New girder plugin for Hauppauge IR Remote

[pheitman]

I have created a new girder plugin that directly supports the IR Remote that comes with the Hauppauge PVR-250 and PVR-350. For now you can find it attached to this message. I am in the process of getting it submitted to the girder plugin directory (and probably to SourceForge). If you have any questions or problems, feel free to ask

[Edited Nov 12, 2003]
I have updated the attachment to contain an example GML file. I started with the SageTV 1.0pre GML file provided by Jim Hughes which I found on the girder exported groups page. I then deleted the events associated with each function and learned the events provided by my event plugin.

[Colin]

Right now my irremote.ini file is changed such that it sends CODEXX events for everything, by changing the HCWPVR section. However, the events that this plugin sends correspond to the old events that this section used to translate to.. Is there anyway to change this? I'm currently going to be using a ProntoNEO, which has been programmed for the first 60 codes, to expand my possible button layout., and having to translate from code to event would be a pain.

[pheitman]

There's a couple of answers to that. First, I've been thinking about providing a way to configure the events returned. I haven't explored it yet since it involves heavier windows programming (dialogs) than I've done in a while, but it's probably worth a look (especially since Sage2 is a ways off and what do I have to do in the meantime anyway? The other answer is that I could create a custom version of the plugin for you. The downside to that is that if fixes are needed in the future it's less likely for you to get an update unless you ping me again...

[Colin]

My current solution is to just use the irremote.ini to translate the codes into girder event.exe calls. This seems to work pretty well for me right now.

[pheitman]

True - the solution provided by clavinniu is general and works well. I just wanted to provide an alternative that didn't require the Hauppauge IR application and spawning the girder event app for each event. But then again my plugin isn't as flexible since the events are hard coded right now...

[AirJunky]

Excuse my ignorance, but what is a "girder"?

I received my PVR250 & SageTV bundle yesterday & got it installed. Installation of the Sage software itself was pretty easy. The Java portion of the install choked so after trying to uninstall & reinstall, I just went to the Sun site & downloaded ver. 1.4 of Java & now Sage appears to work fine.

Still have not picked up a card for the video out to the TV portion of the system though. After making a bad buy of 5 Sigma Design MPEG-1 decoder cards on Ebay (didn't have much time & didn't do any homework, oh well, a $30 lesson), and already buying & returning an nVidia FX5200 (looked like crap), I'm considering an X-Card with remote. Sure not many places available to get these things though.

So last question...... what remote to use? I don't care to use the TV as a computer monitor so the only functionality I expect is to flip thru the channels & control Sage itself. I have the silver Haupaugge remote & expect an X-Card will include one too. Plus I see a few of you are using the MCE remotes available on Ebay. Whats the best remote for strictly Sage functions?

[pheitman]

I can't speak to the question of which remote is best, I'm just using the silver remote that came with the PVR-250. I can talk about girder, however. Girder is software that allows you to control Windows, mapping various input events to a variety of output actions. For example, you can specify that when you push the 'red' button on the remote that girder should send a windows message to SageTV telling it to bring up Live TV. Note that you can do that with the remote already by using the IR application provided by Hauppauge and editing the irremote.ini file. The difference is that the Hauppauge app only sends the messages to the application that has the focus. If you want to use the remote to control the SageTV app while you are reading email, then girder is the way to go. You can find out more about girder at www.girder.nl.

[malore]

I've played around with Girder some and I can add commands and set it up to send a keyboard command for the remote control event, but I can't get it to send a command to the SageTV window when it is in the background. I've set the target window to SageTV, but it only responds when the SageTV window has the focus. Can you please provide a .gml file that is set with the default SageTV commands.

[pheitman]

I've edited my original post to note that I've updated the attachment to include a sample GML file. Hopefully that will help you out.

[malore]

Thanks, your .gml solved my problems and pointed me in the right direction. I've added an additional old sound card to my system and now I can continue using SageTV while someone is doing something else on the computer.

[White94Cobra]

If one has multiple PVR-250 cards, which one should the IR receiver be plugged into? I'm currently using an ATI remote, but it would be great to be able to user a girder plugin that supports the PVR remote - I could then teach the commands from the PVR remote to my MX500 and use the MX500 w/o having to buy additional hardware (?)

[malore]

I have the IR cable hooked into the first PVR-250 I installed and left it there when I installed another card because it still worked. Just to see if it would work I tried it in the other card, but it doesn't seem to work (I didn't try very hard). Girder's system tray icon flashes when it receives a signal, so it shouldn't be to hard to find the card the cable works with.

[AirJunky]

OK, I've got Girder setup as close to how it's described as I thought possible but it's not working. Ran the Girder 3.2.9 install. Copied the SageTV_with_Irremote.gml file into the Girder32 directory. Left the Irremote.ini alone in the Windows directory. Copied the HauppaugeIRRemote.dll to the girder32/plugins directory (even tried it in the girder32/plugins/software & girder32/plugins/hardware directories, but to no avail).

I have the Girder icon in the System tray & it flashes whenever I hit a button on it, but nothing from Sage.

I've opened the SageTV_with_Irremote.gml file in Girder, clicked the Enabled checkbox & hit Apply but it's is never checked when I come back to it. I tried saving it, same thing.

I've gone into a bunch of the EventStrings & there is nothing there. Do I need to do all the event learning?

I go to File, Settings, Plugins, Hauppauge Irremote & click Auto Enable input device & verify the path to the plugins.

What am I missing here?

[malore]

This is from memory so the names might be slightly off. You have to enable the SendMessage plugin in addition to doing what's in the instructions. Then you will be able to look at what each of the commands is sending to sageTV under the plugin tab. In girder's preferences you can set it to load the SageTV_with_Irremote.gml on startup. If you want to customize it, you can find a list of the commands here .

[AirJunky]

Enabling the SendMessage plugin allowed me to see each of the commands & see each button being pressed but it still doesn't control Sage at all.

[pheitman]

Can you check to make sure that the Target of the SendMessage command is the Sage program? Under the Settings group box, the 'Match Invisible Tasks' checkbox should be checked and Name should SageWin, Class Name should be SageApp and Executable should be SageTV.exe. The checkbox should be checked next to each of those.