Re: [Announce] Pierogi - a universal infrared remote control app
 

I will try to work some more on the air conditioners. :) But they really are hard to manage -- not even the experts at the hifi-remote website have found a good way to cram stateful A/C controls into a JP1 remote control...

Re: [Announce] Pierogi - a universal infrared remote control app
 

Maybe at least basic functions :) ?

Re: [Announce] Pierogi - a universal infrared remote control app
 

I have no background of IR spec but I've noticed that some of my remotes I can never get working on ANY other infra-red remote.
What I mean by that is I can never get any other universal remote or LIRC (on a PC) to learn commands from these 2 remotes I have.

The remote was for a DiSEqC (USALS) satellite receiver (made by echostar), I bought several universal remotes to to try and "teach" them from this remote and they would always fail to do so. This forced me to get another DiSEqC satellite receiver made by another company (don't remember the name but it wasn't echostar) and oddly they couldn't learn from it either. All other remotes worked except these. Is there some special protocol for DiSEqC receivers which make them incompatible with universal remotes and LIRC?

Re: [Announce] Pierogi - a universal infrared remote control app
 

The problem is that most A/C remotes now work in this "stateful" mode; in short, the remote itself remembers your settings for temperature, fan speed, oscillation, etc.; and each time you press any one of the buttons, it sends ALL of the settings over to the air conditioner. So even the basic functions end up being not so basic. :) (I mean, even to send a power on / power off command, you've gotta send a valid signal with temperature / fan / oscillation data, and there's usually a checksum or two mixed in to force you to get all the numbers correct...) In short, these guys practically require writing a whole new code path just for themselves. :( I do intend to get it done eventually!

Re: [Announce] Pierogi - a universal infrared remote control app
 

There are indeed a number of IR protocols out there that most universal remotes just can't handle. The "stateful" A/C remotes I've been talking about earlier are one type -- they require the remote to keep track of a handful of variables, and most universal remotes just can't do that. LIRC isn't set up to remember state information either, although I suppose you could probably hack it to work...

Bang & Olufsen uses a ridiculous carrier frequency (455 khz, as opposed to the 36-38 khz used by most manufacturers), so that's another way to defeat the universal remotes.

A lot of the trickier recent protocols, such as those used for IR keyboards, keep very close track of the exact time of each pulse to squeeze in more data; so that, say, a 400 usec pulse is a 0, 500 usec is a 1, 600 usec is a 2, and 700 usec is a 3. This system passes two bits of data in roughly the same time used to pass a single bit in ordinary protocols. You can, of course, extend this system to pass as many bits as you like. And yeah, many universal remotes can't easily handle this type of protocol yet either. (LIRC has no trouble with this, though.)

I don't know what protocol the Echostar receiver is using. Most Echostar devices that I know of are using protocols that a learning remote would be able to recognize; but then, most Echostar devices that I know of are Dish Network units. :)

Re: [Announce] Pierogi - a universal infrared remote control app
 

Here's a question for Pierogi users: I've been working on different ways to control the Pierogi UI via the keyboard, and have only just now noticed that Qt already allows you to switch between tabs by using the right and left arrow keys on the keyboard. :) So, (a) does anyone out there already use this feature, and (b) should this feature be maintained, or allowed to be overridden by other commands? (I was thinking of associating the arrow keys with the arrows in the menu tab, or with the channel/volume buttons of the main tab...) Thanks!

Re: [Announce] Pierogi - a universal infrared remote control app
 

No I don't use this due to not being able to select Favourites or Panels.

IMO Channel/Volume Buttons from the main tab, unless there's a better idea.

Re: [Announce] Pierogi - a universal infrared remote control app
 

Well, I could add the ability to select favorites and panels as well; say, up/down for panel collections, backspace/enter for favorites?

(Actually, I suppose I could make all these options configurable, if I tried hard enough...)

Re: [Announce] Pierogi - a universal infrared remote control app
 

Quicker to tap the screen IMO that's why the tab bar is there.

Plus if you decided to use the QWERTY thing I mentioned, there would be no need.
You could jump striaght to the tab instead of scrolling to it :)

Re: [Announce] Pierogi - a universal infrared remote control app
 

I didn't know the arrow keys did this to begin with :)
I think mapping them to volume and channel would be great.