Can i control my onkyo receiver......

[jonkjon]

Richard, if your offer for the Onkyo panels is still good i would love to have a look at them. Thanks!

[Davieboy]

i'll second that Richard, I've got a shiny new Onkyo TX-SR875 on the way to me.

[jonkjon]

I've temporarily (and rather inexpensively) managed to hack together a ir system for controlling the tuner on my Onkyo receiver using the technique mentioned in my previous posts until i receive the gc 100. Here's probably another one of my dumb questions. Is there some way to determine the volume levels or station presets? The volume level realLy isn't important but the station presets could be. If i am in the kitchen, i can't see the lcd display of my receiver. The only thing i can come up with is to "pre set" the preset when i launch the panel and then link that preset to a label listing either the actual station frequency or a generic reference number that increments/decrements to the next/previous identifier. That is kind of a pain though if, for example, i am using the swremote to read recipes but want to go back to the last channel i was listening to. (Because the panel would reopen and change to the "pre set" default.)

[Richard Naninck]

IR will always be uni directional. No feedback. That's why I dislike it and most of my devices are carefully selected by making sure they have a serial connection and an open protocol. Onkyo, Denon and many others support this. Too bad your receiver doesn't have one.

[Richard Naninck]

All source buttons have indicators that don't show when not selected, show green when selected and On and show grey when selected while the receiver (or zone) is off.

The surround and digital mode labels follow the receiver correctly. Whatever surround and digital mode (inclusive THX overlay) the receiver is in, the theme panels (Receiver and Surround) display the correct icons.

After I built these icons I got the black background issue on these panels.

All of this is rs232 bi-directional (with status) using a continuous running script. Using the remote or the receiver itself will also update the theme panels.

Don't mind my terrible graphics. Maybe sometime Incoronade will beef it up

[jonkjon]

Thanks for the panels. They are really nice and quite a bit of work to. I now have most everything working except for the playlist feature that i will continue to work at. I am a freelance software developer (.NET) and will continue to ply at this for awhile. I would like to mention that for those on a budget, the powermids may be a great alternative for remote ir at least temporarily. They really have worked well for me until the gc100 arrives. They certainly wouldn't compare to the gc100 but they will work in a pinch. They worked well enough for me to be able to learn and create.
Thanks to everyone who contributed to my hb education with ir. I would not be anywhere close to where i am now without everyones help. You all gave me a firm understanding of what was involved and also, the confidence to proceed.......THANK YOU!

[Osler]

Device Spy should open and populate the left pane of the application with all UPnP devices detectable on your network. It is a tree-view and each of those devices can be expanded to reveal what is available for each device for control purposes. Does the xbox show up in the left pane?

Osler

[jonkjon]

The xbox 360 does appear in the device list. It, obviously, only appears when it is turned on.......

[Osler]

So it does appear when it is on? Can you give me the item names when you expand the tree by clicking the (+) sign to the left of its listing in the left pane?

Osler

[jonkjon]

When i expand the tree for "Xbox 360" I get the following:

urn:schemas-upnp-org:service:ConnectionManager:1
urn:schemas-upnp-org:service:RenderingControl:1

is that what you are referring to?

[Osler]

Excellent....this will be very easy to do via UPnP. Do me a favor and simply click on the xbox name in the left pane without expanding the tree and take a screen shot for me. Also take one with both items expanded. I also need to see the device type which should show up in the right pane with just the device highlighted.

Also, here is a link to the ir codes for the xbox:

http://www.remotecentral.com/cgi-bin/fi ... gamesystem

osler

[jonkjon]

Here are the screenshots....

[Osler]

Ok...so explain to me how your Vista Box tells the Xbox what to play in a standard fashion. Is there a playlist or what?

Are you using Media Center 11 as the UPnP server? Do me a favor and under the presets option, double click the list preset and submit the querie in the form that pops up. Do you get an xml based response?

Osler

[jonkjon]

I am getting an exception:

UPnPInvokeException:Could not connect to device

I am able to connect to the other devices without error.

Ok...so explain to me how your Vista Box tells the Xbox what to play in a standard fashion. Is there a playlist or what?

Are you using Media Center 11 as the UPnP server?

Vista has Media Center installed in the Ultimate edition. The xbox360 acts as a media extender for the media center application. Essentially this allows me to access any folders that i choose (for music in this case) that i would like to play via media center on my home theater system. The Onkyo receiver is connected digitally to the xbox360. The playlists, tracks etc; are displayed on my great room television and that is currently how i choose my playlists or individual tracks or albums for playback. I believe that most all of this information originates from wmp 11. I really don't have a handle on how it works other than it just does........
One other note (and maybe what i am going to have to do) is utilize the nettune software, (which i despise), for the onkyo to accomplish this in some fashion. The nettune software works because this receiver has a lan port on it. It isn't currently connected to the lan because i had no use for it since getting the media center pc and because setting up playlists in it was horrific. Anyway, the nettune software allows the receiver to access music and playlists stored on my pc. Do you think that the receiver would show up in device spy if i reconnect it? Would that be helpful in any way?

[Osler]

Make sure MC on the Vista machine is on and accesible by the Xbox prior to invoking the command. I need to see the format the metadata is in that the Xbbox is getting from the UPnP Media Server. It should be standard, but I want to be sure.

Osler