IR Blaster to Digital Box Issues

[meccano]

Hi,

I use the IR Blaster to change channels on a General Instrument (Motorolla) DCT2500 set top box on Shaw cable. My problem is that this works unreliably, about 5% of the time the channel change request fails as it switches to the wrong channel.

I use code set 0081 and have GBPVR set to always send 3 digits. Whenever I test manually, the channel changes work fine but through GBPVR they fail 5% of the time as "005" appears to get interpreted as "00", "043" is taken as "04" or "127" is taken as "27", etc.

I've played with the IR Blaster "Advanced Configuration" a bit but as I can't reproduce the problem I never know if I've solved it until it fails again. Has one had a similar problem and came up with a solution?



David

[markbb1]

Hi,

I use the IR Blaster to change channels on a General Instrument (Motorolla) DCT2500 set top box on Shaw cable. My problem is that this works unreliably, about 5% of the time the channel change request fails as it switches to the wrong channel.

I use code set 0081 and have GBPVR set to always send 3 digits. Whenever I test manually, the channel changes work fine but through GBPVR they fail 5% of the time as "005" appears to get interpreted as "00", "043" is taken as "04" or "127" is taken as "27", etc.

I've played with the IR Blaster "Advanced Configuration" a bit but as I can't reproduce the problem I never know if I've solved it until it fails again. Has one had a similar problem and came up with a solution?

David

Maybe the blaster "bud" is not close enough to the IR "eye" in the set top box. Maybe it only seems to work 100% of the time when you are testing manually. I had a similar problem one time when I was getting WinLIRC to work. All was fine when testing with just WinLIRC, but when I started the HTPC software, the blaster stopped working. I eventually fiddled with the "bud" location and got it working. It didn't make sense that it was the location of the "bud" as it would work when WinLIRC was the only program open, and as soon as I launched the HTPC software it stopped working. Somehow maybe what is running (it) has something to do with transmit power levels?

[martint123]

I've had similar problems, losing characters but with a UK Sky STB.
Never solved it and gave up and bought a serial port blaster. :mad:

[meccano]

By the way, I eventually fixed this problem reliably by blasting the STB TWICE in a row.
The first blast makes sure that the STB is woken up and the 2nd blast reliably changes
the channel. I implemented this by creating HaupBlastTwice.cmd containing these lines:

"C:\Program Files\devnz\gbpvr\HaupBlast.exe" %1
sleep.exe 3
"C:\Program Files\devnz\gbpvr\HaupBlast.exe" %1

and then compiling this batch file into an exe using this software:

http://www.battoexeconverter.com/