Trey & John,
Thanks for the responses.
Trey, I thought I did answer your question.
John, excellent information... thank you!

Trey,
I have had no reports of any problems with Sony equipment. It is the brand that I generally use when setting up a universal remote for the Ocelot.
Your new TV is supposed to pretty nice. How do you like it?

John's explanation sounds realistic. I could see where the A/V equipment could become confused if the user has two remotes... they would never be in sync.

We have plans to address the RC5 learning issue in a later revision of the PIC. Don't look for it in the near future.

Dan Boone, ADI

I will try this test tonight based on John's comments.

1)Press ON once on RCA remote and record as IR#1
2)Press ON again on the RCA remote and record as IR#2

This would allow me to send IR#1 followed by IR#2 and one of the two should be in the right paritity as expected by the RCA TV. I expect unplugging the TV would start the game fresh (for testing only, athough an appliance module could accomplish this) and it should respond to either parity code.

I will keep you posted. Hopefully the TV continues to work.

Dave.

David,

If your RCA TV does not require parity to change from one button push to the next, sending both parity flavors will result in a no-op. That is, the TV will respond to both codes and will "power on" and then quickly "power off". Some equipment will accept either parity in any sequence and some other equipment demands alternating parity.

John Galvin

The bad news.

I did suceed in capturing and on and off RCA command, and likely something else. I turned the TV on and off using the Ocelot about 4 times, then the TV focus went, (the actual setup menu commands, etc were out of focus) and there were green trace lines on the screen. By playing the with Ocelot IR commands I recorded, I could make the screen more out of focus and the the green scan lines more severe. There were times when a sequence of IR commands would appear to improve it. But when you turned the unit off and on using the the remote, the lines were back.

The TV is now in the repair shop and I am awaiting word of what happen. I wonder if RCA uses IR commands when setting up the set????? I wonder if IR broadcase from close distance could fry something inside??? The TV technician did not think so. Anyone else shed any light.

CAUTION : DO NOT USE AN OCELOT WITH AN RCA TV.

Dan has anyone else reported failures of an RCA TV with an Ocelot other then Trey and Myself?

David,
That is really bad news.
No, I have not had any reports of anything like this.
Oue Engineering Manager, Don Johnson, used to work for Zenith. Zenith & RCA worked together, at one time, on TV development.
Don created many of the manufacturing alignment fixtures for Zenith. I'll see if he can offer any insight.
Dan Boone, ADI

Hey Dan, how bout a free Leopard for our troubles? :) I know I'd forget all about the death of my RCA tv then... HA!

Dave,

There are special service modes that are accessed by IR remote key sequences for most TVs. These service modes do generally allow a service technician to adjust things like focus, convergence, gray scale, etc, but I can't imagine that you managed to hit upon that particular key sequence for your TV. I also can't imagine any amount of IR blasting doing any electrical damage.

I'd be interested to hear what the repair shop has to say about what was wrong with the TV.

John Galvin

P.S. I once did enter the service mode on one of my TVs, after someone told me the magic key sequence. It was not at all obvious what to do, at that point. I poked around for a while and then decided that the best thing to do, was to turn the TV off, lest anything I might have changed got saved. Turning the TV back on, the only bad result I could see, was that the "active" channels had been lost.

Dan,
Zenith and RCA used different IR commands, though we did have an agreement that no action would be taken if we "borrowed" technology from each other. Zenith did have a IR mode on their high-end products, that would allow many of the factory adjustments to be made via IR. A special code sequence was required to get into this mode of operation to keep the customer out as you could really screw up the adjustments. One model even had a hidden button to prevent this. I would expect RCA to have similar capabilities to allow adjustments to be made after the cabinet back is installed and to assist in factory automation. Not knowing if or how RCA prevents this from happening, makes this a hard question to answer. One would think that they have make it very difficult to allow access to the factory mode. It may be very difficult to obtain information about this. Zenith only allowed a limited number of workers access to the code and method of activating the factory mode. This was done, in part, to avoid any warranty liabilities. If Dave gets back with a report from the repair shop, maybe that will shed more light on what happened. Focus is an adjustment that normally would not be made though IR (when I was involved with TV's), as this is a high voltage adjustment requiring isolation between the two circuits, but I have no way knowing if that is the case. If a Sam's is available on that model, I could see if there circuitry allowing for IR adjustments. The green lines he saw were most likely vertical retrace. These are normally blanked (the screen is shut-off or set below the CRT cutoff threshold) during this time. A CRT arc, a part failure, a change in the G2 setting, a tracking adjustment or a large change in brightness could account for this. Here again, this could be an adjustment change or a hardware failure. The more I think about the way the set failed (It worked about 4 times), the way it failed I would bet the set failed due to a CRT arc, but I can't say that for sure.
Don

Would sending the fatal *.ir file be useful to anyone. IR#8 and IR#9 were the commands I was giving when the death of the TV occurred.

If you like a copy, send an e-mail and I will forward the files. Use the files at your own risk.

Dave.

PS: Still awaiting TV repair information.

The green lines ran horizontally then would zag down and run horizontally again, about 8-10 on the screen. Focus out and white balance was out (white and snowly). Picture would be ok for about 5-10 seconds when the set was first turned on. Also some chanels would tune ok for a few seconds (10 seconds) before they would drop out. Green line would slowly appear on a tuned channel.

Dave.

David,
The response from "Don" was the report he generated for me. Don Johnson is our Engineering Manager. I asked him to post his e-mail on this forum.
Don previously was an engineer for Zenith. RCA and Zenith traded information on development.
Based on what I learned today:
RCA does use IR signals for some adjustments.
It should be impossible to enter this mode.

But apparently... nothing is impossible.
David... e-mail me with the codes. I'll forward them to the right folks at RCA.
Also, let me know what your repair guy says.
Dan Boone, ADI
ddboone@appdig.com

PS As a side note... we have almost 10K of these things out there. I have never run into this... now we have two reports back to back. I will add a warning until we have this resolved.

For those who have been following this thread, the offending LIR file has been sent to Dan.

Dave.

The repair shop has come back and said the picture tube has failed. I am a little skeptical since I could influence it with the IR commands. I will be taking it to a second shop for another opinion. I did not spend a lot of time choosing a shop to perform the initial evaluation since I thought it was just an adjustment problem.

This shop did not know you could program TV internal settings using IR commands.

Dave.

David,
We have a pretty good selection of A/V equipment.
I can't find anything that is compatible with your RCA F31700.
I'm putting an ad in the paper, to see if I can purchase a used set.
I can then test your e-mailed commands on that set.
I looked at the sent data, and did not see anything strange... but then again, I'm not really sure what the offending code would look like.
I'll keep you posted.
Dan Boone, ADI

I could send you a set, but then shipping and customs would cost more the purchasing a set in the US. Still waiting for the second shop comments.

Dave.