KINAMAX ADS IR Blaster Remote Control Signal Sender

[Phatkilla]

Will this device work with EventGhost?

I ask because it's REAL CHEAP!

[Bartman]

http://www.kinamax.com/product/Item/IR-BLSTR.htm

The driver includes the driver for the USB-UIRT which is supported by EG. No guarantee but 10$ is really cheap compared to the USB-UIRT price.


edit:
http://www.girder.nl/forums/showthread.php?p=123857
Some girder users can't get it working with Girder.

[Phatkilla]

After reading Bartmans comments, I took another look at the USB-UIRT page. The text seemed strangely familiar. I compared it to the KINIMAX(ADS) description on the tigerdirect page, and, amazingly, the text on the USB-UIRT page has been lifted and used as the description for this item on TigerDirect.

I think someone is getting ripped off!

On the flip side, I'm guessing that it's a hardware clone, and so will work fine with EventGhost. Maybe the people on the Girder forum just got some bad hardware, or just haven't figured it out properly....

[Phatkilla]

So, I picked one of these up, installed it, and tried to use it with the USB-UIRT plugin in EG, but it wouldn't work....

I did a little digging, and the drivers appear to be identical to the USB-UIRT. The only difference I found is that the .inf file for the drivers detects a different VID/PID and assigns a different name based on that ID and the device has this ID in the device manager.

So, I'm thinking that the USB-UIRT plugin could probably be modified to use this device. Can anyone point me in the right direction? I'm very new to EG, but not software development in general....

[billqs]

Has anyone gotten any progress on getting this to work? If all that is different in the drivers is an ID in the inf file, couldn't we change the inf file to match the USB UIRT and then it work?

Does anybody have the USB-UIRT driver set so that a comparison could be made?

I have two choices for EventGhost. The ADS IR Blaster and Remote or the Hauppauge Remote that came with my pvr 150. The ADS Remote and IR Blaster are both better than the Hauppauge.

[TomXP411]

I have both of these blasters. It's possible that the hardware in the ADS unit is the same, but I never got it to work with EG. I did try faking in the UIRT drivers, but they didn't pick up the ADS unit.

So I bought a UIRT, and it works so much better. It worked on the first try, and the 3-zone support is nice; you can control 2 different cable boxes with it, even if they use the same codes.

[cyberaddict]

I see this thread died off over 2 years ago. I am not sure if that is because people gave up on this device or because there is something newer, better, or cheaper. I also got lured to this IR Blaster due to its price and aesthetics, and I also got dissapointed I couldn't get it to work with anything including Girder and EG.

After several hours of trying to learn about the device, its protocol, and general IR background, I made the device do what I wanted under EG. That is, to be able to trigger events on IR signals received as well as transmitting IR codes to other devices.

I do not want to share my long story here unless there is some interest in pursuing anything with this device. I was able to derived a plugin for this device from an existing one in EG, but the plugin needs some polishing before being worthy of publication.

I'll keep pursuing enhancing what I have, but it will be likely at a slow pace.

[Magus]

Hi there Cyberaddict

I'd appreciate knowing how you made things work. Even if it's a long story.

I too am lured to purchasing the Kinamax ADS because of the low price. My goal is to trigger two remote projectors from an event on my PC during church service and what you wrote sounds promising!

Cheers... Rick

[cyberaddict]

Rick,

The first thing I discovered when I was trying to get something in/out Realterm is that the protocol was a derivative of the one for UIRT (see http://home.earthlink.net/~jrhees/USBUI ... otocol.doc). Most of the command/responses in that document apply. The baud rate is 312500 instead of 125000.

I couldn't figure how to get the standard USB-UIRT plugin working. So I started experimenting with the UIRT2 plugin. I cloned it and started making modifications starting with the baud rate. I currently have a working copy of this plugin. I am not sure if it is OK to post here. Someone could sanitize it and make it a permanent plugin.

I am wonder where you are in the process. I am not sure if you already figured how to get the FTDI driver installed and get the device recognized by Windows. I just took the one in the FTDI website, and then search the vendor and product ids and replaced them with the ones this device uses.

In the way I have the plugin, it satisfies my needs to some extent. I would like to enhance it so there is no need to copy codes from a terminal program such as Realterm, and then paste them into Evenghost. I would be nice to have a learning code function for instance.

[Magus]

Thanks for the reply

Uhhh, from what you posted it sounds like I'm in some substantially deeper water than I thought. I'm reasonably techy, but I'm not a programmer. Mostly a dabbler.

I'm in the process of selecting a transciever for what I would think is a simple process. Ultimately I'd like to transmit perhaps two or three different codes from a PC to control a pair of ceiling mounted projectors at the church I attend. So I was hoping to transmit a code to enable the channel for PC and another code to enable the channel for video. I was hoping to accomplish this by executing an application to send the codes from a PowerPoint slide.

Cheers... Rick