How to blast IR to an antenna rotator box when changing a TV channel (1 Viewer)

[GJC]

Actually my Eagle Aspen Rotr 100 uses DiSEqC. I technically don't need more than one coax feed line to get both signal and power to turn the rotor. I ended up running two lines because the rotor won't supply enough power to my CM7777 preamp.
The Eagle Aspen still uses its own box with a remote to control the rotor, there's no provision for having my tuner control it directly. I bought a USB UIRT to hook to my PC to let it send IR commands to the rotor box through an IR repeater.

 

[mm1352000]

Okay, makes sense. Cheers for the explanation.

 

[valdi]

I didn't know we were being watched The antenna rotor we are talking about has only infrared(remote control) access to change the direction of antenna. The rotor costs about $75. CDN. If I was so inclined, I could find a rotor that can be controlled via rs232 but those are quite expensive. I believe I saw one online for about 400.00 CDN. That's a little pricey just to get my Fringe in HD for free every friday. I'm just a rookie when it comes to automation of equipment via PC and MediaPortal (MP) so GJC had the same idea to get a simple plug-in going to interact with MediaPortal and EventGhost (EG). GJC has the know-how to get the plug-in up and running while I'm still reading about the interaction of Python scripting and EventGhost and trying to get up to speed. Again I'm a rookie

My involvement is two-fold, I wanted to automate the rotor direction based on channel selection within MP and have MP "remember" the direction of the antenna in degrees. So when it comes to channel change MP grabs the direction of antenna and moves the antenna to new channel direction as needed. Then I eventually want to bastardize his plug-in to gain control of non-RS-232 equipment via MP and EG. By recording the current status of a piece of equipment then reading and writing those variables to an XML file, I hopefully can keep track of status of settings and be able to add and subtract variables to switch settings on AMP ( Surround to 2 channel Stereo to 5 Channel Stereo ETC....). As far as I can find, I haven't been able to find anything or anybody that has successfully done that on these forums.

 

[valdi]

GJC, I'm in North York on top of a hill that has a direct shot at CN Tower (15 KM) and Buffalo beyond. So when I mount the Antenna to the chimney, I'm about 50' or 55' in the air. I'm sure my wife would not allow me to turn off the cable until the kiddies and Mother move out. Wait, that's at least another 15 years. I just want to reduce to basic cable to satisfy the Teletoon and Treehouse fans in the house. I started with an antenna in the attic that worked great for T.O. channels but no Buffalo, I then added a channelmaster amp and got at least FOX from Buffalo. Once I put the antenna on the chimney I then started to receive the Buffalo channels with very good stability. Funny thing is tho. I live in a flight path for Pearson. I think I'm just on the outside leg of approach, when the planes come overhead, quite high as well, I get a momentary glitch from the signal. I somehow want my local MP without committing me to pass a law that will allow pass over of my home only during commercials.

Good Luck with programming!!

 

[x4mer]

The problem you had with IRSS may have just been from installing at as a service (default) instead of as a program. Not all IR receivers are supported in server mode.

I've set it up on my mom's HTPC, to blast her cable box for her cable channels. I would think it could be used the same for a rotor control box. As long as you programed the presets into the rotor first, to match the channel numbers, then each channel blast would call on the rotor to go to one of it's presets. Never tried it with my rotor, as I've never been motivated enough to try it.

 

[valdi]

X4mer, My rotor doesn't have presets. if you need say 180 degrees, MP needs to know where the rotor is currently. As well, i've tried irss in both modes, service and program. i just want to convert to EG in order to take advantage of macro execution in android as well as windows.

 

[GJC]

Hi Guys,

Sorry I'm so slow in piping in, but for some reason I've stopped receiving email notifications that anyone has posted on this thread.

I got my GUI finished for configuring the plug-in last night. I'm just looking up how to make an installer and then I need to touch up my EG python code for a few changes I made. Following that, I'd like to "put a few miles on" the plug-in to be sure that all is well for general release. Hopefully I'll have something ready for late next week.

If anyone can send me the IR codes for the Channel Master rotator for EventGhost then I'll be glad to incorporate them into my sample python code. Right now I only have Eagle Aspen codes.

So far it's looking good. The plug-in allows you to define multiple "zones" for each station so that if some stations can be received off the side of the antenna, then the plug-in will take that into account when working out an antenna position for a given set of active stations. I only have a dual tuner for my testing, but for those people that have more tuners it should work well for optimizing the antenna position for multiple simultaneous stations.

 

[GJC]

X4mer, My rotor doesn't have presets. if you need say 180 degrees, MP needs to know where the rotor is currently.

Valdi, the plug-in will remember where it last instructed your rotator to go to, but it will only call a batch file with the new (absolute) position, preset number and time needed to rotate to that position from the last position. Is that ok or do you need it to send the difference (in degrees) between where you should currently be and where you need to go?

 

[valdi]

GJC, id love it if i could get the difference between where you should be and where you need to go.

 

[GJC]

No problem Valdi, you got it.