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Controlling DCT2000 via Serial Cable
http://forum.linhes.org/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=300
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Author:  eRazor [ Mon Dec 15, 2003 9:04 pm ]
Post subject:  Controlling DCT2000 via Serial Cable

Just a tip for those of you with the DCT2000 external cable tuners.
You can control them via serial cable instead of IRBlaster.

Kindly someone has posted what they needed to do to get it working
at

http://mythtv.org/pipermail/mythtv-dev/2003-June/010644.html

However, the problem I encountered was that the debian release of python on Knoppix doesn't come with distutils. The problem with running apt-get install python is that you jump into version 2.3.3c which didn't appear to be friendly to my needs. (I couldn't get distutils to work for that one either, strangely)

So I had to install from python.org the stable 2.3.2 release and point the symlink for python to that version before I could install the packages required for the serial cable control.

After that, serial control of my cable box worked quite well.

Now if only I could work out why the whole box crashes irrecoverably every 30 minutes, I'd be in hog-heaven.

Author:  prowley [ Sun Jul 04, 2004 12:47 pm ]
Post subject: 

I set this up on a SN41G2V2. Made the code modification mentioned in the link, and also changed the serCon = serial.Serial( ... line to use ttyS0 for COM0:

serCon = serial.Serial('/dev/ttyS0',baudrate=9600, bytesize=serial.EIGHTBITS, parity=serial.PARITY_NONE,
stopbits=serial.STOPBITS_ONE, timeout=1, xonxoff=0,rtscts=0,)

I think I changed xonxoff=0 in that line (originally I believe it is 1), I am not sure if that made a difference since it got changed while I was trying to make stuff work - try xonxoff=1 if this does not work for you.

I was able to do

apt-get install python2.2-dev

which got distutils working (without symlink changing) and install the serial library just fine.

Author:  kingtj [ Thu Aug 11, 2005 9:57 am ]
Post subject:  Control of Motorola DCT2000/DCT2244 via serial cable (update

I just switched from Dish Network to Charter digital cable and was given a Motorola DCT2244 box (part of the DCT2000 family). I did some searching for a way to change channels on it via serial cable, and I think I discovered a better method than the script mentioned in this thread.

Download the source to the "channel" utility here:

http://mythtv.org/pipermail/mythtv-user ... el.tar.bin

Extract into a folder and type "make" to compile it. Then move the resulting "channel" binary to /usr/local/bin (or your preferred directory), and configure Myth to use it to change channels for you.

The advantage of this utility is it has some intelligence to it. It won't try to change a channel if the box reports it is already on the channel you're trying to select, for example. If it doesn't get confirmation back from the box that a channel changed successfully, it assumes the box is probably turned off and sends the command to power it on, and tries again.

Author:  Jamel [ Tue Aug 16, 2005 10:35 pm ]
Post subject: 

I used the instructions found at

http://knoppmythwiki.org/index.php?page=MotorolaDct2000

It worked for like a second. If I cahnge the channel using the digital box remote it works. But if I try changin the channel using myy keyboard is crashes....can anyone help?

Author:  badgers [ Fri Sep 16, 2005 10:16 am ]
Post subject: 

do you use the -v flag for channel?

Author:  Zeero [ Sun Jul 01, 2007 10:50 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Control of Motorola DCT2000/DCT2244 via serial cable (up

kingtj wrote:
Download the source to the "channel" utility here:

http://mythtv.org/pipermail/mythtv-user ... el.tar.bin

Extract into a folder and type "make" to compile it.


kingtj - I downloaded and extracted the file, but the make process failed. The error was:

serial.c: In function 'serial_init':
serial.c:20:warning: incompatible implicit declaration of built-in function 'bzero'
serial.c: In function 'serial_getpacket':
serial.c:94: warning: incompatible implicit declaration of built in function 'mcmcpy'

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