Hi!
I’m struggling to find any good online IR code databases.
The Remote Two has a csv import built in, so it would be pretty easy to import a bunch of codes at once. Here is an example created by me:
My method so far has been to copy and past into a spread sheet, export as .csv and clean up whatever needs cleaning up in a text editor. I’m about to do that with the .rtf document I found with the codes for my Emotiva XMC-2. I’ll let you know how it goes.
Global Cache has a database called “control tower”. They make appliances that can be very useful to R2 users, including IP to IR, IP to RS232. You have to subscribe to download codes, but it’s free. I haven’t tried them yet.
Remote Central has some codes for relatively old stuff. I don’t know if anyone is actively maintaining it any more. A lot of code sets are in Microsoft Excel format, but can be easily exported to .csv.
I registered for access to the Global Cache “Control Tower” database and after less than a day, got access to complete code sets instead of just 5 individual codes a day. Either way, they mail it to you. It’s a mess! It’s in Global Cache format, which is for sending to one of their IP to IR devices, and the codes are quoted, which would probably mess up R2’s ability to read it. I tried copying the email, getting rid of the email header and pasting into their “iconvert” utility, and it said the format was invalid. I wasn’t inclined to mess with it further. Unless you’re good at writing text processing scripts or have a very short code set, enormous amount of cleaning up by hand to do. Probably easier just to learn the commands from the old remote.
I had no problems importing IR codes from Global Cache. I just copied the content of the mail into an unformatted text file, changed the column names in the first line and saved is as a csv file. No need to remove quotes.
The codes I got are apparently intended for GC devices and begin with “sendir”, and some parameters. I can’t imagine them working in that form. And when I use their utility to convert from GC to hex format it won’t accept the input no matter what I do. I checked for an option to have them sent in hex format and didn’t see one.
The control tower sets always have two code variants. The hexcode1 column is the one the remote can accept which is the Pronto format. I just tried it with the code set from the mentioned Emotiva XMC Preamp. Just change function to key and hexcode1 to code.
Emotiva XMC2 pre/proc is exactly what I’m trying to configure. Maybe we can get them to write an iP control integration, bro!
In the mean time, it would be great if I could just use the appropriate columns but at the moment, no matter how I reformat the code GC sent me, Libre Office Calc 6.0.7.3 wants to stuff all the octets of the hex code into one cell, then tells me I’ve exceeded the maximum character count per cell. Even when telling it to consider space to be a delimiter, and even doing search and replace of spaces with commas in the text editor. How are you doing it?
Using the Emotiva app for iPhone, I can adjust the volume on the front panel and the volume status in the app updates. But I’m not a big fan of using just the touch screen on a phone to control things. But that’s the kind of functionality I would love to have in R2.
I’ve also played with RS232 with my Parasound P7, and feel confident that with enough head banging I could get R2 to send RS232 codes to my Global Cache IP to RS232 appliance. But then, getting it to parse the status updates the pre sends back and update some widget on the R2 would be the tricky bit. I hope that kind of functionality materializes eventually.
Just use a plain text editor to edit the file like Notepad on Windows or TextEdit on macOS. I assume other programs just add too much unwanted formatting to it.
I could do that but it’s a lot of editing by hand! Text editors do not have “columns”. So I tried another approach and used a code set in RTF format that is on Emotiva support. Pasted into text editor (Gedit in Linux), got rid of formatting, commas look like they’re all in the right place. I get this error: Invalid CSV record at position 1: CSV deserialize error: record 1 (line: 1, byte: 24): missing field code no matter what I try (single quoting the headings, double quoting the headings, not quoting the headings. There’s no leading white space, “code” is right there on line one, I can see it with a “cat” command. Giving up for today.
The columns of a csv file are defined within the first line of the file. You just just need to copy the content of the mail you got from Global Cache and paste it into a plain text editor. Then you change the first line so it looks like this:
key, code1, code, code2, hexcode2
Then save it as a csv file and you should be able to import it
Thanks Markus, I finally got it sorted out, thanks to kennymc.c The set I installed, from Global Cache, is only for the main zone. I’m not yet using zone 2. I’m assuming if I import zone 2 it will either concatinate or overwrite. I’m game to find out when the time comes. Thanks again for your offer.
Hooray! I did what you said, and the code set works! So R2 just reads the fields it wants and ignores the others? I would never have figured that out on my own. Thanks for saving my sanity for another day.
Also imported the other codes I got from GC. The Oppo UDP works great. The Sanyo PLVZ4 projector may or may not work. I held the dock as close to it as I could get it and still no response. Guess I’ll have to fish out the receiver and blaster that came with my HDMI over CAT6 adapter. Everyone complains about how weak the IR from the dock is but so far it hadn’t been an issue. The Harmony, from where I was able to locate its blaster, was able to reach everything in the rack and to bounce off the screen and hit the projector, reliably. A project for another time.