[quote="edwaugh"]Hi,
I'd like to use USB-UIRT to interface my hifi remote to my pc just for simple tasks like playing and skipping music tracks. I'd also like to do it as cheap as possible. I bought a USB-IrDA adaptor but the manufacturer don't make a driver that allows you to see the data as a com port so I can't interface it to something like WinLIRC although the hardware spec. should support a tv remote. Does anyone know a way of making this work without device specific support from something like Girder?
Anyway, I'd like to use USB-UIRT with WinLIRC or something similar (free), is this possible? Does the USB-UIRT driver let you see the incoming data on a com port?
thanks very much
ed[/quote]
Ed,
I would say you probably want to use either USB-UIRT OR WinLIRC, but probably not both.
For WinLIRC you will want to build your reciever/transmitter or buy from either
http://www.irblaster.info/ or
http://iguanaworks.net/ir/
You probably will not be able to get WinLIRC software to drive USB-UIRT hardware.
My experience with WinLIRC was the only way to easily get codes from WinLIRC into a program is IREX. It sends the received command to the Window that has focus. The other way to get WinLIRC to communicate with a program is via TCP/IP. That is not very well documented anywhere that I could find, although many people have written Java and Python and other programs that are able to capitalize on it. Getting things out of a program into WinLIRC is difficult because the program that is bundled with WinLIRC (transmit.exe) only allows a single character to be sent at a time. Maybe those Java and Python programs would work for that, I don't know because I am mostly fed up with installing program after program to get some little function to work. So I never try any of them anymore. Also, transmit.exe was not included with the most recent WinLIRC zip file, you have to download and unzip the previous version. See
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/markbb1/Winlirc.rtf for more details.
Having said all that, if you have/get some LIRC hardware and a USB-UIRT unit, you can probably use WinLIRC to get IR commands from your COM port into your program and USB-UIRT to get commands from your program out to your set top box. Or you can use USB-UIRT to get IR commands from your remote into your program and WinLIRC to get commands from your program out to your set top box. Your call, but you should be able to get either program to do what you want, shouldn't need both WinLIRC and USB-UIRT.
I have not messed with USB-UIRT hardware or software, but if I found that Girder was the only way to use USB-UIRT hardware with my setup, I wouldn't bother. The learning curve for Girder was too steep for me. But it might not be that difficult to you.
A.