Frontend
ASUS M4A78-EM w/8400GS 4G RAM pcHDTV 3000 + PVR500 (1045), 1TB, 250 & 320. Iguana IR USB (running R6)
Frontend_1
Asus M2NPV-VM - 1GB RAM - 40 GB Hard Disk - StreamZap
Frontend_2
Dragon 1.0 w/ 2G RAM - 40 GB Hard Disk StreamZap

That's correct.


Does it bounce around the screen? I.e. it's not hung or anything. Have you tried walking to the box and pushing ok on the uverse remote & then see if it comes on? (You can tell from watching the power button, it should come on).




I was very close to doing the same thing but found then merely sending 'ok' worked well.


I would increase it to something silly like 10 or 20s, just as a test.



It was a nightmare trying to get this remote learned & working, note the guy who eventually learned it used an oscilloscope!

So, just been reading the irsend doc (below). There are some vaguely interesting parms to check out



That should allow you to send a whole bunch of "OK" cmds as should the following:


Still tho, these aren't really any different than what you're already doing with the multiple sends.

http://www.lirc.org/html/irsend.html

_________________
Paul O'Flynn

Hi Paul,

Thanks for the suggestions, it looks like taking the wait statement up to 5 seconds for switching the channels worked well.

_________________
Backend/Frontend
ASUS M4A78-EM w/8400GS 4G RAM pcHDTV 3000 + PVR500 (1045), 1TB, 250 & 320. Iguana IR USB (running R6)
Frontend_1
Asus M2NPV-VM - 1GB RAM - 40 GB Hard Disk - StreamZap
Frontend_2
Dragon 1.0 w/ 2G RAM - 40 GB Hard Disk StreamZap

Cool, good to hear. Mine has been working pretty well actually, no complaints, quality looks pretty good too. Every now and again, maybe 1 out of 20 recordings, for some reason the power never comes on the STB and I end up recording the 'push ok to watch TV' msg which is a bummer, maybe I just need to up my wait stmt. Note that while this wait is ok for recording it makes channel surfing a bit of a non-starter but that doesn't bother me as I never do that, I only watch recordings.

If you ever hear of anyone getting the USB port working or anything else like that, please post back here. It would be great if they were forced by the FCC to have a working firewire port on their STBs..

_________________
Paul O'Flynn