Intercepting stuff from a remote control
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I have a quick not really programming question, I have a hollywood+ dvd decoder card with remote control. The remote has a com port IR receiver and a small utility to monitor the com port and forward remote commands to the dvd player. What I want to do is either intercept the comms between the receiver utility and dvd player, or write a small utility of my own to read from the com port and utilise the button presses for other apps apart from the dvd player... Does that make sense? :-O I tried checking the data coming stright from the com port but couldn't see anything indicating which button was pressed. I don't really want to borrow the network analyser from work to view the raw data stream... Anyone know of any techniques to intercept the comms between the utility and the dvd player in any way?? Spy++ didn't help much... Regards all Liam O'Hagan :-D Senior Test Engineer GLI Australia www.gli.com.au
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I have a quick not really programming question, I have a hollywood+ dvd decoder card with remote control. The remote has a com port IR receiver and a small utility to monitor the com port and forward remote commands to the dvd player. What I want to do is either intercept the comms between the receiver utility and dvd player, or write a small utility of my own to read from the com port and utilise the button presses for other apps apart from the dvd player... Does that make sense? :-O I tried checking the data coming stright from the com port but couldn't see anything indicating which button was pressed. I don't really want to borrow the network analyser from work to view the raw data stream... Anyone know of any techniques to intercept the comms between the utility and the dvd player in any way?? Spy++ didn't help much... Regards all Liam O'Hagan :-D Senior Test Engineer GLI Australia www.gli.com.au
i know this won't help ya much but I had a similar problem with a barcode scanner I bought. I was trying to read raw data off of the serial port but couldn't get anything... Problem was that it was sending what a tech referred to as "black and white" data. I'm not sure exactly what was mean by it but the end result was that there has to be a decoder to push the data into something manageable by software... This in your case is probably what the dvd decoder card does. Like I said this is no solution of course but maybe it helps ya better understand your problem. Good luck. Joseph Dempsey jdempsey@cox.rr.com Joseph.Dempsey@thermobio.com "Software Engineering is a race between the programmers, trying to make bigger and better fool-proof software, and the universe trying to make bigger fools. So far the Universe in winning." --anonymous
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i know this won't help ya much but I had a similar problem with a barcode scanner I bought. I was trying to read raw data off of the serial port but couldn't get anything... Problem was that it was sending what a tech referred to as "black and white" data. I'm not sure exactly what was mean by it but the end result was that there has to be a decoder to push the data into something manageable by software... This in your case is probably what the dvd decoder card does. Like I said this is no solution of course but maybe it helps ya better understand your problem. Good luck. Joseph Dempsey jdempsey@cox.rr.com Joseph.Dempsey@thermobio.com "Software Engineering is a race between the programmers, trying to make bigger and better fool-proof software, and the universe trying to make bigger fools. So far the Universe in winning." --anonymous
Hrmm thanks for the info... I'll have to get hold of the protocol analyser and try and figure out what their command syntax is... Senior Test Engineer GLI Australia www.gli.com.au
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Hrmm thanks for the info... I'll have to get hold of the protocol analyser and try and figure out what their command syntax is... Senior Test Engineer GLI Australia www.gli.com.au
Well, this is isn't exactly what you need, but the IR carrier wave operates in a broadband range. Allmost all remotes use a 32khz signal (I think there's also a 41khz signal used by some manufacturors) that is either on or off. Kinda of like morse code over 1800s telegraph wires, with the IR carrier being the wires, the 32khz signal being the 1khz tone and the on/off pattern being the information. The pattern of off's and on's (presence/absence of the the 32khz tone) determines the key that was pressed. It's very easy to grab an IR reciever off the shelf and wire it up to the serial port. That way you can use the remote, but have your own custom downlink to the pc. This kind of stuff is very well documented in hardware hacker circles.