SkyTune v1.01
Welcome to SkyTune, a simple utility to
allow set top boxes to be tuned from your PC. This allows programs such as
Showshifter to support set top boxes such as Sky.
Features
- Primarily designed to allows
products such as Showshifter to support set top boxes such as Sky Digiboxes,
but it can be used as a general utility for using the RedRat2 device.
Copyright
- You are allowed to include the source code in
any product (commercial, shareware, freeware or otherwise) when your product
is released in binary form.
- You are allowed to modify the source code in
any way you want except you cannot modify the copyright details at the top
of each module.
- If you want to distribute source code with
your application, then you are only allowed to distribute versions released
by the author. This is to maintain a single distribution point for the
source code.
History
v1.0 (15 March 2003)
v1.01 (1 September 2004)
- A new predefined
constant called "DELAY" is now defined. On some devices, sending them IR codes
too quickly can cause problems. By using the constant DELAY you can insert a
fixed delay of 100 milliseconds. For example to change to channel 106 with 100
millisecond intra delays, you would use the command line:
c:\skytune\skytune.exe "1,DELAY,0,DELAY,6".
- Now includes full support for RedRat3 USB devices.
Please see the shipped SkyTune.ini for details on how to configure this.
Usage
- You will need to have a RedRat2 or Redrat3 device installed. This
is an infrared transmitter / receiver unit which connects to your PC's serial
port (or USB port if RedRat3). They are available to buy from
http://www.redrat.co.uk
- You need to have the MFC dlls installed on your
machine. For information on obtaining these see
www.naughter.com/notpad.html.
- If you have a RedRat2, you need to download the RedRatCOM component from the
authors web site at
www.naughter.com/redrat.html. After you have extracted the zip file, register the RedRat.exe component using the command line "RedRat.exe /RegServer".
- If you will be using SkyTune with Showshifter then you
will need to configure it to use SkyTune to change the channels. For this, in
Showshifter, go
to the "TV and Video Settings Page", "Channel Settings", Select the channel to
edit or create a new one, then click the "Edit the selected channel" button.
Then use the command edit box as follows, for example if you want to tune the selected
channel to Sky 1 and SkyTune is in a "SkyTune" directory on your C drive, you
would use the command line: c:\skytune\skytune.exe "1,0,6". This assumes that
you already have picked the correct channel number and input for Sky. This
will depend on the RF channel settings set on your Sky dig box. From memory I
believe this is 58.
- Note the quotes in the command line sent to SkyTune are
required so that it is parsed correctly.
- SkyTune takes the actual command to send to the RedRat
device from an ini file in the same directory as the executable (If you are
using a RedRat2, if using a RedRat3, then the inbuild xml databases are used). It comes
supplied with all numeric values 0 to 9 for a standard Sky Digibox, but you
can easily add your own commands to it. To capture additional remote control
codes, you can use a program such as TestRat available from
http://www.dodgies.demon.co.uk/Software/TestRat/index.html.
- In addition the ini file contains the port number on
which to connect to the RedRat device (AGain only applicable if you are using
a RedRat2). The shipped ini file has this value set
to 1, i.e. COM1.
- Finally if you are having difficulty setting up
SkyTune, drop me an email.
PLANNED
ENHANCEMENTS
- If you have any other suggested improvements
for SkyTune, please let me know so that I can incorporate them into the next release of
SkyTune.
CONTACTING
THE AUTHOR
PJ Naughter
Email: pjna@naughter.com
Web: http://www.naughter.com
1 September 2004