Utility: SageChanger STBs firewire channel changer for Windows

[mikep]

I forget to include that you need to change sage.properties file to work with deviceid and not device index.

Follow this step.

1- Exit SageTV (and shut down service if running)

2- Make a backup copy of ...\Program files\SageTV\SageTV\sage.properties before proceeding.

3-Look for mmc/encoders/… Find the 'device_name=’ property for the tuner you just set up (It may be set to StubDevice or 2 or 4 in your case) that has a matching number sequence to the tuning_device property that is set to use EXEMultiTunerPlugin.dll. It should look something like this:

mmc/encoders/1642691032/3/0/device_name=2

4- replace it with your deviceid:
mmc/encoders/1642691032/3/0/device_name=a8739eea1c00

5- Do the same for the other tuner

6- Restart sage service

[timg11]

Mike,

Thanks for writing this.
The main thing I'm looking for is a way to query whether the STB power is on (tested that and it works ), and also a way to turn the power on if it is off. (I'm not sure how to do that yet).

I tried TimMoore's channel changing via firewire a couple of years ago, but it didn't solve the problem I have with the STB sleeping and missing the channel change code.

ShadeBlue's STBKeepAlive kept me going until recently SageTV has added the "irtune_prefix_extra_delay" parameter to sage.properties. I have that set to 1 second, so SageTV sends a SEL command, delays 1 second, then sends the channel change. The SEL command wakes up the STB, so the command works. This is all over IR.

So bottom line, I'm thinking I need to stick with IR for channel changing to maintain the prefix / wake-up function. (unless you have a similar "wake up" function working over Firewire).
For the present time, I just want to run SageChanger from a scheduled task once an hour and have it check the STB power, and if it is off, turn it on. Can I do that with SageChanger?

Thanks!

[mikep]

Originally Posted by timg11

Mike,

Thanks for writing this.
The main thing I'm looking for is a way to query whether the STB power is on (tested that and it works ), and also a way to turn the power on if it is off. (I'm not sure how to do that yet).

I tried TimMoore's channel changing via firewire a couple of years ago, but it didn't solve the problem I have with the STB sleeping and missing the channel change code.

ShadeBlue's STBKeepAlive kept me going until recently SageTV has added the "irtune_prefix_extra_delay" parameter to sage.properties. I have that set to 1 second, so SageTV sends a SEL command, delays 1 second, then sends the channel change. The SEL command wakes up the STB, so the command works. This is all over IR.

So bottom line, I'm thinking I need to stick with IR for channel changing to maintain the prefix / wake-up function. (unless you have a similar "wake up" function working over Firewire).
For the present time, I just want to run SageChanger from a scheduled task once an hour and have it check the STB power, and if it is off, turn it on. Can I do that with SageChanger?

Thanks!

Hi

The -p switch will turn the STB ON if and only if it's OFF before changing the channel. You don't have do use any IR. It is build in with a "wake up" function all working over firewire. I was tired of "blank recording" because my STB was OFF during a sage recording. So I wrote SageChanger!

If you want to only query your STB you can use -q switch, process will exit with a return value of; 2=ON, 1=OFF, -1=Error. In a batch file you can test ERRORLEVEL to get that value.

I can add a new switch to just turn ON or OFF your STB if you need it!

Mike

[timg11]

Mike,

Thanks for the offer. I found a way to toggle the power with IR, so you don't need to make the dedicated on/off mode just for me. It might be useful to others, though, so maybe you could add it the next time you're working in that part of the code.

I found the program UUTX.EXE linked from this page.

I created a command script that uses SageChanger and UUTX to turn on the STB if it is off:

"C:\Program Files\SageTV\SageTV\SageChanger.exe" -n 86c21ace1c23 -q -v
if errorlevel==2 goto alreadyon
if errorlevel==1 goto turniton
echo SageChanger returned error or no return code
goto end
:turniton
c:\batch\uutx.exe "0000 0048 0000 0018 00C0 00C1 0030 0092 0030 0092 0030 0031 0030 0092 0030 0092 0030 0092 0030 0092 0030 0092 0030 0031 0030 0031 0030 0031 0030 0031 0030 0031 0030 0092 0030 0031 0030 0031 0030 0031 0030 0031 0030 0031 0030 0092 0030 0092 0030 0092 0030 0887"
goto end
:alreadyon
echo STB is already on
:end

The long string of hex in the uutx command line is the power command for my STB (in Pronto format), as captured by the LRNHelper tool provided with the USB-UIRT.

I configured this command as a task triggered by the computer ending sleep mode (which usually indicates that SageTV is about to start recording)


PS - I don't know if the Firewire API provides a capability to "wake up" the STB, but it would be great to be able to use Firewire channel changing. The way I do it with the USB-UIRT is to send the "SEL" key, which wakes up the box. Then 1 second later, send the channel which is correctly received. If the channel change is sent to a sleeping STB, it will ignore the first 1 or 2 digits. I think the same problem occurs with Firewire (based on my testing a while back) - if the box is sleeping, the Firewire channel change is ignored. Maybe your power-status check would be enough to wake up the box? Or maybe two status checks if the first one is ignored? I'll have to watch and see what happens when SageChanger runs when the system is coming out of sleep and the STB is still sleeping.

[kchase56]

Tested SageChanger v0.2 Beta with the following results =>

DCT-6416
2- SageChanger -n <UniqueID> -q -v --> Failed. It always reported the STB as on.
3- SageChanger -n <UniqueID> -c 200 -v --> Succeeded!

DCH-3200
2- SageChanger -n <UniqueID> -q -v --> Failed. It always reported the STB as on.
3- SageChanger -n <UniqueID> -c 200 -v --> Succeeded!

If you need anymore information, please let me know.

[mikep]

Originally Posted by kchase56

Tested SageChanger v0.2 Beta with the following results =>

DCT-6416
2- SageChanger -n <UniqueID> -q -v --> Failed. It always reported the STB as on.
3- SageChanger -n <UniqueID> -c 200 -v --> Succeeded!

DCH-3200
2- SageChanger -n <UniqueID> -q -v --> Failed. It always reported the STB as on.
3- SageChanger -n <UniqueID> -c 200 -v --> Succeeded!

If you need anymore information, please let me know.

Thanks for sharing,

Motorola power doesn't seem to work... If I have some time, I will look at it but I don't own a Motorola, so finding the correct sequence will be hard....

Mike

[thomaszoo]

I went to watch something last night through Sage on a premium channel and was met with failure because the STB was off. Then I remembered seeing your post.

I am using a Motorola DCT-6200. It works great for both power and channel changes.

I was using EXETunerPlugin to change channels so the setup was slightly different (Registry Value was in "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Sage\EXETunerPlugin"). I had not seen your post #21 so I put the device ID in the registry string as such "C:\\Program Files\\SageTV\\Firewire STB\\SageChanger.exe -p -n 8478f0feff801100 -c %CHANNEL%".

Thanks for this little gem. It was just what I needed!

Wayne

[mikep]

Originally Posted by thomaszoo

I went to watch something last night through Sage on a premium channel and was met with failure because the STB was off. Then I remembered seeing your post.

I am using a Motorola DCT-6200. It works great for both power and channel changes.

I was using EXETunerPlugin to change channels so the setup was slightly different (Registry Value was in "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Sage\EXETunerPlugin"). I had not seen your post #21 so I put the device ID in the registry string as such "C:\\Program Files\\SageTV\\Firewire STB\\SageChanger.exe -p -n 8478f0feff801100 -c %CHANNEL%".

Thanks for this little gem. It was just what I needed!

Wayne

Great!

[timg11]

Is anybody having trouble with their Sage computer not going into sleep mode after starting to use Firewire?

Or I should ask - does anybody's computer go into sleep mode normally while using Firewire?

Since connecting to my STB by firewire, my Windows 7 system does not sleep anymore. I can put it into sleep mode manually and it wakes up normally, but then stays on from then on.

When I run "POWERCFG.EXE -requests", nothing is listed as a reason for the system to not sleep.

I disabled all the Firewire drivers except for the AVC Panel that SageChanger uses, but it didn't help.

Since I'm not recording from Firewire, went back to the standard Windows 7 Firewire driver (instead of the Legacy driver that is recommended with the TimMoore Firewire drivers) thinking that maybe "legacy" meant it didn't support Window 7 power management properly. It didn't help.

I'm looking for any other ideas to let the system sleep when not in use (which is a lot of the time). I'm only using SageChanger to make sure the STB is powered on. A useful feature, but I don't want to have the computer running full power 24/7.

[timg11]

Mikep,

As I mentioned in the previous post, my computer has not entered sleep mode since I started using Firewire. I'm trying to debug the issue by using the DEVCON.EXE program to disable the Firewire host controller, except for in the batch file before when I run SageChanger. Then at the end I'll disable it again. I'm hoping that if Firewire is disabled except for when the hourly task runs to check the STB, maybe the computer will sleep again.

My test with disabling with DevCon seems to leave the Firewire interface in a state where the STB is on, but SageChanger doesn't communicate, so it thinks it is off, and then the batch file sends the power command by IR, which actually turns the STB off

I'm having trouble with the return codes from SageChanger. The help says
" -q Query STB power status. Returns 2=ON, 1=OFF, -1=Error."

My program checks the return values like this:

"C:\Program Files\SageTV\SageTV\SageChanger.exe" -n 86c21ace1c23 -q -v
if %errorlevel% EQU 2 goto alreadyon
if %errorlevel% EQU 1 goto turniton
if %errorlevel% LSS 0 goto scerror

However, when I run SageChanger when the Firewire is disabled or not working, my batch file branches to "turniton", and not "scerror".

Are the return values not working as expected? Is there a different command I can issue to verify that I can communicate with the STB?

[timg11]

I came up with a way to detect whether the STB was reachable by Firewire:

"C:\Program Files\SageTV\SageTV\SageChanger.exe" -n 86c21ace1c23 -s | findinpipe "86c21ace1c23 " /R /N
if errorlevel==1 goto STBNotFound
:STBFound
"C:\Program Files\SageTV\SageTV\SageChanger.exe" -n 86c21ace1c23 -q -v
if %errorlevel% EQU 2 goto alreadyon
if %errorlevel% EQU 1 goto turniton
if %errorlevel% LSS 0 goto scerror

FindInPipe is a little program I wrote to take text on STDIN and return an errorlevel if a supplied string is not found. So I use the SageChanger -s option to enumerate the devices, and verify that my STB unique ID is present in the output text. Then I perform the power check only if the STB is reachable.

[mikep]

Glad you found a solution!

[Brent]

Mike,
I did a little reinstall of SageTV today for a project and decided to use your new SageChanger program. Of course I'm missing something and need some help

Help me with the steps - assume this is a brand new install with nothing set up (although I did have firewire working with FWChannelProxy2 before.)

I have a Scientific Atlanta Explorer SA4250HDC connected to my HTPC server via firewire - like I said channel changing does work... when I dont mess it up that is

Here's the steps I took:

1. Put your FirewireChanger.exe in the C:\FirewireChanger\ folder
2. in CMD ran c\FirewireChanger\sagechanger -s
Resulted in device UniqueID = 263452ea1c00
3. in CMD ran C\FirewireChanger\sagechanger -n 263452ea1c00 -q -v
Resulted in the "Power status is ON" message - yeah!
4. Ran sagechanger -n 263452ea1c00 -c 200 -v
It changes the channel to 200 the first time, but then changes to channel 1 every time after that.

[Fonceur]

Originally Posted by timg11

Since connecting to my STB by firewire, my Windows 7 system does not sleep anymore.

I've tried win7 before release and it was doing that too. I think I had found a work around, so it wouldn't prevent the sleep, but the side effect was that it would crash or reboot the pc instead, not really an improvement. So I went back to XP.

[mikep]

Originally Posted by Brent

Here's the steps I took:

1. Put your FirewireChanger.exe in the C:\FirewireChanger\ folder
2. in CMD ran c\FirewireChanger\sagechanger -s
Resulted in device UniqueID = 263452ea1c00
3. in CMD ran C\FirewireChanger\sagechanger -n 263452ea1c00 -q -v
Resulted in the "Power status is ON" message - yeah!
4. Ran sagechanger -n 263452ea1c00 -c 200 -v
It changes the channel to 200 the first time, but then changes to channel 1 every time after that.

Have you try to reboot your STB. I already had that problem with timmore channel.exe and I add to reboot by STB an the problem went away.

Mike

[Brent]

Originally Posted by mikep

Have you try to reboot your STB. I already had that problem with timmore channel.exe and I add to reboot by STB an the problem went away.

Mike

rebooting the STB worked. Thanks!

[SamVimes2]

Originally Posted by mikep

I forget to include that you need to change sage.properties file to work with deviceid and not device index.

Follow this step.

1- Exit SageTV (and shut down service if running)

2- Make a backup copy of ...\Program files\SageTV\SageTV\sage.properties before proceeding.

3-Look for mmc/encoders/… Find the 'device_name=’ property for the tuner you just set up (It may be set to StubDevice or 2 or 4 in your case) that has a matching number sequence to the tuning_device property that is set to use EXEMultiTunerPlugin.dll. It should look something like this:

mmc/encoders/1642691032/3/0/device_name=2

4- replace it with your deviceid:
mmc/encoders/1642691032/3/0/device_name=a8739eea1c00

5- Do the same for the other tuner

6- Restart sage service

I tried this and I still can't get it to work from within SageTV... :-(

I changed these lines:
mmc/encoders/-1674637831/90/0/device_name=4
mmc/encoders/-431556906/90/0/device_name=3

to:
mmc/encoders/-1674637831/90/0/device_name=c05bb4d71b00
mmc/encoders/-431556906/90/0/device_name=a8739eea1c00

respectively. No love, but still works well from the command line.

Any further advice? I hate bugging you, but I regularly miss recordings because my box resets...

[timg11]

Originally Posted by mikep

Glad you found a solution!

Well, not really. That fixes the issue of the STB power getting turned off if the Firewire communication didn't work.
However, I still have the problem with the system not going to sleep. It has not entered sleep mode since I installed the FireWire drivers.

I have unplugged the Firewire cable to the STB and let it go for a couple of days. Still no sleep - the system stays on 24/7.

Is there anything about the MCE2005 STB Controller (Timmmoore) that could cause this problem? Can I uninstall this software and still use SageChanger?

If I'm not doing anything with Firewire other than using SageChanger, what else can I uninstall that might be preventing sleep? I want to get the Firewire support down to the minimum before giving up. Otherwise I'll have to uninstall everything, and then try to find another way to sense the STB power status.

[wayner]

Originally Posted by SamVimes2

I tried this and I still can't get it to work from within SageTV... :-(

I changed these lines:
mmc/encoders/-1674637831/90/0/device_name=4
mmc/encoders/-431556906/90/0/device_name=3

to:
mmc/encoders/-1674637831/90/0/device_name=c05bb4d71b00
mmc/encoders/-431556906/90/0/device_name=a8739eea1c00

respectively. No love, but still works well from the command line.

Any further advice? I hate bugging you, but I regularly miss recordings because my box resets...

I am pretty sure that you have to change the .ir files to match the device_name that you are using in Sage - did you do this? For example 4.ir should now be renamed (or copied) to c05bb4d71b00.ir

[SamVimes2]

I copied them, so now I have 4 files in there:
3.ir
4.ir
c05bb4d71b00.ir
a8739eea1c00.ir

Any reason that wouldn't work?