IR 200L with Dish 301 Com Problems

[DerekTheGeek]

I just recently received my IR 200L IR blaster that I ordered from Frey. I only have 4 days left on my trial so I really hope I can get it to work before I have to make a decision on which PVR solution to buy (so far SageTV rules). I followed all directions including those to NOT install any drivers for the IR-200L. I plug the IR-200L into my serial port but when I run through the setup wizard SageTV is unable to detect the blaster on any of my COM ports (1-4). As far as I can tell I do not have any other apps using my COM ports. Truth be told I haven't even dealt with COM ports since USB came out. My specs are as follows:

WinXP Pro
WinTV-PVR 250
nVida FX5200

Some other info that may be helpful...
On a hunch I tried using USB to serial adapter my wife has used with her PDA in the past. Using this SageTV was able to detect my IR-200L on COM1, COM2, COM3, and COM4! Now that was weird. Using this USB to Serial adapter I tried to select the "DishSatelliteReceiver1" but when I tried to program the number keys my PC locked up consistently. Somehow I think the USB to Serial adapter is not the correct route.

Any help or suggestions would be most welcome. Thanks a bunch.

- Derek

P.S. I would just like to add that I am impressed with the amount of participation the SageTV staff provide. It's comforting to see the CTO, CEO, and others actually using the product and taking the time to help people get everything setup.

[Narflex]

Derek,

Check in your BIOS and in Device Manager to be sure that your serial ports are enabled. They're probably not if the detection is failing.

Let me know how that goes.

Cheers.

[DerekTheGeek]

Thank you for the reply,

I looked in the BIOS and my settings match some of those posted by others. That is to say that that COM1 is using IRQ4 and COM2 is using IRQ3. Also the respective IRQ ports are using the memory address specified as others in the forum. Is there a specific setting I should be looking for?

Also the two COM ports on my system show up as installed and working when viewing fron device manager.

I am using a USB wireless keyboard and mouse to control SageTV, could this be related?

Thanks,

Derek

[DerekTheGeek]

Do the problems I am having sound like the IR-200L could be damaged? Are there any other solutions out there to control the Dish Satellite receiver?

- Derek

[DerekTheGeek]

Well at least I know the IR-200L is not broken or defective. I was able to use HE Remote with my IR-200L to change channels on my Dish 301 recieiver. In fact HE Remote had no problems detecting my IR-200L on Com Port 1. SageTV, however, still cannot detect the IR-200L.

Now if I could only find a way to use HE Remote from SageTV.

- Derek

[DerekTheGeek]

Well I finally got it working though I don't know entirely how. I will explain further for the benifit of others.

I downloaded and installed HE Remote which is a peice of software used to control the IR Blaster (IR-200L) which is talked about on the SnapStream forums. HE Remote was able to detect my IR-200L without a problem. It seems strange that SageTV was not able to do the same. In any case I followed the HELP instructions from the website "HE Remote" was downloaded from. By following the directions I was able to get HE Remote working to the point where I could change the channels on my Dish 301 receiver by using HE Remote's on screen control interface.
At this point I had read that HE Remote supported "SnapStream's" PVR solution directly. Sure enough I loaded SnapStream and I was able to use SnapStream while running HE Remote. Yes I was able to tune channels on my dish receiver from SnapStream. Nice as SnapStream's PVR product is, I like SageTV a lot better for many reasons, so I was hoping I might have success using HE Remote with SageTV. I switched over to SageTV but was not able to control the Dish receiver from SageTV. With HE Remote installed and running I stepped through the SageTV setup menu again but as always the SageTV setup could not locate my IR-200L on any of the COM Ports.
At this point on a hunch I disabled HE Remote and tried the InfraRed blaster setup again in SageTV, and it was detected right away on COM1! From there I selected the "dishreceiver" option and then selected all defaults. Now SageTV works fine for me and it is able to tune my channels via the IR-200L. I don't know what exactly HE Remote did but it somehow "allowed" SageTV to properly detect the IR-200L on COM1.

So in summary:
1) Installed HE Remote and followed setup instructions
2) Then disabled HE Remote and followed the setup menu for using IR-200L with SageTV.

I hope this helps other people in the same situation I was in. If anyone has some thoughts as to why this worked please share your thoughts here. I would really like to know.

- Derek

[Narflex]

Maybe HERemote performed some modifications to your COM port settings that were needed to make it work properly....?