UHF Remote

[flyswatta]

Okay, I'm on the verge of giving up on this, but I thought I'd ask the considerable braintrust here to see if you guys had any ideas. Here's the scenario:
I have a DishNetwork 322 STB (dual tuner) and TV1 channel changing works pretty good (serial ir blaster) . TV2 is controlled only by UHF remote, which makes changing channels via a computer, uh, somewhat challenging. Right now I just set timers, which works okay until a show goes in "hibernation" for a few months, then new shows pop up. Managing the timer is a pain in the ascii.

I've been brainstorming ways to somehow change the channels via UHF and have met with dead-ends. My ideas so far have been:

1. UHF Blaster - doesn't seem to be one in existence, but I would think that someone could build something like that.

2. Find some "magic" setting in the STB menu that enables IR for TV2. Dead end on this one.

3. Build some sort of "robot" or cradle, that pushes buttons on the remote control This would be cool, but I fear it would also be somewhat expensive.

4. Ditch the 322, get 2 single receivers, and pay for them to re-run a new wire from the dish to my office, and pay the extra $$ per month for an additional outlet fee. Then I would have to get one of those IR to UHF jobbies to be able to control the STB from the kitchen. (besides, I'd have to explain to my wife why we need to buy 2 new receivers and pay more per month) I'd like to avoid this option

5. Hack the STB to enable IR on TV2. Haven't found much on this either.

6. I just thought of this one: IR Blast an IR to UHF Remote Extender, only don't have the receiving unit. I suspect that the UHF frequency that the extender will use is different than what the UHF remote uses. Or is it?

Anybody out there have any comments, ideas, or general knowledge that might help me out or get me going in the right direction?

[sub]

The reason you dont see UHF blasters (or extenders etc) is because there is no real standards for how manufacturers implement them, so it only possible for hardware to target a specific device. ie, a blaster manufacturer would be able to build a "DishNetwork 322 Blaster" but not a generic "UHF Blaster", severly reducing the size of the market for such a device.

IR on the other hand is pretty well defined.

I'm assuming this STB doesnt have a serial port?

[flyswatta]

Yeh, no serial port. I went down that path a while back. Well, long enough to pull it out and look at the back

It's actually a great implementation that they have - it solves a problem for 98% of the people out there - it just hoses over those of us "amateur" pvr'ers. I suspect that they really don't care to add another IR Reciever because of the small % of people that would use it and the added cost to the unit. Besides, they'd rather you purchase THEIR dvrs, instead of doing it yourself.

I just have a hard time believing that no-one has solved this problem before...

[Ted the Penguin]

you could hack the remote apart, and replace the buttons with some circuitry of your own, you would need some electronics skill though. I can probably give some advice in that department if you decide to go that way.

[flyswatta]

you could hack the remote apart, and replace the buttons with some circuitry of your own, you would need some electronics skill though. I can probably give some advice in that department if you decide to go that way.

I thought about doing something along those lines, but the last electronics class I had was 18 years ago in the Navy, but when I got to the ship, all we did was swap out circuit cards. :mad:

If you don't think it would be too difficult to do, I might give it a shot - I can get another remote off Ebay for pretty cheap to jack around with.

So in general terms, what are you thinking? Some sort of Serial/Parallel connection to the "circuit"? Then have the circuit drive some sort of thingy that will push a button / close a circuit?

You have my curiousity up now...

[pastro]

you could hack the remote apart, and replace the buttons with some circuitry of your own, you would need some electronics skill though. I can probably give some advice in that department if you decide to go that way.

I was thinking along those lines too. Using the parallel port to control it. You might be able to create an RF transmitter at the right frequency as well and hack it to a computer controlled RF. Remotes pretty much just do on/off keying even the RF ones from what I have seen so it's a matter of building and hooking up a different tx block.

[flyswatta]

At least once done, you'd be able to IR / UHF blast the receiver. Too bad you couldn't come up with some sort of "Universal" solution that would work on any remote. Since it would use the actual remote for the device, it'd put a kebosh on the current IR blaster solutions out there...

[pBS]

here's an interesting link i found...

http://forum.byopvr.com/dvr/index.php?PH...0#msg18830

[flyswatta]

Looks like the guy had the same issues I do. After reading through the link, it looks like they ended up TV1 for TV2.

[Ted the Penguin]

I thought about doing something along those lines, but the last electronics class I had was 18 years ago in the Navy, but when I got to the ship, all we did was swap out circuit cards. :mad:

If you don't think it would be too difficult to do, I might give it a shot - I can get another remote off Ebay for pretty cheap to jack around with.

So in general terms, what are you thinking? Some sort of Serial/Parallel connection to the "circuit"? Then have the circuit drive some sort of thingy that will push a button / close a circuit?

You have my curiousity up now...

I was thinking that you could electrically trigger the "high" signal from a button, you would have to figure out how much voltage is required, amperage, etc... I just did a whole bunch of crap like that for my capstone project, so I have lots of fun recent experience in it