On December 24, 2018 at 11:23, Fins said...
How the hell do you make money in this business?
Well, one item is that instead of trying out multiple sets of IR codes to see which ones work, spending one to four hours to do something that surely someone else has done, I'll simply ask a short question, and VOILA overnight I have the answer. Why do you think that limits my income?
All the discrete codes for both Yamaha and Samsung are in the URC database.
I admit it: I never looked because I knew I'd have to go through several models' worth of files to find the commands I need. Or I could ask.
For Samsung TVs, start with the devices at the top of the list, “discrete codes”. Neither brand has changed their codes in years, so it only takes a couple minutes for an experienced tech to find which codesets work.
Let's say "a few" actually turns out to be five minutes. I've gone home from the worksite and I need the codes next time I'm there. I asked. It took a minute. What is your problem with this?
Choice:
A. Ask someone about it. I will then have to go to that/those command sets and I will find what I need. Downside: my mighty male ego will be bruised from having to actually stop and ask directions of someone who has been there.
Or
B. See how many codesets there are. Try them out, one at a time. Very likely the order that they're listed in won't correspond to the most useful commands for the latest TV, so I'll be looking, at random, at various codesets until I find what I need. If I'm very lucky the first one will work perfectly. If not I will either have to try them all to find one that has everything I need, or cobble together commands for two or three TVs to get what I need.
What I wonder, Fins, is why you would put yourself through this if someone else might have already done so. Why are you afraid to ask for help, for directions? Did you see that help came fast? And overnight, when I couldn't work on it anyway? I don't find the method of being one of a thousand lone installers inventing the wheel over and over to be a good method.
I'm sure this probably shows some personal flaw of mine, but --
I'm still irritated at JVC for their RS232 instructions for the first D-ILAs on the market (the ones that were first sold as the Hughes brand). Instead of giving us a list of RS-232 commands we could just friggin copy, they published a 60+ page volume on HOW to construct RS-232 commands for this projector.
I was also installing Vidikron at that time, and Vidikron manuals had, on a single page, a list of EVERY RS-232 command EXACTLY as it had to be entered.
The engineers at JVC somehow could not understand me when I asked, "didn't someone, at some time, actually use this manual to construct RS-232 commands? Didn't they make a list for future use? How about providing that list? Why make a thousand installers each wade through that manual instead of giving us the commands?"
Fins, I'll stop and ask and I won't feel bad about it.
