Confusion with multiple IRTrans Ethernet

[plessdude]

I decided to add another IRTrans unit to for another room in my house. I have read through the information here but cannot seem to put everything together. Here are my questions

1. I am using two ethernet devices. When setting up zone support how do I specify which unit is which. I can see that I have the option to specify which bus the learning takes place on. I assume this is bus 0 on my setup. When I want to setup a command to turn off my sat reciever on the first floor but not on the second floor (they are both the same models) I need to specify some sort of zone within Homeseer. Which numbers should I use. Do I want to make everything in one room Zone 1 and everything in the other Zone 2?

2. How should I handle commands that pertain to the whole house like lighting and homeseer events. Should this be on a different zone? How will the modules understand that this seperate zone should repeat to all other zones?

3. Is there a way to have Homeseer only control the output commands to each device? I don't need traditional IR repeating rather I just want Homeseer to control shutting of my A/V equipment in each room. I also need the shutoff of devices to work by room rather than globally.


Is there setup strategies anyone can recommend? Most of my use for IRTrans is to control lighting and Homeseer events. I use A/V control only to turn on and off devices.

[RegForte]

The ethernet units are mapped to bus designations by placing them in the irserver command line in the intended bus order, seperated by semicolons. The ethernet units require static IP assignments here.

For example, my command line is:

irserver 192.168.0.32;192.168.0.33;192.168.0.34

Which creates the following mappings:

bus 0 = 192.168.0.32
bus 1 = 192.168.0.33
bus 2 = 192.168.0.34

IR commands are routed to specific ethernet units by transmitting with the following zone parameters:

HS zone 199 routes to bus 0 (192.168.0.32)
HS zone 299 routes to bus 1 (192.168.0.33)
HS zone 399 routes to bus 2 (192.168.0.34)
HS zone < 100 routes to all busses

See also YoYo's post on zone/bus mapping:

http://board.homeseer.com/showthread...=119331&page=2

[plessdude]

Thanks Reg....i stumbled upon this concept about an hour ago after I asked my questions and have made progress but still have issue with getting the proper bus to point to the correct ip address. I might be missing how you place this information in the command line. Where is this exactly? I can't seem to figure out if you mean the right clicking on the icon and adding it there or going some other route.

I want to have 2 zones. Like this:

Bedroom - 192.168.1.15 on Bus 0 (199)
Living Room - 192.168.1.16 on Bus 1 (299)

This covers my AV needs. I then want to have whole house commands that pertain to lights and events. Do I want to set this on 99 or 1. YoYo's post said that anything under 100 will trigger both. I have broadcast ir turned of since I do not want the Bus's to act like repeater. Does this affect anything?

[RegForte]

Thanks Reg....i stumbled upon this concept about an hour ago after I asked my questions and have made progress but still have issue with getting the proper bus to point to the correct ip address. I might be missing how you place this information in the command line. Where is this exactly? I can't seem to figure out if you mean the right clicking on the icon and adding it there or going some other route.

I use the unix shell for windows in MKS Toolkit for all my shell scripts. The full command line to run it in the background is:

irserver 192.168.0.32;192.168.0.33;192.168.0.34 > /dev/null 2>&1 &

Hopefully someone will speak up on how to do it in pure windows. Windows script host, perhaps?

I want to have 2 zones. Like this:

Bedroom - 192.168.1.15 on Bus 0 (199)
Living Room - 192.168.1.16 on Bus 1 (299)

This covers my AV needs. I then want to have whole house commands that pertain to lights and events. Do I want to set this on 99 or 1. YoYo's post said that anything under 100 will trigger both.

For consistency I use 99. I haven't tried 1.

I have broadcast ir turned of since I do not want the Bus's to act like repeater. Does this affect anything?

I have "broadcast IR" set to on and the zone selectivity works fine.

[plessdude]

Well I may have hit a dead end here. I don't even know where to begin trying to execute that command. I have been messing with this setup for a good 5 hours now and still can't some up with a way to disable ir repeating while still being able to initiate whole house commands from both rooms. Too much of my equipment is the same and until I can stop non Homeseer IR commands from going to both units I am stuck. Its a shame cause all I need the IR to do when it comes to controlling my AV equipment is turn devices off. Most of what I am using the modules for is simply controlling lights and events via remote control. Before I added a second module I had an event that turned off my AV equipment when I armed my alarm. I wanted to add that ability to another room to test if it would make sense t put one in every room with AV equipment in my house. I have been through every thread on this sub-forum and read all of the material on IRTrans' site but there just seems to be a few things I am missing.

Thanks for trying though!

[RegForte]

Well I may have hit a dead end here. I don't even know where to begin trying to execute that command.

I don't think I implied that you should. You can run

irserver 192.168.1.15;192.168.1.16

in a cmd window and minimize it, or put it in a shortcut set to "run minimized". That will get you going at least.

[YoYo]

Hi plessdude,

You edit the shortcut by right-clicking on it and choosing properties.
In the "Target:" field you should see something like:

"C:\Program Files\IRTrans\irtranstray.exe"

To the end of that add a space and list your IP addresses in the order you want them assigned with a semicolon in between. So in your case the command would look like...

"C:\Program Files\IRTrans\irtranstray.exe" 192.168.1.15;192.168.1.16

Click on OK to save the changes. Bus 0 will refer to .15 and bus 1 to .16.

As far as the IR repeating goes, refer to the IRTrans manual on how to shut that off. From memory, you'd open a web browser, enter http://192.168.1.15 for the URL to access the device settings.
Login with "admin" and "irtrans" as the password.
I think by default IR is relayed from all devices if the list is blank so go ahead and add one host like 192.168.1.1 that is not an IRTrans device.
Uncheck "Broadcast IR Relay".
Click on Store Settings.

I think RegForte answered your questions on sending IR to different IRTrans devices...

Does that help?

[plessdude]

YoYo,

I think I have the bus numbering issue correct although since I am using the Ethernet version and my system is picky about how IRserver starts up I put the command on the actual IRserver .exe in the IRTRans folder on my C: drive. I have not done enough testing to verfiy this works but as of now it seems to be.

I have been through almost all of the setting combinations and it seems that if I turn off IR repeating I lose the ability to execute any commands on items below 100 which is where I have whole house commands. I have tried various ways around this but since I cannot isolate individual emmiters I am at a dead end.

Basically I just want each bus to ignore all IR signals that come from my remote controls that execute A/V equipment commands. Instead, I want to program my remotes to just execute Homeseer commands for items I want to control. I want Homeseer to handle the few A/V equipment commands I am running which are just OFF commands to my equipment. Since I have the same brand TV and SAT receiver in each room I cannot prevent ir commands from repeating and executing in both rooms.

So the big question is what setting do i need to just have Homeseer control these modules?

Is there any better documentation than whats available in PDF format on IRTrans' website?

[YoYo]

Hi plessdude,

I guess I'm having a hard time following you... I *think* what you're asking for is pretty straight forward and is certainly doable.

I have been through almost all of the setting combinations and it seems that if I turn off IR repeating I lose the ability to execute any commands on items below 100 which is where I have whole house commands. I have tried various ways around this but since I cannot isolate individual emmiters I am at a dead end.

When you say "items below 100" above, you mean HS zones? I'll check with Marcus on this, but I suppose that it's possible that when we send to all zones it's done as a broadcast, which would explain why it doesn't work when you have broadcast shut off. Maybe you could try turning that back on and entering an individual bogus host as I described earlier to see if that helps.

If not, since you only have 2 modules, leave it off and just send the same command out first to one module then the other? Do you follow?

When you say "I cannot isolate individual emitters" do you mean ethernet modules, or an external emitter that might attach to one of these modules? Remember each ethernet module is mapped to its own HS zone, so it is certainly possible to send IR out to an individual module.

I'm not aware of any other IRTrans documentation, but e-mailing their support has worked well for me.

Does this help?

[YoYo]

plessdude,

Try this:

For each one of your IRTrans ethernet modules, do the following:

1. Open the configuration web page concerning "IR Relay".
2. Uncheck the "Broadcast IR Relay" check box. This tells the IRTrans device not to broadcast received IR to other devices.
3. Add the host IP that is running IRServer (usually the HS PC) to the "Send IR Relay To" list. This tells the IRTrans device to relay any received IR codes to the HS PC.
4. Add the host IP that is running IRServer (usually the HS PC) to the "Accept IR Relay from" list. This tells the IRTrans device to accept IR commands from the HS PC.

Let us know if that takes care of it...

[plessdude]

Ahhhh...thats a great idea....gonna try when I get home.

[plessdude]

YoYo,

You are a genius! Changing the relay to only accept commands from my Homeseer ip address worked like a charm. I have to give it a few days to make sure things continue to work but this seems like it will.

As I have it now, I wave my keyfob over a sensor when I leave my house and all my lights turn off, My TV's and AV equipment turn off, my thermostat turns down, and my alarm arms. I am now officially the laziest person on the planet. Ahhh....it feel good man...feels real good.

Thanks for all your Reg and YoYo. You guys made my day.

[YoYo]

I am now officially the laziest person on the planet. Ahhh....it feel good man...feels real good.

I prefer to think of it as being one of the more "efficient" people on the planet!

Glad it's working for you.

[plessdude]

I prefer to think of it as being one of the more "efficient" people on the planet!

Glad it's working for you.

LOL....well...... maybe I am efficiently lazy now!