I have several 9600 remotes talking to a mishmash of equipment, that all gets piped through an Audio Authority video switcher. Just recently I added a second Tivo to the system. I want to be able to watch either Tivo from any TV. The control codes and Activity screens for the Tivos are identical. The only difference is that one has its IR output from port 1 on an RFX9600 and the second comes from port 2.

I know I could set it up with two different "Project Components", each with a different RFX9600 port. Then I could duplicate the entire Activity. Seems fairly stupid though. If I make any change to the activity, I have to do it twice. Is there an easy, clean way to solve this?

I have a fair amount of Prontoscript code in my config, but almost all of the controls for the Tivos are either simple IR codes or little Channel macros. I would hate to have to write new code for every single button.

Any ideas?

I have 6 Sony DVP-CX985V 400-disc DVD Changers in my setup. All are set to use the same IR codeset, Command Mode 1. I'm then using a Xantech RT8 IR Router to control each independently. (RFX9400 IR Port 1->RT8 IR Input->RT8 IR Outputs 1-6) This eliminates from the need for more than one IR codeset (Project Component) or device (Activity) in my configuration file per controlling the changers. When selecting a given changer I simply set the IR router to the appropriate IR output as part of the macro which runs. Done deal. I also use a System Global to store the value of the selected changer, so that any text labels can be populated accordingly as seen here.

Ganymebe,

A very fast way of duplicating a device with different IR codes is to drag it to the Gallery and create a new, duplicate activity by dragging from the Gallery. This can be done in a few seconds. Now, reconfigure the extender settings for the duplicate device and fix any heading labels that need repair. I would use a custom background image for each device as an additional cue to the user. Unless you need extensive customization, this can be done in a minute or two.

Another technique that is messy to set up, but has huge rewords if you program multiple remotes, is to write a tune() function.

I set up an associative channel array that is prepared in a spreadsheet. A typical entry would be:

CNN;413,

On activity startup, I build the associative array. Each channel icon calls its channel:

tune("CNN");

In each activity I have a KEYBOARD page that has a button for each IR code that I will need to call from my scripts. This is simply reusing my old links page from PEP1. The tune() function references IR codes on the KEYBOARD page or it could build RS232 commands. If necessary I could flip from IR to RS232 on the fly.

For my current programs I am not attempting to reuse the same activity for multiple rooms, but the tune() function would make this easy. I would simply reference an appropriate KEYBOARD page in the tune() function.

I can't imagine going back to my previous channel icon schemes, because I can quickly recover from the cable or satellite provider shuffling the channel assignments by modifying the spreadsheet and pasting a preformatted copy of my matrix into the program. One could also use an include. One quick copy and paste will fix the assignments -- I don't need to pick through the program icon by icon. Another benefit of the tune() function is that you can customize delays or add or remove a trailing ENTER command for every channel in a blink.

Lowpro: thanks, but I hate the idea of having to get any additional hardware to make this work.

Buzz: I like your "tune()" idea. I thought the addition of Channel Macros was nice, but this clearly steps it up quite a bit for maintenance. I think I will use the quick and dirty "copy to the gallery" to get something working today and then start creating my channel buttons over time.

As always, thanks to everyone for their nearly instant help!