I have put together a quick prototype for Windows Media Center control over WiFi directly from TSU9300 based on the RFX9600 communication protocol reverse engineered by the author of ProntoNIC who was kind enough to share some of the UDP layer code with me. Everything so far works great, except, I could not quite get the wheel to work reliably.

Here’s what I am seeing - when assigning a serial repeated command to a button/wheel, the extender basically gets 3 types of events:

* First, there is one instance of “Button is pressed/wheel rotations started” event;
* Then zero to unlimited instances of “Button is still pressed/wheel keeps rotating in the same direction” events that keep coming in regular intervals (slightly under a second –the network packed interval does not depend on the repeat interval specified in the function definition – it looks like it’s the extender’s responsibility to keep sending the serial command at the specified repeat rate);
* And, finally, there is the “Button is released/wheel has stopped” event received immediately on release/stop.

So far, both the touch and the hard buttons have worked flawlessly. However, it’s not exactly the case for the wheel. Specifically, it _mostly_ works fine, but when the direction of the rotation changes abruptly, occasionally, Pronto just ceases sending any more packets despite the wheel keeps rotating. But if the wheel first stops for at least, say 1/3 a second or so before changing the direction, it always works fine.

One obvious suspicion, of course, is that I did not get some of the protocol details correctly. However, the fact that the normal buttons just work goes against it. It would seem like there could be a problem in the firmware code that emulates the regular push button behavior for the wheel when no PS is used.

I wonder if this rings a bell and anyone else has stumbled upon something similar, and if it is – I wonder whether there is anything that I can do. I read the RC threads about related issues when using PS code on wheel events, but since this is TSU9300, it’s not really applicable here, IMHO.

Thanks!

P.S. TSU9300 is my second Pronto (I used to have TSU9200/RFX9200). The more I play with it, the more I like it. Despite the lack of PS and not the best build quality, it looks like I could do whatever I need it to do even without an extender. It could be the perfect remote for my setup and it’s really sad that Philips killed it.

IIRC, There were some minor issues with ProntoScript and the wheel such that when direction changed, you got a number in the opposite direction followed by the correct number. This may be what is causing your issue and if so, there is likely nothing you can do at the moment to correct this.

OK, understood.

I would never use it for something more or less common then, like skip/replay or volume up/down as it would quickly annoy the hell out of me that it’s unreliable. But since the wheel is one of the key differentiators or Pronto and actually is quite convenient, it would make much more sense if it could actually do something useful dependably.

From the pure usability, is there is any 9300 wheel application, say for media/AV control that would still be tolerable considering the issue?

Thanks!

Channel changes for cable/sat/TV?

Too bad I don't normally browse TV channels :)

I will probably leave the wheel alone for now - for me it certainly will takes some getting used to it as quite often I accidentally move the wheel when I don't intend doing it, like when I operate the arrow buttons.

BTW, does anyone have any experience building Windows Media Center Applications? It would be really slick to add a Pronto controller as a proper Media Center plugin. It could open up many interesting possibilities, especially for PS enabled panels.