Controlling Motorola DCT6200 via firewire revisted

[Naylia]

Check this out:
IEEE 1394 Standard

There are some links in the digital video section to companies that publish standards. If it'd be possible to purchase just a single one instead of getting a membership that'd be nice.

EDIT: ANSI wants $122 for the spec. Damn that's annoying. I'm going to work on getting my hands on the header file in hopes that I'll be able to access everything we need from there.

[Naylia]

This may be useful. It describes a mac program and it describes the hex string being sent to the 6200 to change channels.

http://mac_hdtv_timer.home.comcast.net/channel.html

[jvheitz]

Naylia,
I think the best route to take will follow that 'AV/C browser' program for apple.
Maybe not a program to change channels, but a program that allows AV/C commands to be sent directly to the device.
We could then query the device for valid opcodes, and test commands before writing any app to change channels.

[jvheitz]

Check out this link - some guy tried with the DDK, but was having trouble...
http://www.all-usenet-archive.com/File.asp?service=621
You have to scroll down about halfway to see the discussion.

[Naylia]

It looks like he solved his problem if you read all the way to the end, maybe we can levarage some of whats there.

[Stealth1971]

Just stumbled across your thread briefly (I am working on some other HD integration for a Network Encoder), but I did some research on FW recording awhile back. Your not just looking for Moto box FW protocol, but actually the HAVI protocol. I believe that HAVI is the protocol that all DVHS & DVRs can use over FW. Think of it as HTTP over a TCP connection (HTTP is HAVI and firewire is the TCP layer)

I could be wrong here but it is something to explore - there are some HAVI code samples/libraries out there. Sorry if this has been suggested already...

[jvheitz]

Stealth,
What I am working on (and I believe Naylia as well) is developing a driver for the STB first. We have no "transport method" currently to control the STB - only capture the stream.
First we have to develop the driver to handle issuing the AV/C commands to the STB, then we can develop the app to control it.
Do you have any links or code samples that we could look over?
Thanks

[Stealth1971]

Well I should have dug a little deeper before offering advice - sounds like you have good basis of info I didn't realized there was a simpler layer such as the AV/C commands... I thought the HAVI specification defined a command protocol too, but as I have read find a devices with full HAVI compatibility is rare.

I did find this link - implementation of linux raw 1394 drivers and then tools to connect them to the user space. Might have some insights

http://www.ict.tuwien.ac.at/ieee1394/opensource.html

(if windows driver dev gives you hassles you can always do a linux pass through! i.e. linux to handle firewire stuff and pass it over the network to Windows)

good luck!

[Naylia]

JV,

I think the existing tuner driver provided by DFA will provide all we need with regards to an application finding the hardware. The cable box is recognized as an av/c device type 5 on the firewire bus and windows correctly enumerates its ID. We should be able to treat the cable box as a peer device (vs virtual device) using avc.h / avc.sys.


Turns out the stack looks like this

avc
61883
1394

we want to develop an application that interfaces to the device using the avc layer. As long as we have the correct enumerated device ID we should be able to send it commands using the avc layer and the lower layers will take care of themselves.

ADD: Check this outSending an AV/C Command Scroll down a little and there is a generic outline to sending and AV/C command.

[jvheitz]

Naylia,
The problem with the driver (i believe) is that it is really for a "generic" tuner with a modded .inf file to edit the description.
There is no "correct" driver yet for any of these STB's. (Thats what I am hoping to correct).
I like the idea of a workaround using the existing driver and writing a standalone app that sends the AVC requests/commands directly to the GUID of the STB. I started going in the new driver direction, but may change course....
I should be getting my DDK any day now and will post my progress.
I still have much more reading to do on this...

[jvheitz]

On a side note, as I ws looking into this I found that if you have a valid (actual) DVHS driver loaded (not the STB as DVHS device) you should be able to see some of the functions in the AV/C Tape Subunit Device in Graphedit/properties.
http://www.webtc.com/DVHS/default.htm
That is one of the reasons I was going down the driver road...
If you click on the STB in graphedit and click properties, do you get any info? I registered proppage.dll, but still cannot display properties for the device.

[Naylia]

That would be great to have a proper tuner specific driver that will provide that functionality. For now I'll be persuing using the existing driver only for the purposes of identifing the hardware on the bus and hope to be able to send it the correct commands through the avc instantiation for the 'tuner'. I'll take a look at my stb properties tonight, I think i already regeistered proppage.dll.

[turak]

I guess nobody was able to get this working.

[Naylia]

I got so busy I haven't had a chance to even compile the stuff I found. I've still got it on a back burner but have been distracted by finally actually getting sage and trying to get it all working perfectly for the first time. I still haven't shown it to the gf because it needs to be flawless before I do.

[eobiont]

There was anopther thread somewhere where a guy got far enough that he thought he was sending commands out the 1394, but everytime he told the Panasonic driver that we are all using to send a command, his computer would blue screen.

SGraphRecorder has been modified to accept an external tuner, so if you ever do get an EXE that can take a command 6200ch 123, it will plug right in. For now, I am using the blaster built into my 150.

[turak]

Changing channels through firewire has been solved. See this thread. I figured I post the link here so people wouldn't have to sift through 25 pages of posts before finding out you can use firewire to change channels.