IR Blaster Setup

[nycjoe]

I've been dreading this day for years... My STB died a few days ago. Time Warner replaced it (sci-Atlanta 3270 I believe) with a new explorer 4642hdc. The (hd-pvr) IR blaster no longer works, and I tried a bunch of different models in the video-sources menu.

I don't remember if there's anything special that needs to be done to get it to work (I just remember spending forever getting it to work a few years ago).

Does anyone have any tips for an easy way to do this? Is it easier to do with a USB-UIRT? Or FireWire? Any tips would be appreciated. Also thinking about just going OTA though I'm not sure if that works here in NYC.

Thanks!

[bcjenkins]

IMO - http://commandir.com/

Can't go wrong

[stuckless]

I use the command ir as well... and I use the generic tuner plugin (which I helped build) combined with the native command line blaster for command ir. In the last 3+ years I haven't missed a single recording.

Previously I used LIRC with a combination of different IR blasters, and I was always missing recordings.

Thanks to bcjenkins for pointing me to commandir

[nycjoe]

Hmm it doesn't look like commandirs can be bought... The website says to check back in the new year (I wonder which year they mean). Yikes.

I'm totally in the dark about how IR tuning works, to be honest. Isn't there a way to inject the IR codes into the PVR150 tuner (I use an HD-PVR)? I was able to record codes off the remote with a USB-UIRT into a lirc config file.

EDITED:
Yay I found a commandIR3 for sale on ebay... I hope to get it sometime by this weekend. Is there a writeup you guys would recommend using for setting it up? I guess I'll need to use the external tuning plugin? I hope there's a way to modify the tuning device, I would hate to re-do my lineup (I made so many changes to it)

[nycjoe]

Well just to keep everyone posted - I was able to get a blaster on eBay, and its a working one, too.

Setting it up was pretty easy, just a firmware flash and they even have ppa sources for my outdated (10.10) Ubuntu to install commandir's version of lirc. I was fortunate enough to even find IR codes for my stb to update in hardware.conf.

The SageTV portion was also simple - the external tuning plugin comes with a clear readme that explains how to change plugins (stop sage and edit the CFG file) and that's pretty much it.

The only issues I had are lirc becoming unresponsive after an hour or so which I fixed by adding a pkill -9 lirc && lirc start to the gentuner (sounds flaky to restart it sp often but it works) and being unable to find the right spot for the IR receiver on the box - not sure if that's because the blaster is weak or what, but positioning it a few inches away from the box works.

Thanks everyone!

[bcjenkins]

I have a commandir2 so this doesn't apply to me, but the 3 doesn't need lirc. Perhaps @stuckless could share a how to.

B

[nycjoe]

I wanted to post an update to this thread. I wasn't ever able to get my commandir3 to work very reliably. It would miss about %5 of the time, very inconsistently - sometimes the first digit, sometimes the second digit.. Maybe a faulty unit. I also had to position it about an inch away from the STB - it would never work when directly on the STB, unlike my Hauppauge blaster which worked better.

What I figured out the other day was that my STB (explorer 4642hdc) has a webserver that supports tuning with a simple http get request - just "wget http://IP/RemoteControl?Numbers=123", so I added that to gentuner and it tunes MUCH faster than any IR blaster I've ever seen. I never even realized it had an ethernet port. Definitely something I would recommend looking at.

Hopefully my provider wont update (read: break) this interface very often.

[bcjenkins]

Gentuner is awesome for its flexibility. Depending on your cable provider, John also wrote an app to run cable card native in Linux. No need for sagedct

B

[jpwegas]

Originally Posted by nycjoe

What I figured out the other day was that my STB (explorer 4642hdc) has a webserver that supports tuning with a simple http get request - just "wget http://IP/RemoteControl?Numbers=123", so I added that to gentuner and it tunes MUCH faster than any IR blaster I've ever seen. I never even realized it had an ethernet port. Definitely something I would recommend looking at.

Would you be willing to share your custom gentuner script? I'd be happy to add it to the project as an example for those with that type of STB.

If you're willing, send me the file or a PR on github: https://github.com/jwittkoski/GenericTunerPlugin

--John

[nycjoe]

sure, will do, just let me redo it because its has an embarrassing mix of LIRC stuff in it

[nycjoe]

Done - I sent a pull request. Also kind of inspired me to upload some misc scripts I had to my own dvr-utils repo in case anyone is interested (https://github.com/yoavp77/dvr-utils - it's not all strictly sagetv stuff).

[nycjoe]

Originally Posted by nycjoe

my STB (explorer 4642hdc) has a webserver that supports tuning with a simple http get request
...
Hopefully my provider wont update (read: break) this interface very often.

Well it took about a year but TWC suddenly decided to disable the web server on my STB. Does anyone think there's any point in calling their tech support? I think a 2 hour call with a rep is the final push I need to just dump cable and go OTA, although I haven't had much luck getting reception here in the city. I have no appetite to go back to IR blasting.