CurtPalme.com Home Theater Forum

[stefuel]

Any of you barco pukes have the serial protocol to control these. I know that some of the Barco IR remotes work with some Barco industrial LCD projectors. I'm hoping that the serial protocol will work also. I have a Barco Graphics 2100LC that I use for outdoor viewing on Halloween and Xmas and I would like to be able to turn it on/off remotely.
Thanks,

[VideoGrabber]

That slimey toad, Chip, inquired:
> Any of you barco pukes <

Well, since you asked so politely...

> I have a Barco Graphics 2100LC that I use.. <

Hey, us "Barco pukes" don't have no steenking LCDs!

And no, the LCDs have a different command set ($fe, $ff wrapped) than the CRTs (STX, ETX wrapped). They also avoid the bizarre byte offset shifting the CRTs use, replaced by a single escape meta-character ($80).

[VideoGrabber]

FYI, if you're going to insult people when you come begging for information, you will find that some will take offense. Others will take defense. And the rest will take no fence at all.

Lastly, the Barco LCD-DLP Serial command reference manual I have, has hundreds of commands, but No power on/off commands within its 500+ pages.

[macgyver655]

[macgyver655]

\x65..... projector on.

\x66......projector off.

[VideoGrabber]

Mac,

that's pretty amazing. Same manual I had. But I found nothing about power, either On or Off. Plenty of other stuff being turned On and Off though, in 500 pages. Even after I knew it was there (from your comments) I didn't find it until I searched explicitly for x65. And even then, reading the description, I initially could make no sense of it, and thought you might be in error.

But "Projector Status" it does appear to be:

projector status, read : \x67

projector status, write off : \x66 -- turns the power Off (how obvious)
projector status, write on : \x65

Chip, you ugly bag of mostly water, these are just the command bytes. You'll still need the packet wrapper (start, addr, cmds, CS, end):

Off = \xfe \x01 \x66 \x67 \xff .....// where the 2nd byte ($01) is the PJ address. The checksum is a simple sum (mod 256).
On = \xfe \x01 \x65 \x66 \xff

[stefuel]

Ugly bag of mostly water here. It might not even be "power on or power off". It might be standby on/off.
The control pad under the door only has a standby button. There is a hard switch to fully power down.
The communication settings are fully adjustable. I will have to set up the screen so that I can look as the OSD to see what it's set at. I can match the settings in my Crestron processor and send the code.

As far as insulting a Barco owner, you have to be kidding. After all the ribbing I've taken over the years with my AmPro's from Barco owners. They're getting off easy

[macgyver655]

[Nashou66]

I always wondered how to use serial code from a computer. how do you implement it? is there a program? where do you eneter the text? etc, etc, etc

Athnaasios

[Tom.W]

[VideoGrabber]

> I always wondered how to use serial code from a computer. how do you implement it? is there a program? where do you eneter the text? etc, etc, etc <

Nash, there's potentially lots of different ways. The most normal would be various custom programs that send the command strings (that you enter on a Config screen) when you click a button, or a timer ticks, or some Event happens. You could even write your own program that did nothing more than send command bytes out a serial port (similar to a HelloWorld app). Probably the easiest way to experiment is with a terminal emulator, that lets you send arbitrary hex bytes out, along with text. Then you could see the responses from the device you were communicating with, and know whether it is accepting them or not.

Serial codes are just another communication channel, to convey the same type of information as you'd get from an IR remote (or RF). Or via a USB port, or a network link. Same idea and underlying commands in all cases, just different transport mechanisms.

[stefuel]

Why is some protocol soooo confusing?
To turn on a Ampro, all you need to send it is a left bracket [ And to turn it off, a right one ] and nothing else.

You know what? Somewhere I also have that 500+ page Barco serial control manual. I put it away. It was giving me a ball ache.
When I enter all that info for output, do I do it with or without spaces???

Thanks,

[VideoGrabber]

Chip,
> When I enter all that info for output, do I do it with or without spaces??? <

No spaces. You don't even enter the literal text strings as presented. It has to be binary bytes, with the values as designated by the hex values.

I know nothing about Crestron, but I'm certain they have some way to do this. \xfe\x01 etc, or 0xfe,0x01... It would be documented under something like Sending Binary values, vs. Sending Text strings.

Consider yourself lucky that these are simply fixed strings, and you don't have to figure out the meta-characters in Crestron to dynamically generate CS bytes, or worse, the offset values used by Barco CRTs.

[stefuel]

After all this putzing around I found a pre-made Crestron module that is for the exact model. It was not in the database when I first looked for it (right after I bought it) but it is there now. As the projector is so old and the module was not there before I assumed they would not provide it later. I spent the day cleaning up my garage so that I can run a serial cable to it from my rack without tripping over a ton and a half of stuff. Tomorrow I'll run the cable over and make a trip to rat shack for connectors and shells. It should only take me a couple of hours to whip together a program to run it.
You can see the screen from the living room touch panel so that's where I'll add it to the system.
Thanks,

[macgyver655]

Just make sure you get that programming right so your not shootin porn on that big outdoor screen. Unless you want to scare everyone on Halloween with your homemade delights.....

[stefuel]

[macgyver655]

[stefuel]

OK, couldn't sleep so I had some time to work on this AND go through 500+ pages of the most interesting reading.
The biggest thing that bothered me was the "ON and OFF" command. This projector (according to the internal key pad) does NOT turn on/off but goes into "STBY". The other things were the arrow and enter buttons. Those commands are not in the individual command list. But ch-ching, on pages 39-42 is a section called "IR remote simulation" I think this is really what I want to use. The strings are almost the same but all the "command[0]" transmissions are \x30 (telling the projector it's in simulation mode) followed by a data byte. The data byte for STBY toggle is \x0e. So to tell the PJ to toggle on/off I
would send the following. \xfe\x01\x30\x0e\x43\xff...I think