Very interesting.  My smart remotes sure do take a long time to sync
with the TVs DVDs and VCRs in my living room and master   bedroom.  

I have not tried the stereo yet but may do so.  I witch I had the
ability to set up more than three devices with each remote so it would
not matter which one is used in either place.  

I had a Memorex here at work which had The ability to set up 8 32 step
macros but if you did not have the original remote to train the Memorex
you were out of luck unlike the two I am using at home.    I used the
Memorex to run a basic automation sequence for my radio station.  

I guess everything today is X10 modules or the replacements for same
(for house automation) but the IP control is very nice for off site
management.  

Turn on the coffee pot at 2:40 am for that rare dx, notify you when the
brew is done, warm up the rig tune the antenna and as you sleepily
meander into the shack, the logging program comes up ready for entry....



###
BRETT WINCHESTER
[log in to unmask] 
208-639-8386
###


-----Original Message-----
From: For blind ham radio operators
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Martin McCormick
Sent: Thursday, August 02, 2007 9:17 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: A Replacement for an Icom R71 Receiver

Brett Winches writes:
> Does the drake have a hand held remote control like the 71 does?

	I don't know, but that turned out to be a real learning
experience for me in the mid eighties.

	At that time, I wanted to see if I could make an Apple
II computer control the ICR71	. I built a photo cell circuit
so as to be able to turn the IR flashes in to something the Apple II
could read. I then wrote a timing program in assembler that counted
processor cycles and waited for the infrared signal to go off if it was
on or on if it was off. it would store the count in a table.

	I thought I had figured it out and even wrote a table of values
for each button press on the remote.

	I wrote another assembler program to toggle one of the game
paddle bits on and off in the Apple and fed that signal to a driver
feeding some infrared LED's  I had scavenged from a defunct TV remote.

	To make a long story short, it didn't work at all and I was
mystified.

	Then, I thought that there might be a carrier on those data
which was too fast for the 1-MHZ processor on the Apple to follow.

	I remember taking that ICR71 receiver, connecting the antena
input through a capacitor to the collector of the photo transistor and
tuning around 100 KHZ while hitting buttons on the remote.

	Sure enough, I heard bursts of carrier about every 33 KHZ and I
realized that IR remotes use a carrier and then gate that on and off
with lower-speed data.

	I couldn't make the Apple II get the timing right to do the 33
KHZ carrier, so I built a 33-KHZ generator using a crystal and some
divide-by counters to get the frequency down to
33 kilohertz.

	When I ran the control program I had written on the Apple and
had it modulate that carrier, it did work.

	For a while, I had the Apple II set the R71 to 9.580 megahertz
every Sunday morning and turn on a cassette recorder to get the Radio
Australia DX program which they used to have.It all actually worked
pretty well after I learned how infrared remotes work.

	Of course, each manufacturer has its own pulse code and carrier
frequency so each new remote is a new project.

Martin McCormick WB5AGZ  Stillwater, OK Systems Engineer OSU Information
Technology Department Network Operations Group