First, let me thank Daniel and everyone else for all of the great information that has been shared here over the years. I'm the long-time owner of the original model Pronto and learned much about how it and ProntoEdit work from reading and absorbing the tips and tricks provided here by others.

I work as a home theater consultant, with my primary focus on ISF calibrations. I don't actually do much remote programming work, as I've found it's difficult to find customers who are willing to pay anything close a reasonable rate based on the number of hours required to do these right. As a result, I tend to limit my remote programming services as an add-on, and I'm very upfront about the fact that I'll only work on them on a "time-available" basis.

Last December, I had a friend of a customer contact me about programming his recently acquired iPronto. I moved forward on that project before reading much of the detail here about the iPronto. Once I was committed, I had a lot of "uh oh" moments, based on all of the problems seen early on with the iPronto and its editing tool.

Fortunately my new customer decided to wait for the arrival of his HD TiVo before having any programming work done. I think that a lot of the bugs in the original iPronto firmware and iProntoEdit were worked out between the beginning of this year and September. While I was prepared for the worst, I was pleasantly surprised by the stability and functionality of the system and software. Yes, there's a lot of things still missing, which in my case resulted in a lot of time spent in Paint Shop Pro and Crystal Button. But overall, I found it much more reliable and robust than the ProntoNG system and editor, which I think is a poor excuse for a product.

Anyway, I finished up this project over the weekend and while it's pretty simple, I think it turned out really well. The key point of interest here (I think) is the pseudo "four up" page that I've created and dubbed "the Dashboard." The Dashboard, designed to replace the "four up" functionality that was lost in the recent firmware upgrade, is the primary activity screen for the iPronto remote user. Because this particular equipment configuration has only three activities (HDTV, DVD and Cable), the four-pane display really works well.

The descriptive labels above each of the sections in the Dashboard display are actually buttons that can be clicked to take the user to a full-page display of controls for that particular component/activity. The full-page displays, which are color-coded to match the Dashboard section, replicate the same buttons in the upper right corner to match the corresponding panel of the Dashboard. Each of the full pages include macros at the bottom to switch to one of the two other activities, or to return to the Dashboard.

The Switcher on the Dashboard allows jumping from one activity to another, and these include working discrete codes so the switching among components and TV and surround sound is largely failsafe. The same macros, along with a System Off macro, are included on the home page.

The Home Page is obviously the entry point for the remote user and provides a quick and easy way to start a system activity, or at the conclusion of viewing/listening to shut down the system.

I welcome any comments or questions about this system file and hope some of you find it useful as a jumping off point for your own designs.

This message was edited by ClearlyResolved on 09/13/04 15:53 ET.