Re: infra-red keyboard / mouse protocols

My NTL STB is made by Pace.

I agree the software is appalling.

The user interface is so badly designed that it can't show the full channel or programme names, it crashes so badly it needs to be unplugged, and when it powers up it blatantly lies that NTL are upgrading the service. They spent loads of time and effort advertising the interactive button, which usually crashes the box. I don't know how they have the nerve to present it as a finished consumer product.

I scoped the handset signals, they look like RC5. I doubt they would go to the effort of writing an IrDA stack.

How did you find this out? Can you use it in place of the NTL/Pace keyboard?

The Linux InfraRed Remote Control website

is interesting.

K.

Mine too, DI-4100 or something... AFAIK, they are all made by Pace, even the CWC ones.

That's what I thought. Over on the home-cinema newsgroups they swear blind that it's some kind of IrDA and that's why the IR blasters on most VCRs don't work with the NTL STBs. I told them that my Panny VCR is happy to control my STB if I tell the VCR that my NTL STB is really a Philips Canal+ box. I said that Philips invented RC5 and therefore it's probably not IrDA, especially as none of the IrDA sniffers that I have used recognise the NTL keyboard. No one believed me...

keycaps

I saw some pictures of IR keyboards for sale on a US web site. Apart from the colours and keycap legends, the keyboards looked almost exactly like the NTL one. "KB9820" is stamped/moulded on the back of my NTL keyboard so I Googled. The rest, as they say, is history...

No idea. There's some kind of mask ROM/controller inside the NTL keyboard. You would think/expect that all the KB9820 models sent the same RC5 codes and that the STBs decode them directly and the PC keyboard thingy converts them to scan codes and stuffs them down the PS/2 port. The NTL keyboard transmits when you press a key and again when you release the key, so this fits in with the way scancodes work on a PC. I don't know if N-key rollover will work though...

I'll take a look...

Aha, then

indicates those are definitely RC5! # model: DI4001N # supported devices: DI4001N (NTL UK Digital Cable box)

Doesn't cover the keyboard codes though.

From the file, I can't spot the system codes easily. I need to look at the C code.

I'd guess the NTL keyboard combines the KB9820 and the IR widget.

AFAIK, RC5 does not include keyboard codes (it would need too many) so it may use a different protocol for them.

Agreed.

That's useful information.

K.

is RC5 based. is Ruwido rMAP as I recall, only the one I remember was blue and was a different design (maybe that was the one that used the NEC protocol). The Telewest box uses Two-way TV protocol which _is_ based on IrDA. The Pace boxes use a custom IC from Two-way TV that decodes the Two-way TV packets into something that's suitable for attaching to a UART. No stack writing involved.

Makes no odds, they're all easily scoped and replicated, IrDA or not, as has already been pointed out.

Do bear in mind that the NTL keyboard is made by Chicony, not Ruwido.