Need IR advice

[TCassio]

I am running HS 2.0 and Main Lobby. I wish to control my Home Theatre system via Mail Lobby. I need to controll 4 devices. Surround sound system, DVD player, Cable Box, And a Hi Def TV. My HS server is located in my office and the Home Theatre system is in my family room (both on the same floor but in different rooms.

Need to know what equipment I need to do this?

Approximate costs?

Least expensive is always perferred.

I've been looking at the USB UIRT with a set of Powermids. Or the GC100-6. As far as the GC100 I can't figure out what would be needed equipment wise.

Any advise would be appriciated.

 

[DavidL]

If you can get three wires from server to theater system you can just run a IR emitter in view of the theater equipment.

Or, if you have a Cat5 wire at the theater equipment, you can use a GlobalCache IR / serial box there. This would be the preferred model. Yes you could run USB_UIRT and powermids, but that won't be as quality or reliable as the GlobalCache and stickon emitters or IR jacks (if the theater equipment supports hard wired IR - that's better than emitters).

Another nice thing of the globalCache is that it puts a couple serial ports accesible to the Theater equipment. Serial is much preferred to IR (emitter or hard wired) as it can support 2 way control. Most newer / better equipment supports RS232 (serial). Cinemar is a reseller of the Global Cache device.

 

[Dean Roddey]

Be aware that the serial ports on the GC-100 are very limited and you might not be able to use them for some devices. They can only do None for parity, and they can't go very high in baud rate, and they don't support any of the control lines so anything that requires those can't be supported. Some Sony stuff in particular uses Odd parity, and right off hand I can think of the IRMan which uses control lines. And something like the Elk would have too high a baud rate for it (I think they max out at like 35K or something like that.)

 

[Rupp]

I'm not sure what some consider reliable but my Ocelot and powermids have open and closed my blinds, turned on and off my TV as well as mute it when the phone rings , as well as control my AV equipment, 100% of the time since installation. I have read where some users have had problems with powermids but I can only report success. In addition installation was easy.