Motorola DTC2000 Plugin

[jtt88]

The cable box has a 9-pin female connector. Most computers have a 9-pin male connector. You would need a 9-pin female to 9-pin male serial cable.

[Dandren]

Beelzebub, would you please post again a link to the source code for the exe that works with the ExeTunerPlugin (DCT2000_src.zip)?

[meekell]

Beelzebub, would you please post again a link to the source code for the exe that works with the ExeTunerPlugin (DCT2000_src.zip)?

I would also like to play with the code.
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[justme]

I've gotten a response from Snewman(the person who developed the most recent DCT plugin) and he has sent me the source for his version of a DCT control plugin. This is developed from sourcecode for a plugin that a SnapStream user originally developed. Snewman unfortunately doesn't have the time to farther develope his version right now. But fortunately he has been kind enough to make the source available to me. I'll glady forward it to anyone who feels they can further develope the DCT plugin, as long as they will contribute their work back to the SageTV community.

I'd also appreciate anone who developes any DCT plugin to send me the source. You can contact me by PM and I'll provide a email, if you don't wish to make the source available to the entire SageTV community. I just wish to have a archive of all the source for this plugin so I can help future developers in case whoever picks up the torch is unable to continue.

As for Beelzebub...

I've attempted to contact Beelzebub, by PM and the email that was in the readme for his version. I know the email I sent to the address from the zip was unable to be delivered. I think/fear his SageTV PM(email notification) is also tied to the old website of his that is now dead. I hope I'm wrong and that he'll contact me. I only have a copy of the exe that I downloaded when I was trying to get this to work on my box. I didn't download the sourcecode as I was not a Moderator at the time. So If Beelzebub or ANYONE reads this who has a copy of the sourcecode for the original DCT plugin, pleas post it. Or at least PM me to allow me to add the source code to the archive I'm building to assist people who wish to further develop this plugin. I'm sure Beelzebub wouldn't mind you posting or at least providing me with the source as his original post had the source available for download.

I only just attempted to get ahold of Beelzebub yesterday morining, so hopefully I'll get a reply soon. Still I'd greatly appreciate anyone who has a copy of Beelzebub's soucre to contact me. I'll wait until later this week, before I take the next step. If no one contact me by about Wednesday, I'll try a drastic measure.... I'll try PMing all those who've participated in this thread, as some may have unsubscribed once they got their setup working. In the hope that one of these people will still have a copy of Beelzebub's source, the same way I had a copy of his exe just laying around on my hard drive.

So in simplest terms...
Could anyone who reads this please check your hard drive to see if you have a copy of Beelzebub's source code? If you do please post or PM me. Your help would be greatly appreciated.

/justme

[Beelzebub]

Sorry haven't really messed with the HTPC, I will upload everything before I go to bed. I also have digital cable again, so I'm going to make a new one. This one is slapped together using VB.

Check
http://sio.midco.net/jmoffitt/

[coppit]

Is anyone making progress on a DLL version? The DOS window popup is distracting...

[salsbst]

Guys, unless I'm mistaken you don't need a DLL version to avoid the DOS popup. The following script pings the machine named in the first parameter without displaying a window.

Dim oShell
Set oShell = WScript.CreateObject ("WSCript.shell")
oShell.run "ping " & WScript.Arguments(0), 0, true

If you save it as "c:\ping.vbs", you can run it with the command:

wscript "c:\ping.vbs" "www.dell.com"

the run method:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/en...l/wsMthRun.asp

the arguments property:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/en...oArguments.asp

You would replace the ping with the command that you want to execute invisibly. Hope that helps.

[Beelzebub]

I uploaded the plugin.

[coppit]

The link in the first post is broken. It's here: http://sio.midco.net/jmoffitt/DCT2000Plugin.zip

No more popups. Thanks!

[justme]

I editted the first post to reflect the new links(thanks to Beezlebub for the repost). So the links(both source and exe) on the first page are now valid again(the users site was down until just recently).

PS:Beelzebub, Great to have you back .

PPS:I'm sorry for the delay in sending out copies of the sourcecode for snewman's version to the few who ask, but I'm on vacation with the wife. Those of you who wish to work on this plugin may wish to collaborate(one has already suggested this in PM) on the plugin, perhaps even a sourceforge site to allow easier collaboration.

/justme

[pheitman]

Help! I am unable to get Sage working with the Plugin. The plugin works (at least dct with the default com port of 1 works fine when Sage isn't running). I modified the registry entry to remove the '#'. I modified Sage.properties and renamed StubDevice to COM1. (Setup now reports that the Tuner Control is set to DirecTV Serial COM1 - is that the problem?) How do I tell Sage to use the EXETunerPlugin.dll? My Sage.properties file does have mmc/sfir_dev_name set to the full path of the EXETunerPlugin.dll....

Any ideas, please?

Peter

[Ryokurin]

has anyone made any progress on getting rid of the project errors? its rather an annoyance.

[snewman]

Ok, here's the initial release of a DLL plugin to control the Motorola DCT box. Keep in mind, this is a beta release, it works for me, and if it blows up your machine it's not my fault.

There is a readme file included in the zip which discusses how to install it. You will probably need to edit the .ini file included to suit your install.

Features:
No more DOS window popping up
It verifies the channel was changed correctly and tries to change it again if it detects it was set to the wrong channel.
Will attempt to power on the cable box if the channel change fails.
Supports multiple cable boxes connected to different COM ports.

The plugin page is located here: MultiDCTPlugin DLL page

Please use the Sourceforge page to log bugs, feature requests, support requests, etc.

[drinkmilk15]

Awesome! finally. this works great. so glad to have that stupid popup gone.

edit: ok. it works sometimes. maybe for a few minutes after sage is started up, then it doesn't at all.

[Bigfoot]

I need some help troubleshooting dct.exe. I have successfully connected to my DCT2224 with HyperTerminal. I send a CR and I get a string returned. I assume my serial port is enabled correctly on the cable box.

When I run dct.exe either through the GUI or command-line interface I get no response from the cable box. No lights flash, nothing happens.

I even installed MultiDCTPlugin and configured Sage correctly but I get no response.

Any suggestions on troubleshooting this?

[snewman]

Originally posted by Bigfoot
I need some help troubleshooting dct.exe. I have successfully connected to my DCT2224 with HyperTerminal. I send a CR and I get a string returned. I assume my serial port is enabled correctly on the cable box.

When I run dct.exe either through the GUI or command-line interface I get no response from the cable box. No lights flash, nothing happens.

I even installed MultiDCTPlugin and configured Sage correctly but I get no response.

Any suggestions on troubleshooting this?

It could be that the port is enabled, but the wrong firmware version is on the cable box. I have seen some posts around which tell what version is required. Mine is using S/W version 15.22 with Firmware 07.85. You can see this by going into Menu->Cable Box->Setup->See Configuration.

The dct.exe program is pretty straight forward and assumes you have the box connected to COM 1. If you're not getting a response back from that, then you might want to check your cable.

The plugin DLL will write a debug log file (assuming you have it turned on). This file will contain the communication between the computer and the cable box. If there's little or nothing in this file, then for some reason, communication isn't working. If you can post the contents of the file here, we can see more of what's going on.

[Bigfoot]

snewman,
I double checked my HyperTerminal settings, I'm using COM1. That still works.

The cable box is S/W 17.44 and firmware 7.85.

Does dct.exe use the default protocol for COM 1?

I attached the log. Thanks for your help.

[snewman]

Sorry Bigfoot, it would appear your cable box is using a different protocol. Who is your cable provider? Perhaps the serial port on the cable box is using different COM settings, I'm not sure. You might try unplugging the cable box for a minute or so, then plug it in again and see if that helps, but I'm not holding out hope that it will.

Ideally the beginning of the log file should look something like this:

Port set to 0 ... delaying COM Port initialization
Initializing Serial Port 1 on device StubDevice ... done
Attempting to initialize DCT StubDevice
SENT: type 0x70, len 2, id 0x04, seq 0x03
RECV: type 0x70, len 2, id 0x00, seq 0x80
SENT: type 0x78, len 3, id 0x04, seq 0x03
      data 0x00
RECV: type 0x78, len 2, id 0x00, seq 0x80
RECV: type 0x78, len 15, id 0x00, seq 0x10
      data 0x80 0x30 0x31 0x2e 0x30 0x30 0x30 0x37 0x2e 0x38 0x35 0x00 0x11
Sending automatic ACK
SENT: type 0x78, len 2, id 0x04, seq 0x91
Attempting to initialize DCT StubDevice
SENT: type 0x70, len 2, id 0x04, seq 0x03
RECV: type 0x70, len 2, id 0x00, seq 0x80
SENT: type 0x78, len 3, id 0x04, seq 0x03
      data 0x00
RECV: type 0x78, len 2, id 0x00, seq 0x80
RECV: type 0x78, len 15, id 0x00, seq 0x10
      data 0x80 0x30 0x31 0x2e 0x30 0x30 0x30 0x37 0x2e 0x38 0x35 0x00 0x11
Sending automatic ACK
SENT: type 0x78, len 2, id 0x04, seq 0x91
Reading current channel
SENT: type 0x78, len 3, id 0x04, seq 0x21
      data 0x21
RECV: type 0x78, len 2, id 0x00, seq 0xa2
RECV: type 0x78, len 8, id 0x00, seq 0x32
      data 0xa1 0x00 0x4a 0x00 0x01 0x00
Sending automatic ACK
SENT: type 0x78, len 2, id 0x04, seq 0xb3
Current Channel: 74

Here you can see the "SENT" and "RECV" communication between the computer and the cable box. The protocol code I used was written by Jim Paris for the dct-channel application he created for MythTV. I don't really know the protocol myself. I will do some research to see if there are multiple versions of the protocol and if there is a possibility of incorporating the different versions into the code. The best I could do right now is possibly create an application to dump the packets sent between the computer and the cable box, to a log file for analysis. Other than that, I'm stumped at the moment.

[snewman]

Not really having much luck finding information on the protocol. It would seem the serial port on the cable box is really designed for connecting an external HD receiver for decoding High Def signals. I'm guessing that perhaps the external receiver uses this connection to control the cable box and change channels as needed, but as the HD receiver is also a Motorola product, it seems the protocol is not public. I'm not sure where the currently public information came from. It would be nice if there was a way to get this information from Motorola .

Some of the information I came across said Motorola bought General Instruments and was re-labeling the GI boxes as Motorola boxes and it's unknown if the protocol is the same. Also, it would seem that TiVO boxes have the same issues with serial control. They also require the correct version of the firmware on the cable box for serial control to work.

The only alternative I can think of for you to try would be using an IR Blaster to control the cable box instead. I know this isn't the most desirable thing to do, but it might work for you.

Hope this Helps

[Bigfoot]

Hmmm, disappointing news. Well, I'll see what I can find surfing the net.

Is there any way to test things out either via HyperTerminal or some command line utility? What I'm thinking is, if I could easily send a series of codes and capture the output then I might try playing around with this.

I'm not ready to use an IR blaster, yet.

Thanks again.

I attached another log. This time there was a RECV, but since the protocol is different it may be random.