Dual USB-UIRTs

[Dragon470]

I have used a usb-uirt for well over a year and it has worked great. I have 3 tvs, 2 receivers, 3 MCE extenders, and 2 small radio sets that also have ir. When I just added the last room which was a receiver, extender, and tv, I am noticing a major issue. I have a few hundred of feet of cat6 cable being used to transfer the feed to the various lcations and I think that is taking its toll on the signal. On several of the devices it doesn't always react to the ir beenbag. To test this I can unplug any of the feeds and all the rest work great. I want to get a second usb-uirt on the same eg config. This doesn't work for me. I know in the plugin it finds the hardware with hardwareId = "USB\\VID_0403&PID_F850". I also know it says it can multiload but never has worked that way. It doesn't recognize a seperate second device. Is there a way to rewrite the plugin to have it give us a selection of which uirt to use. Ideally I would like to end up with 3 usb-uirts so each room will have its own line. (6 rooms, l,r,l,r,l,r).
I don't have the knowledge to really take this on. I do have some ideas to get inspirations on how to implement it. Use the same hardwareId system, but use something like the generic HID plugin with the selection.

[dopdahl]

Whoa.. not sure I understand your setup.

Are you using the two emitter outputs from the single USB-UIRT to feed like 10 separate emitters?

If so, you're probably overloading the USB_UIRTS ability to supply current to all those emitters.

Zantech (and others, check Ebay), make powered connecting blocks that can distribute IR to 6, 8, 12 emitters with no problem.

If I'm way off base, please clarify your setup so I can noodle it.

EDIT, just noticed this thread is a year old...
EDIT2, whoops, you joined a year ago... thread is new.

[Dragon470]

Yes, you are correct. The newest batch of emitters are making the usb-uirt underpowering the emmitters. So with what testing I did it looks like each channel from the usb-uirt can reliably have 4 to 6 irs blasters on it. I already have a spare usb-uirt is why I asked this. I did try using one exclusively in a virtual machine, but it was very spotty. one would work and then both would fire and then none. That setup would not be very great either.

[dopdahl]

I'd find a cheap powered emmitter connecting block and try that to pump up the juice and take the load off of the USB_UIRT.

You can get these cheaper... but it should do the trick.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Xantech-IR-Emit ... 1e6b2157b2

[Dragon470]

For now I will be buying an emitter block, but will work on the plugin issue when work is not as crazy. The real reason I will check in to the plugin more is with the emitter block all ir emitters throughout the house will fire on all commands. As it is now the uirt has left and right so it is in two zones and only half the emitters need to fire at a given command. I will soon have four rooms, "zones", with ir ports. If I had both uirts working then each room would be seperate.

[dopdahl]

Yeah, I completely get it. Never tried it.

I assume the plug-in would have to append a unique identifier to each event to define where it came from... like add a -1 for the first unit and a -2 for the second.

I'm pretty sure the USBUIRT driver can support multiple units.