IR distribution questions

[AnthonyZ]

Wasn't Zigbee supposed to solve all of our IR woes?

Time will tell. I don't know that I'd buy stock in a vendor yet but, it does show some promise.

Swaggy, I would recommend Universal Remote Control. Excellent products. In particular, the MX980 gives me wood. However, if you are wanting to program yourself, you would be wise to shop carefully and work with a dealer or retailer who can provide you with the software. From that point, visit the URC forum here.

jlegault, you have CT mail. In retrospect, it probably reads as rude or course. No offense intended (despite the fact that I'll never be described as "diplomatic").

 

[sic0048]

You definitely can hook up more than one Xantech IR receiver to a basic one zone block. I do it myself. However, it does allow for crossing of IR signals if the block receives signals from two receivers at the same time. So the more receivers you are trying to hook into the same zone, the greater the chance that this might happen.

For example, someone in room A sends out a signal "AAAA" and someone in room B sends out a signal "BBBB" at the exact same time, the zone block might see something like this "AABBAABB" or "ABABABAB" etc. This won't cause any harm, but the devices receiving the signal won't recognize it and therefore the intended function won't work.

A multi-zone block will accept signals from the different zones at the same time and buffer them so that each signal is sent to the outputs in the order they are received. So in the above example, even if the two signals are received at the same time, the devices will still see "AAAA" and "BBBB" as expected. Therefore I would recommend a multi-zone block if you have lots of rooms you are going to have receivers in or if it is likely that several people will regularly be using the system in different rooms.

 

[swaggy]

Thanks to everyone for all the responses. I will look into an RF solution from URC with IR/Xantech as my fallback plan.