Controlling C band sat

[cummings66]

OK, now that I have decided SageTv is stable enough with the 2.2.2 beta I'm looking at the next stage which is to control my GI 650 Satellite receiver.

I know I need girder and will have to buy and use the USB-UIRT as well. I know I can enable channel changing in the setup for this device. What I don't know is how to insure Sage will change channels correctly.

The problem is on a sat receiver such as this you will tell it to go to the satellite G5 for example, wait a bit, then tell it channel 06 and that's it.

The guide listings have been remapped to the right names vs the odd ones that come by the C band EPG. But I can not see anyway for it to change channels in the manner it needs, how would it be done? PS, the channel name of G5 would have to be remapped to 15 and so I guess a custom script that remaps based on a substr search would be needed. So the code to be sent would be 15 wait 06. The wait would be best if it could be varied based on current jack position, but worse case you could assume a delay of so many seconds from the west to east end of the arc. Worst case I could remap the channels to numbers, which still are not the same as what the EPG gives it. I'd be curious what those numbers mean to a c band dish? That's not how Zap2it lists the C band listings so I know there's some massaging being done somewhere.

In other words because I don't know how complex sage is in terms of remote controls, given the above conditions I don't want to buy the hardware if Sage can't use it to change channels on my C Band sat receiver and I'd want to know if it's possible.

[Menehune]

My manual controller at work uses position numbers for the satellite presets. Position 1 in 95deg. Then transponder 1. It's supposed to be controlled via a serial port, but I've never investigated that feature-the dish usually sits on the same bird and transponder for months at a time-we use it for break-away video and audio for our TV station.

Maybe the positions could be mapped to the channel up/down button and the transponder channel mapped to the numeric entry key? It would be tedious when you scan from the east end of the arc to the west end though.

What you would almost need is a remote with a shift key so you could shift-1 for the satellite position 1, shift-9 for satellite position 9, then the regular numeric keys could be used for the transponders.

[cummings66]

I've been reading up a bit on girder and the lua language. It's going to be different, I've used C and so it's familar but different as well.

What I'd like to know is what does SageTv send out to the plugin when told to change channels on a C band system? With that info you could write the script.

I think it's doable on a GI easily enough, it has only a couple ways of changing channels and not like your system at all. Girder supports scripts and so any channel change can automatically run through that script, be parsed and then output as whatever commands you need. So yes, I know it can be done.

To my knowledge, nobody has controlled a regular sat receiver with Sage. I found a 4dtv girder script that shows the language syntax a bit and is useful from that standpoint to build on. But until I get the USB-UIRT I can't tell what Sage sends out, unless somebody can tell me.

[cummings66]

I got it working. I modified a 4dtv script for girder quite a bit to add things into it to make the GI 650 operate well. It's better than programming it.

A link to the GML is here;

http://www.mcmsys.com/~cummings/gi650-sage.GML

Most of the code is mine as are the bugs I suspect, if somebody uses it and has problems let me know and I'll see if I can address them. I wish LUA was more like C, this would be easier and I could have tighter code. I only have the GI 650 so all I can say for sure is that the thing works with the GI 350, 450, 550, and 650 series receiver. It works, and considering I've just learned the basics of LUA I guess that's good enough for now.

The registry entry needed for the ExeTunerPlugin is;

REGEDIT4

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Frey Technologies\Common\EXEMultiTunerPlugin]
"command"="C:\\Program Files\\Girder\\event.exe SSChanNum%CHANNEL%"