serial controls standard? (1 Viewer)

[LarryM]

I have an offbrand plasma (Hyundai HQP421SR) and I was wondering if I might be able to make more adustments through the serial port than I can through the remote.

Of course, I can't find any Hyundai documentation; are serial controls standard across devices, or do I need to hound Hyundai?

I found a Zenith (well, LG) manual which has directions on how to hook up a serial control and what commands to send; I imagine I can do this using Girder. But I don't want to guess blindly at the codes. Are these standard?

Unlike IR codes, there doesn't seem to be a reason to change them between one brand and another.

 

[Arthur_King]

Larry,

There is no "standard" for serial communications in the HT world. That unfortunately means that your LG/Zenith manual wouldn't really help you out. It COULD be the same, but who really knows. Either go hound Hyundai (they may make a bunch of other brands with the same essential innards) or try one of the easily "undo-able" options, and see if they match. (for example, use the serial control to raise the brightness, if it works, bingo, if it doesn't you didnt lose anything, if it works but you cant undo it with the serial control, you can turn the brightness down with the front panel, or the remote)

Daffy Arthur King
with the brain of a duck

 

[Leo Kerr]

AV equipment has all sorts of serial protocols. Mostly, however, there are some constants.

Most are happy and/or prefer 9600 baud, 8-N-1 (although some things do come preset to 4800-8N1.)

Some things have very simple command strings - 1-3 bytes, and then a carriage return.

Some things have very ugly command strings - 32 byte sequences that have all sorts of parity information embedded in it, with a lot of the bytes being non-enterable 'null' characters. Very grusome, that.

Look harder; finding the real list of commands will save you a lot of bother.

Leo

 

[LarryM]

I thought I would ad: I wrote Hyundai Imagequest Company and I got back an email (to quote literally):


And,
Hyundai PDP cannot support RS232C. We are now on developing the program.
When this work is done, we will up-road in web-site.

Thanks

 

[Allen Ross]

"RS232 the most non-standard standard in the world"

One of my ECE professors

 

[Leo Kerr]

I've never had troubles with the concept of RS232...

it's just there is that whole mess of DTE/DCE (did I get the combinations right?) I can never keep 'em straight, and the whole issue of, 'is the pin crossed or not?' is a pain in the butt.

Then there are manufacturers who don't understand RS232. We've a type of projector that its control string is always 64 bytes. And 80% are critical 'null' characters that must be sent. Sending a 'null' is a pain. Then having to compute the parity and checksums is also a royal pain - just to turn the stinkin' projector on and off.

While other projectors do something like this:

**PON**

or

**POF**

Tough stuff, hm?

Ah, well..

Leo

 

[Allen Ross]

never said the concept was tough, it was how each company twisted the standard and soon everything was all messed up with so many different ways of doing this simple communication.

 

[LarryM]

I just got a Harman Kardon 635, and it looks like, to control the "second zone" with my Harmony remote, I'm going to have to resort to controlling the reciever using Girder on my HTPC to do the setup over the RS232 line.

Any suggestions on where to look for RS232 control for this device? I have Girder, but I'm not sure it's up to the task, since the RS232 protocol looks like it's emulating the remote and the monitor (and has parity checks, too, for that matter).