Does the USB-UIRT support a separate IR receiver, such as those from Xantech? My UIRT is located in my equipment closet where it controls my DirecTV receiver via CQC. But I sometimes like to control the DirecTV receiver with my IR remote, which is hard to do with the closet door closed! I've taken to leaving the door open, but it would be great if I could mount an unobtrusive IR receiver in the door and connect it directly to the UIRT.
Any thoughts?
Thanks,
Ken
The later model UIRTs actually support a second zone via an 8th inch RCA plug on the back. I've not had time yet to experiment with getting support for that in place (and still being able to deal with the older kinds in a backwards compatible way.)
no, the older USB-UIRT doesn't. You can use that latter model Dean suggests, or...
Option 1) Custom-fabrication route.
I know of folks who have disassembled their USB-UIRTs, cut a small window in their cabinets, replaced them with dark glass, and mounted the UIRT guts behind the glass. That way the IR gets through the "door".
Option 2) Elephant Gun. Get an RF/IR remote, and an RF base station.
I opted for the elephant gun route, and bought an MX850 for $400 and an MRF300 for $200. You don't have to spend nearly that much - I think surfremotecontrol.com, which sells the "Universal Remote" products, has some of their cheaper stuff too.
I use my MX850 throughout the house - i can walk around with it, directly control my Denon 3805 to turn volume up/down, turn zones on/off, and soon will be able to directly communicate with the USBUIRT/IRMan pause/play/skip songs. [don't ask - i'm about to try something either incredibly smart or incredibly stupid - using the same emitter to control the IRMan on one machine, and the USBUIRT on another.]
From what I can tell from the UIRT website, the 1/8" jack in the back is for an IR emitter, not a receiver. But I guess it would be possible to mount the UIRT in the door and simply extend an attached emitter lead into the closet. Drawbacks to that approach are that the mounting has the potential to be quite ugly (unless I do it right) and I might miss the "blasting" capability of the powerful IR emitter on the UIRT.
I may try to connect a receiver to the jack in the back and see if it works first.
The "elephant gun" approach is less attractive, mostly b/c we are addicted to the "peanut" remote that comes with the DirecTiVo receiver.
I guess a final option would be to install a second UIRT on the PC and mount it in the door or elsewhere in the room where it will receive IR signals. . . . assuming I give it a different name in CQC, will CQC support two UIRTs connected to the same machine??
- Ken
Oh, I misread sorry. I thought you were looking to blast into an IR distribution block or something.
You can't load two UIRTS because there's currently no way, that I know of, to tell them apart. They are found by their USB vendor/product ids, in a search. But there's no terribly obvious way to link a given driver instance to a given UIRT, i.e. they don't show up with names like COM1, COM2 and whatnot. I can iterate them and find them, but I don't think that there's any permanent identifier that would let the drivers know which one they should talk to.
Maybe there's something that I'm just not aware of, but currently it wouldn't work. They'd both just try to talk to the first one they found.
Why would you need 2? If you can find a place for your 2nd one that receives IR signals and can physically reach the PC [given the 15' limitation on USB], all you need is that one.
Alternatively, you could get an IRMan which is serial as you can have long-ass serial runs. Then just mount that someplace convenient and out of the way but within a wall bounce of the IR signal.
Finally, technically you could have both an IRMan and a USBUIRT, but I really don't see any business/functional value in that.
Now, that is an idea. I already have a spare IRMan. Perhaps I can set up the IRMan as a receiver and continue using the UIRT as a blaster? Dean, would that work?
Sure, yeh, no problem with that. You'll have to re-train anything you'd set up in the UIRT, in terms of receiving, over into the IRMan.
Hi Guys
I do recall on the usb forum someone requested if possible to add another ir receiver and i believe Jon said that you could......Of course some soldering skills required ......Browse the usbuirt forum....
HTH
Frank
Hi.
Sorry for bringing up a dead thread.
I would like to use two USBUIRT's on my CQC server. For me, it's the only way possible to achieve two IR zones.
From what I've read here, this can't be done because the driver uses the USBUIRT's name so there's really no way to tell them apart.
However, I've seen on usbuirt's forums an utily to rename the USBUIRT to allow to connect more than one.
The utility is this one:
http://www.usbuirt.com/uurename.zip
More info is available here on the usbuirt forum:
http://65.36.202.170/phpBB2/viewtopic.ph...9e41dc6977
I guess that now all that is needed is to rename the CQC driver, right? Is this easy to do?