Hi, I have an MX-980 and MSC-400 and noticed a problem I am having. Anything I do ends up causing all the IR flashers to illuminate. I "assume" this means they are outputting something. This may be causing some issues for me. Anyway, I have all the MX-980 commands configured for the proper ports on the MSC-400, and I also made sure the MSC-400 configuration and each device's configuration are only one port. I have 5 IR and 5 RS-232 devices. I even went in and put each device to an unused port for the signal type not used (unused IR port for the Serial) since they all list both under device properties. So far I have not been able to get only the flasher for the commanded device to flash. Is there another output all buried somewhere? Very strange. Everything does "mostly" seem to work (I have had some trouble with certain macro's but moving things around has helped some - and no these are not time related, since TV power on was first in the list and did not work until I moved some things around). Very strange...

Update - I swapped two IR blasters and the functions did not work. Implying that the commands are following the correct channel. However, they all still flash. Possibly URC did this just to let you know a command went out? Seems silly to me if true, since I would think you would only want to indicate "which" blaster got a command. Again, very strange. I would be interested in hearing thoughts on this...

One question and one guess.

Question: WHEN do all flashers flash?

A. When running a macro from the MSC400
B. When you send a single command from the remote?

Guess: My thought is everything is assigned correctly in the MSC-400 but the devices are set to ALL in the remote.

This would be true if the MSC-400 macros only flash the right emitters, but every time you press a single command on the remote (i.e. Play, Stop, CH+, etc) all emitters flash.

Well,

As it turns out, I only have triggers currently (I am currently running macros from the 980 - baby steps). I have gone back through the remote and made sure nothing is "all". Thanks for the reply. Possibly someone who has a similar configuration handy (980 and 400) can see if it behaves the same way (all lights very briefly flash on any trigger). When a command goes out to a device, the flashes are brighter and longer.

Confusing post. First you said ir and 232 now all you have are triggers? Even though you are issuing macros from the 980 the msc is still picking them up via the antenna and outputting via the ir ports. Have you set port assignments in mx editor and msc editor? You've basically created an expensive mrf350...why you're doing this i'm not sure.

edit: send me your 2 files and i'll take a quick look.

Feel free to send them to me too and I can load them into my MSC and 980 and see what happens.

I had exactly the same problem when my antenna was too close to my equipment rack. It was caused by interference.

Moving it around made the problem more intermittent, but didn't fix it completely until I moved the RFX antenna module to another part of the room (extended it with Cat 5 cable), and haven't had the problem since.

Definitely something to try.

Sean

Hi - I really want to thank everyone for the suggestions. I have tried a couple, and so far still flashing (very short). I will update when I have had time to try everything (it might take me a couple of days).

Thanks again.

Well,

I tried the suggestions given to me so far, and have come to the conclusion that either this is a bug in the latest software for the MSC-400, or somewhere along the way I corrupted my msf file (I have reloaded the software, a couple of times, but have not built up the msf from scratch - I did try a brand new MX-980 file). I did build a couple of longish macro's and the extra IR data going out to all the ports on the MSC-400 only occurs at the very beginning. This leads me to believe that it is either a bug or corrupt file (since it happens on every single smart macro triggered from the MX-980). I can add delays in the macro's to get around any devices that need a delay (since some require a dead time before IR input). So I can live with this for a while (until it's fixed, or I have time to rebuild from scratch - that will take some time :-) ).

Again thanks for all the help!

Well, an update of sorts. Following the suggestion of reporting "bugs" I did report this. After sending my files I was informed this was "normal". Well, needless to say I'm not terribly happy about that response - since pass-through IR commands work just fine. I don't see how you CI's can put up with this (or maybe not enough have complained). So my advice would be to use pass-through IR commands as much as possible with the remote, and make sure serial commands come first in any MSC-400 macros so that the devices have time to come back on-line (for those that go off-line briefly after they see IR for someone else). I can live with it now that I know what it is and how to get around it...