I get my Television through IPTV, and I am trying to figure out a good way to change channels.

Now I could use an IR blaster and use it to change channels, but what fun is that. Now my settop box has a USB port on it, and I connected a keyboard to it and what do you know I am able to type in my channel and it changes.


Now I am no programmer, but I am sure that I should be able to run a USB cable from my computer to my Settop box and be able to change channels, but I have no clue as to where I can even start.

Anyone have any ideas?


Spud

The problem with this idea is that USB is different to the old serial port comms system.
With the old style COM ports you could just plug the control device into your PC and work out what it is sending down the cable, then plug the PC into your STB and send it the right codes.
Under USB there is a master-host which controls slave-devices, and there can only be one host at a time.
When you plug a keyboard into the set top box via USB the STB is the host. If you were to connect the PC to the STB both boxes would try to be hosts, which wouldn't be possible. This is due to the way Intel designed USB so that there would always be a PC controlling your devices, but didn't take into account needs such as yours. Firewire however was designed so that a host isn't required, not that that helps you much in this situation.

Can the set top box be controlled via a serial port?

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Paul Turpie
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What about using a laplink type cable or USB>Serial Adapter? I am sure that Someone has/is working on this.....

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I did some searching on the mythtv.org mailing lists and found this...

http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/m ... w_threaded


It looks like I am going to have to just use an IR blaster for now. The set top box does not have a serial port on it and USB appears to be the only way to interface with it.

It does look like some people on the mailing list are working on some sort of way to control using USB as some of the newer boxes only have USB, so I will wait it out.


Spud