Using DirecTV serial control cable on a USB port?

[bstowers]

I've been using Sage for a few years now and I'm building a new machine for it. My new motherboard didn't come with a serial port (I know, I goofed on that one), so I went and picked up a PCI card with a couple of serial ports and I'm using that with Paterson cable on my new DirecTV H20 reciever.

I'm having a significant amount of trouble getting it to reliably change channels on the receiver. Since everything is new, including the DTV receiver, I'm not 100% sure where the problem is, but I'm suspecting the addon card with the serial ports. I've Googled around and seen that there are ways to treat a USB port as a serial port, and I found a set of instructions for creating a special USB to USB cable mashup for the DTV H20, but it wasn't specifically for Sage.

Does anyone have any experience controlling a DTV receiver from their PC's USB port? If so, can you give me any specifics on what you did? What driver software, where you got your cabling instructions, etc?

Many thanks.

--Brad

[thorforyou]

I am using a directv hr20 with a usb to serial adapter and a null modem cable. I also use a program called directv.exe and the exetuner plugin.

Go to the GBPVR forum and you can download the directv.exe plugin from there.

In my case I used a bafo 810 serial to usb adapter and a null modem cable.
The bafo 810 is based on the prolific chipset.
Hope that this helps
Cliff

[phelme]

I'm using an IOGear GUC232A usb-serial adapter along with the Paterson device on my H20 and it works great.

[bstowers]

Hmm, my local radio shack has something similar:

http://www.radioshack.com/product/in...entPage=search

I wonder if that's the same thing as the BAFO cable.

[thorforyou]

The cable looks the same. If the radio shack has a good return policy it might be worth a try.

I ordered my cable from newegg more than 2 years ago and the link is no longer there.

Good luck.
Cliff

[bstowers]

Well, the good news is the Paterson cable software utility seems to report that it works fine using that cable (Radio Shack part number 26-183) plugged into it, but no joy on actually using it to change the channels on the DirecTV box.

It worked sporadically at first yesterday, and usually I fixed it by unplugging the cable from the PC, then telling Sage to change the channel, then after a few seconds plugging the cable back into the PC and using Sage to change the channel again. Then it would work for a little while, but eventually stop again. Today I haven't been able to get it to change channels at all. Neither before nor after changing to this new USB-based cable (yes, I made sure to check the serial port number that Sage is using).

Not sure what to make of it.

[thorforyou]

Does the radio shack cable come with a drive from prolific or does it allow you to specify which port to use?

Using the prolific software with the Bafo cable in the device manager the cable will usually default to com port 3. The prolific software allows you to change that to port 1.

In the directv.exe software from gbpvr the default is com port 1. You should download that app and then set everything to com port 1.

Then open a command prompt and navigate to the dir that contains Directv.exe next type directv.exe #278

This should change channels on the box to the discovery channel.

If that does not work then recycle the directv box. It needs to reboot sometimes.

One you have tested the setup you can then install the exetuner plugin and you will be good to go. This is a very reliable setup and has worked 100% no glitchess ever.

[bstowers]

I have been fighting with the receiver using DTVControl and am just not sure what to make of the situation. It turns out they didn't bring me the model they said they would. I got a H23-600 instead of an H20 or H21. I'm afraid something has changed in its command parser and has broken channel setting. You can see my detailed description in this new thread: http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/showthread.php?t=33951

Using DirecTV.exe as you recommend I'm having better luck. It looks like it changes channels using the "one number at a time" method (the A5 command followed by one digit of the channel number repeatedly) instead of the A6 command that DTVControl and I think Sage are using (a single A6 command followed by four hex digits representing the entire channel number).

I'll see if I can figure out how to replace the method I'm using in SageTV right now with the DirecTV.exe program and hopefully that will fix me up.

[bstowers]

That's got me working again. Thanks so much for your time and suggestions. Not sure what's gone wrong with the built in serial control, but this will work for me.