Any remote experts out there???

Posted by Ergin Guney [IP: 165.117.55.56] on September 30, 1999 at 18:29:40
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In Reply to: Any remote experts out there??? posted by Yohan Pamudji on September 24, 1999 at 03:14:12:

I'm certainly no "remote expert", but I did examine the high-end remotes available on the market closely recently and chose and purchased a Pronto.

There are no "state-sensing" remotes that I know of either. However, the catch is, you don't have to have a state sensing remote to do all that right.

The answer is "discrete power on/off commands". Although most devices have a single "power" key on their native remote controls, they still recognize separate "power on" and "power off" IR remote codes. (The "power" command on their remote is usually a third "power toggle" command.) By using discrete power commands instead of the power toggle command and by programming your mode switching macros intelligently, you can do everything right.

Here is how you would do it: Let's say you have a system made up of a DVD player, a VCR, and a CD player. Your "play DVD" macro would include the following commands:

1) power on DVD
2) power on TV
3) power on receiver
4) receiver switch to DVD input
5) power off VCR
6) power off CD
7) (possibly) play DVD

If you use this when nothing is on, those components that receive the "power off" commands will do nothing. They are already off. All the rest will do what you want.

When you are using the same macro for switching from, say, watching a VCR to watching a DVD, then the VCR will respond to its own power off command and turn off. The TV and receiver will not respond to their power on commands since they are already on. Everything else will fall into place nicely.

You get the idea...

Of course, this only applies to the state of the "power" of each unit. If you are talking about other types of state sensing ("is the VCR currently playing", "which input is the TV on", "does the DVD player currently contain a disk", etc.) then you may be out of luck. Although, if you think carefully, you'll notice that even those kinds of specialized cases can be handled pretty well by a few cleverly selected "dumb" commands. ("The VCR will end up stopped when you hit STOP whether or not it is currently playing." "The TV will end up at the Video2 input when you select VIDEO2 whether or not it was there to begin with." "The DVD player wouldn't hurt itself anyway by attempting to play when there is no disk in it.")

I don't know about other high-end learning remotes, but the Pronto has a lot of "discrete power on/off" commands for it publicly available on the Internet for many brands. (See www.remotecentral.com.) Most (if not all) of these work even on models that do not have discrete on/off buttons on their own remotes.

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