Building an IR Blaster

[steets250]

@Dvbit said:

http://blog.univers-domotique.com/2013/10/plugin-vera-arduir/

Thanks for the suggestion, however, the project talked about is going the wrong way. I want signals from Vera to the transmitter, not transmitter to Vera.

I got an IR receiver and programmed my codes into an Arduino program. For anyone wondering, I had no storage issues (previously talked about).I haven't given up on this yet (saving $200 is a pretty good motivation)! Still trying to find out how to get Vera to send a message to Vera with Vera's IR remote UI. Seeing as how I have been trying with absolutely no luck for the past few days, I might have to make me own remote UI.

I haven't contacted guessed yet but I will soon, still playing around with it myself.

Has anyone tried this yet?? Instructions above.

[Dvbit]

Ok. Please note that the guy in the post above talks about bidirectional signal "easily doable" in his post.
You may want to ask him ;-)
Tx for your wrk

[steets250]

@Dvbit I didn't see anything talking about a bidirectional signal. Where did you see that? I am going to check out what it says as well as the plugin files to see what I can find.

FWI: The IR receiver I ordered from RadioShack came, so I am able to program in the codes. It was mentioned earlier that the codes would take up a lot of space on the Arduino, but using the IRRemote library, receiving a remote signal gives me a hex that will work with some of my devices, so I don't see a storage issue. I have to remotes set up so far.

[BulldogLowell]

@steets250

If you need space, you could always attach external memory (SD card perhaps) .

Compressing the codes would be nice.

Cannot wait until you have this worked out!

[steets250]

So I got the Arduino side of it done! Did I make any mistakes?

MySensors_IR.ino

[BulldogLowell]

@steets250 said:

So I got the Arduino side of it done! Did I make any mistakes?

MySensors_IR.ino

the codes all do what they need to?

interesting that the length of the codes vary so much

TV 1 = B10000

TV 0 = B101110011101001

[steets250]

I was quite surprised when I saw that. All of the codes work properly when used with the send sony command. On my second remote, it uses the NEC protocol, and has a longer code. Another remote I tested was coming in as only raw code, so if someone tried to use remotes with only raw code it could be pretty space consuming.

The sd card was a good idea! The program could also possible use multiple ir LEDs in different locations to get the signal to multiple devices, which is when the sd card might be needed.

I'm now checking over what changes hek suggested earlier, and comparing it with some other mysensors devices. It seems like the vera is not sending a message through the send pronto code function that is described below.

@hek said:

I think you have to create your own implementation of SendProntoCode.

You must take care of and handle all actions in D_IrTransmitter1.xml. Edit the I_Arduino.xml where you will find the actions defined.

<action>
    <serviceId>urn:micasaverde-com:serviceId:IrTransmitter1</serviceId>
   	<name>SendProntoCode</name>
   	<run>if (p ~= nil) then p.sendProntoCode(lul_device, lul_settings.ProntoCode) end</run>
 </action> 

And then implement sendProntoCode in L_Arduino.lua which sends the actual code using sendCommand to gateway for further processing.

function sendProntoCode(device, prontoCode)
  sendCommand(luup.devices[device].id,"IR_SEND",prontoCode)
end

[steets250]

Trying to change the code that Vera transmits, I discover this: :angry::angry::angry::angry::angry:

Right after selecting it here:

I'm not sure why Vera refuses to accept the Arduino as an IR transmitter. I will give the SQ blaster plugin another look at to see what they have.

[Dvbit]

@steets250

La librairie IRremote permet la reception et l’émission de codes IR (Infrarouges) selon différents protocoles, la rendant compatible avec la plupart des télécommandes IR, et des appareils télécommandés par IR disponibles sur le marché.

Dans ce plugin, seule la partie réception de la librairie est utilisée (rien n’empêche la réalisation d’une interface d’émission, sauf que je n’en ai pas l’usage J ).
Irrlib supports input and output...then
The last sentence is "nothing blocks from developing an output interface but I do not need it"

Cheers

[hek]

@Dvbit
The problem isn't really doing bi-directional sending of ir-codes between vera/arduino. The problem is getting a dynamic presentation on vera-side up and running. What @steets250 is trying to do is getting the built-in ir device working.. which probably is the most flexible solution.

Cheerio

[BulldogLowell]

@steets250 said:

Trying to change the code that Vera transmits, I discover this: :angry::angry::angry::angry::angry:

Right after selecting it here:

I'm not sure why Vera refuses to accept the Arduino as an IR transmitter. I will give the SQ blaster plugin another look at to see what they have.

you could try to look at the TiVo plugin, too.

[steets250]

So about half of this topic got cut off. To catch people up: The main goal of this topic is to create an IR transmitter device in Vera that can be used to send IR codes to a TV, DVD, DVR, etc. The transmitter is easy to assemble by attaching an IR LED and IR receiver (for learning codes) to an Arduino. The cost of this is about $15. Normal IR blasters range from $50 (USB UIRT - not wireless) to over $100 (Global Cache WF2IR - wireless). Seeing that I could save $85, a MySensors IR blaster looked great.

When trying to connect the IR blaster to Vera, and get it to transmit, I encountered some problems. The MySensors program currently does not support IR blasters, so I tried to edit the code and make it work. After looking at the SQ Blaster plugin, it gave me an idea of how to get the IR blaster to work. I edited lump files in an attempt to create an IR blaster device. I have so far been able to have Vera create an IR blaster device that shows up on the devices page.
However, when trying to use it to create an IR device (TV) I can go through the initial setup
But then click on any of the remote's buttons gets me this error message.

I have been stuck with this for a while now. Also, the Vera appears to be sending the IR command:
08 06/06/14 10:25:29.361 JobHandler_LuaUPnP::HandleActionRequest argument ProntoCode=0000 0071 0000 001A 0080 0080 0020 0020 0020 0020 0020 0020 0020 0060 0020 0020 0020 0060 0020 0020 0020 0020 0020 0020 0020 0020 0020 0020 0020 0060 0020 0060 0020 0060 0020 0060 0020 0020 0020 0060 0020 0020 0020 0060 0020 0060 0020 0060 0020 0060 0020 0060 0020 0020 0020 04DF <0x2ca29680>
02 06/06/14 10:25:29.362 Device_LuaUPnP::HandleActionRequest 38 none of the 1 implementations handled it <0x2ca29680>
01 06/06/14 10:25:29.551 zzz-A2 83 <0x2ca29680>
01 06/06/14 10:25:29.551 zzz-1 83 <0x2ca29680>
01 06/06/14 10:25:29.551 zzz-1b 0xe1b888 <0x2ca29680>
08 06/06/14 10:25:29.552 JobHandler_LuaUPnP::HandleActionRequest device: 38 service: urn:micasaverde-com:serviceId:IrTransmitter1 action: SendProntoCode <0x2ca29680>
But the IR code never arrives at the Arduino. I am currently trying to fix this problem, and was wondering if anyone could help. Hek suggested I send guessed (from Vera forums) a message which I will do.

If any one wants to give this a try, here are the files to upload and test: Please let me know if you see something wrong with the code!

L_Arduino.lua
Which contains:
function sendProntoCode(prontoCode, device)
sendCommand(luup.devices[device].id,"IR_SEND",prontoCode)
end

I_Arduino1.xml
Which contains:
<action>
<serviceId>urn:micasaverde-com:serviceId:IrTransmitter1</serviceId>
<name>SendProntoCode</name>
<run>sendProntoCode(lul_settings.ProntoCode, lul_device)</run>
</action>

D_Arduino1.xml
Which contains:
<service>
<serviceType>urn:schemas-micasaverde-com:service:IrTransmitter:1</serviceType>
<serviceId>urn:micasaverde-com:serviceId:IrTransmitter1</serviceId>
<SCPDURL>S_IrTransmitter1.xml</SCPDURL>
</service>

MySensors_IR.ino
Which creates the IR device (S_IR) and then serial prints whatever message it receives.

Quick side note:There are two IR codes that Vera might be sending right now. A short code, 0x2ca29680 (in Vera log), or 0000 0071 0000 001A 0080 0080 0020 0020 0020 0020 0020 0020 0020 0060 0020 0020 0020 0060 0020 0020 0020 0020 0020 0020 0020 0020 0020 0020 0020 0060 0020 0060 0020 0060 0020 0060 0020 0020 0020 0060 0020 0020 0020 0060 0020 0060 0020 0060 0020 0060 0020 0060 0020 0020 0020 04DF (also in Vera log). In the event that Vera is sending the longer code which is too big to send over the air, my solution to that was to have Vera send a single digit representing a longer IR code to send, for example 1 = power button, 2 = volume up, 3 = volume down, etc. The single digit method is already in the Arduino program so that I can change the IR codes on the Arduino easily without needing to change them in Vera.

Let me know if you have any questions. Thanks for your help!

[Zeph]

@steets250 said:

In the event that Vera is sending the longer code which is too big to send over the air, my solution to that was to have Vera send a single digit representing a longer IR code to send, for example 1 = power button, 2 = volume up, 3 = volume down, etc. The single digit method is already in the Arduino program so that I can change the IR codes on the Arduino easily without needing to change them in Vera.

How were you thinking to get Vera to use that shorter code?

Or asked another way - where does Vera find the PRONTO codes it sends? Can you edit some file to get it to send a short code instead?

---

As for what code to send to the IR blasting node. You are sending the IR library's 32 bit (or less) interpreted code when there is one.

When there isn't one, I think your approach of saving the raw values to PROGMEM should work well; you can also also save the 32 bit hash the IR library creates. Suggestion: send that hash from Vera, have the node look it up in your PROGMEM and send the corresponding raw values. That is, use the hash rather than sending an arbitrarily assigned digit.

xUnless you have a lot of buttons, and they create long raw codes, you can probably fit them into PROGMEM without needing an SD card.

[steets250]

Thanks! @Zeph

When you create an IR device in Vera, it uses two files:
D_Codeset_2.xml and I_Codeset_2.xml.
You can change the codes in the I_Codeset file to whatever you want (I think). The codes in the I_Codeset file would be the shorter code representing a longer one in the Arduino program.

What I still have to figure out is if Vera sends short codes (0x153) or the RAW codes. I'm hoping raw so I can change the code send to different numbers. And if Vera does send pronto codes, I wonder if Vera will try and convert the single digits (representing a larger command) into a pronto code (I doubt it).

[Dringie]

Did you manage to get this working?

[steets250]

@Dringie No... I've been trying to get it to work, but I am still having issues getting Vera to send IR commands to the Arduino. I think it's the implementation of the actual command that send the IR info to the arduino.

I will keep working, and I will send guessed another message.

[Homer]

This looks like a great idea!!

I wish I knew enough of this stuff to help out... I will start building over the weekend with the stuff I have collected, and maybe I might learn some stuff that I can use to help get this project working :-)

fingers crossed lol

[steets250]

@Homer Awesome! Let me know what you find. Are you using mysensors 1.7?

[Corvl]

I was also planning to make an arduino based IR blaster , since I thought it would be working.

I just want to switch off my mediabox , with that I allready would be happy , when I read this post it is not possible :-S , or do I interpret it wrong?

Thanks,
Cor

[hek]

Very much possible to solve if it's just a few things you want to control. The MySensors provided example creates a "lightswitch" device which triggers ir-sending of a couple of ir codes.

Not a full fledged blaster but it should be enough to solve your particular problem.