EventGhost

I think there are several plugins here on this site already that are loading a dll and using it's methods. One is the TellStickDuo, another one the k8055

The code of those might give you some ideas *how to* (it is all about ctypes).

Best, Walter

barnabas1969 wrote: I had this problem at one time. I don't remember the exact details, but I had to make my EG macro wake the TV (even though it was already awake) and select the device for playback (even though it was already selected) in order for my TV to start communicating with the device after turning on the TV. The macro executes whenever the TV turns on, or when the PC is woken by a user action (pressing a button on the remote or keyboard).

For details on how I detect that a user woke the PC (instead of waking for an automatic task), see my post here:
http://www.thegreenbutton.tv/forums/vie ... =22&t=4948

EDIT: The post above doesn't discuss the "Action" that is triggered by the event in the Windows Event log. The action simply runs EG with the parameters that cause it to trigger an event in EG. Then, I simply used this event to trigger my EG macro.

Thanks barnabas,
It's great to see someone else just as interested in EventGhost and CEC. (I saw some of your pulse-eight posts too)

Here is a little more detail around my specific issue with CEC and my TV.
It's almost like it's a my TV's (Samsung-LCD-LN46A550P3FXZC) CEC (AnyNet+) thing. Even when I make a direct call from EventGhost to the TV telling it to "Standby", the response is that the request was "Refused" by the target device. (I will get you the exact msg, but this is an approximation) This error is what leads me to believe its the TV itself that has an issue. I would then assume its the CEC of the TV altogether, if it weren't for the fact that the TV is able to turn on and off (and chance inputs) of the PC and the Amp.

So I'm now on a hunt to find documentation or forums around the TV itself. I was thinking of even calling Samsung support.

Any ideas?

Good information, Walter. Thanks.

iDVB wrote:Thanks barnabas,
It's great to see someone else just as interested in EventGhost and CEC. (I saw some of your pulse-eight posts too)

Here is a little more detail around my specific issue with CEC and my TV.
It's almost like it's a my TV's (Samsung-LCD-LN46A550P3FXZC) CEC (AnyNet+) thing. Even when I make a direct call from EventGhost to the TV telling it to "Standby", the response is that the request was "Refused" by the target device. (I will get you the exact msg, but this is an approximation) This error is what leads me to believe its the TV itself that has an issue. I would then assume its the CEC of the TV altogether, if it weren't for the fact that the TV is able to turn on and off (and chance inputs) of the PC and the Amp.

So I'm now on a hunt to find documentation or forums around the TV itself. I was thinking of even calling Samsung support.

Any ideas?

My TV is a Samsung PN64D8000, so the implementation of AnyNet+ should be very similar to yours. I'll try to remember to look at how I setup the plugin and macros and get you those details.

barnabas1969 wrote: My TV is a Samsung PN64D8000, so the implementation of AnyNet+ should be very similar to yours. I'll try to remember to look at how I setup the plugin and macros and get you those details.

Thanks so much barnabas1969. Really appreciate it.

barnabas1969 wrote: My TV is a Samsung PN64D8000, so the implementation of AnyNet+ should be very similar to yours. I'll try to remember to look at how I setup the plugin and macros and get you those details.

Hey barnabas,
Any luck finding out details of you got yer TV workn?

Sorry. I forgot all about it. I've been distracted by a new thin mini-ITX HTPC build, and now I'm looking into the possibility of building a car-puter.

I'm going to bed now, but I'll set a reminder in my phone to look at it tomorrow.

First of all, you need to make sure your plugin is configured with the correct logical and physical addresses. You can see my settings in the picture below. The TV should always be logical address 0, and physical address 0.0.0.0.

Then, your PC should be setup either as a recording device (logical 1) or a playback device (logical 4). The physical address must be the actual port number(s) that the PC is plugged into (NOT the port that the RCAware device is plugged into). As you can see, my PC is plugged into the AV receiver's port 3, and the AVR is plugged into the TV's port 2.
Then, you need to send the following commands:

1) Wake up device: TV
2) Wait 2.0 seconds
3) Menu status: TV
4) Select source: <name of your PC's device within the RCAware plugin>

Here are screen shots of the settings in my steps number 1, 3, and 4: My macro that sends these commands triggers on several different events:

a) I have a button on my remote setup to trigger an event that starts this macro on demand.
b) I have the task scheduler task (mentioned earlier in this thread) that fires an event which triggers this macro.
c) When the TV turns on, the HDMI-CEC event for "TV turned on" fires this macro.

You could setup a simple macro with the above mentioned four actions, with no events, and execute the macro manually to see if it resolves your problem.

Nice. Thanks barnabas!
I somehow missed this post. Very detailed, give me a day to dive into this and try a few things.
I need to read up more on how the physical address is formed. It sounds pretty straightforward though.
It would be really sweet if I could get it to work. I'll keep ya posted.

Cheers,
D

The physical address is simple. The first digit is always the port number of the HDMI port on the TV. The 2nd number is the port number of the HDMI switch (if any) that the next device in the chain is plugged into (or zero if you have the device plugged directly into the TV). HDMI switches can be daisy-chained, so the 3rd and 4th number in the physical address work the same as the 2nd number.

In my example, my AV receiver is plugged into port 2 on the TV. Then, the PC is plugged into port 3 on the AV receiver. There are no other devices daisy-chained to the PC (obviously, because you can only daisy-chain HDMI switches). So, the physical address of my PC is 2.3.0.0.

Make certain to note that this is the physical address of the video card in the PC. It is NOT the address of the RCAware/RainShadow device itself. The RCAware/RainShadow device should not be assigned a physical address.

barnabas1969 wrote:The physical address is simple. The first digit is always the port number of the HDMI port on the TV. The 2nd number is the port number of the HDMI switch (if any) that the next device in the chain is plugged into (or zero if you have the device plugged directly into the TV). HDMI switches can be daisy-chained, so the 3rd and 4th number in the physical address work the same as the 2nd number.

In my example, my AV receiver is plugged into port 2 on the TV. Then, the PC is plugged into port 3 on the AV receiver. There are no other devices daisy-chained to the PC (obviously, because you can only daisy-chain HDMI switches). So, the physical address of my PC is 2.3.0.0.

Make certain to note that this is the physical address of the video card in the PC. It is NOT the address of the RCAware/RainShadow device itself. The RCAware/RainShadow device should not be assigned a physical address.

Thanks for the detail. This helps understand things better for sure. I should have time to tinker today. I'll let you know how it goes.

I got my new HTPC up and running today, with Media Center working to watch/record all the channels to which I'm subscribed, using the Silicondust HD HomeRun PRIME tuners that I already owned.

So... I installed the software/drivers from Pulse-Eight (the version recommended by one of their developers via e-mail), and it doesn't work. Windows 7 Professional x64 doesn't recognize the device. I've tried searching their forums, and none of the answers I've found do anything for me.

I e-mailed the devs at pulse-eight and I am waiting for their reply.

I sure hope the Pulse-Eight device and software will work better than the RCAware device. The non-response from RCAware has driven me to spend money elsewhere. I cannot at this time recommend either device, but I'll post back here when/if I get this thing working.

Pulse-Eight discussion continued here:

viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3697#p27405

First off, barnabas1969 you are AMAZING!
Thanks so much man... for helping with my "not able to control tv" issue. I triple checked the Addresses and those seem ok.
I then used your Macro specifically and it works like a charm. So not sure exactly WHAT my deal was.
I know I tried the select source command before, however I never tried the "Device Menu Control > Menu Status = Activated" before.
So I think that is what did it.

Now to see if I can use this info to setup two buttons on my control, one for TV and one for Media center so I can toggle back and forth and it will turn on the TV if need be.

Feel free to share any other Macros you may have.

Cheers!

Yes, so I tried using the same macro I got working for the media center but modified to switch the TV Source to "TV" However this does not seem to work.

When I do this the TV stays (incorrectly) on the HDMI source that the AV is attached to (in turn the Media Center).
What should happen is the TV changes its source to "TV" or the amp/basic cable source.

I think the issue is that the TV AMP source does not appear as a "Device" under the TV's CEC devices so when I tell it to select that the TV does nothing and the Receiver is the only one that changes.

I likely either need to make a different CEC call to the TV or I need to find a way to make the TV AMP SOURCE appear as a CEC Device.

UPDATE -
Here are some pics of my TV's CEC menu.



As you can see there is a CEC menu item called "View TV" and click that with the TV remote does what I want... turn source to TV (basic cable) and turn AV unit to that audio source.
However, when I click on the TV's CEC menu item "Devices" you can see that the TV is not listed as a device, only the Media Center.

To make things more confusing... I setup a button to fire a Marco that dumps the Active Source to the log and I manually changed the source to TV (with native TV remote) and then fired that Macro. The log dumps "TV" as its Active Source! GAH! Well then why don't you listen to ME telling you to set that to your source Mr. TV!?

Thoughts?

D