Home Automation Domotica Forum Europe, Bwired Forum

This evening i finished my IRTrans project.



With the IRTrans i can control all IR controlled devices in the livingroom from wherever i want.
The IRTrans Ethernet is based on a TCP/IP Client/Server architecture and communication is done using port 21000.

There are several ways to integrate the IRTrans in your own software; my personal favorite interface is the TCP/ASCII interface, since it's easy to do and you're independant of dll's, ActiveX and other things like that. The ASCII interface gives you the ability to send and receive IR commands and to retrieve lists of the configured remotes and commands.
All this can be very easily done by opening a Client socket to port 21000 of the machine where you have the IRServer software running.

You can send commands like: <b>Asnd TV,vol_up</b> or <b>Asnd mediaplayer,ch+</b> .
After the command has been sent, you'll receive a status message with which you can determine if everything went as expected.

IR commands that are received by the IRTrans Receviver are sent over the socket from IRTrans to your own software as well;
you'll receive things like <b>**00034 RCV_COM pinnacle,play,0,0</b> . That way you know someone pressed the play-button on your pinnacle remote.

Learning all IR codes of 4 remotes took me about 2-3 hours. Because i already had a lot of IR codes stored in my Philips Pronto TSU9600,
it was just a matter of copy/paste since IRTrans supports the Pronto CCF IR format. Everything worked perfectly.
With the IRTRans located in the opposite corner of the livingroom, being >10 m away from the equipment it has to control,
there have been no problems of IR commands not being executed by TV/Home Theatre/STB/Media player.

And from now on, with the IRTrans in the livingroom, i don't have have to use the Pronto IR anymore. Not the Pronto does bad IR, but it was too 'closed' in relation the rest of my Home Automation stuff. New setup is that the Pronto sends commands to my Home Automation software, which relays these commands to the IRTrans.



This is the same approach i use for lighting: the Pronto sends a 'light XY on' command to my Home Automation software which takes care of the rest.

Benefits of doing IR this way are:
- No more aiming needed;
- Full IR control from everywhere;
- IR is now easier expandable for multiroom control;
- My HA software now knows what buttons are pressed and can automatically trigger events based on them; like closing the curtains at the 'Play Movie' button.
- It also knows about all kinds of other events happening: so when there's an incoming phonecall, i can mute Radio and TV.

The IRTrans certainly is a great addition to my hardware.

Its one of the "i really must have this at some point" devices on my list. And your setup seems also very nice.

I assume the trick is to not use the normal remotes anymore at all, so you would only have pronto -> irtrans -> mediadevice (so the irtrans itself would not pickup anymore "stray" ir things)

// Erik (binkey.nl)

I just looked at my todo-list and the 1st item is: "remove batteries from all remotes"
No, just kidding, the IRTrans can also receive IR, so if someone still dares to use a 'normal' remote, the IRTrans should be able to receive that and it will be processed by my HA software. Time will tell how reliable this is.

Hi Robert,

Congrats, great setup! One question: what did you use for mounting the IRTrans on the wall? A speaker mount and some glue?

Lennart

Thanks
I used a wall mount for surround speakers that was still there but without speaker since a couple of months. I modified the speaker-part of the wall mount so that i could mount the IRTrans horizontally instead of vertically, painted the wall mount parts white and used tie wraps to attach the IRTrans to the wall mount.

Hi,
As I don't have any eperience with IR projects but have it on my wishlist I was wondering if all commands from the Pronto run through HS and then an IR signal is send to your home audio equipment or is HS not in this chain.
If the answer is yes I was wondering if you have any delays. I could imagine if you have let's say 0,5 second delay in zapping on your TV this would be anoying right?
3rd question: If there is no delay would it also be possible to use an Ipod touch with HStocuh as a (no delay) remote?

Jeroen

@Jeroen,
Irtrans+HS is faster than RFX9400 (pronto Extender)

Hi Jeroen,

I don't use HS, so i can't comment on that. Maybe some other users who use HS & IRTrans combination can give some input on that.
In my case everything is working very fast, it's as if the Pronto is still doing the IR directly. Sometimes i even blocked the IR transmitter of the Pronto with my hand to be sure it was the IRTrans that was sending and not some button i forgot to reprogram So 0,5 seconds, no way.
iPod Touch should be possible also, but i would need to test that before i can give you a good answer. Maybe a nice thing to do late this evening (i'm not really making friends right now over here, with ice skating on and me testing Pronto buttons )

Via an iPhone/iPod Touch would be possible, but not very convenient when using a webpage interface for ie homeseer. This due to the fact that if the iPhone/iTouch is not docked the Wifi would need to come on, then the page with your interface would need to load and only then could you change the channel or something else. For simple channel changing this would be far from ideal and well over 0.5sec.

Ciao,
Esteban

What also will work fine is the Nokia N810
http://irreco.garage.maemo.org/

Zapping with iPod is Ok. Once you have the page loaded with the zap buttons on it, the response is nearly as fast as with the Pronto. No 0.5 sec, more like 1/4 sec. But keep in mind these Touch pages i have are a combination of the iui library and some ASP.NET where an onclick starts a telnet-like session to my HA application just to keep overhead to a minimum. Maybe with some more optimization it can be made even faster.

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by Chak</i>
<br />What also will work fine is the Nokia N810
http://irreco.garage.maemo.org/
<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></font id="quote"></blockquote id="quote">

Chak, thanks for this pointer!
Irreco also supports a 'telnet mode' so it can talk directly to a telnet server!
New add-on for my domotica project is born soon, first have to upgrade my 770 to hackers edition 2008 [:o)] It was catching dust until now.

Regards,
Ron