The only thing they've provided are the parts that they used that where GPL from start, and they have done so from the start:

"The Pronto products contain software provided under a variety of licenses. Some components are "free" or "open source" software, while other components are proprietary.

Pronto products may contain software that is based in part on the work of the Independent JPEG Group. Pronto products may contain software of which portions are copyright 2010 The FreeType Project (www.freetype.org) Pronto products may also contain libcurl, for which copyright and permission notice apply."

These are:

busybox-maestro
glibc-maestro.tar
libcurl-maestro
libfreetype-maestro
libjpeg-maestro
libjs-maestro
libpng-maestro
libsdl-maestro
libsdl_image-maestro
libsdl_ttf-maestro
libuclibc-maestro
linux-maestro
lrzsz-maestro
mtd-utils
wireless_tools-maestro
wpa_supplicant-maestro
zlib-maestro

While it would be possible to use freescale drivers and a ARM version of linux, how would we flash it on the Pronto? How would we get the touchscreen running? And there is probably more that would be really hard to do that I'm overlooking.

Damn, I guess I'm too late coming back to the party.

Not necessarily... Pronto is gone but there are a lot of new players now. Most revolve around the iPod/iPhone/iPad/Android devices.

It would be nice if there was an app that can talk directly to the rfx9600 extenders.

Andrea, The party is just about over, but glad to have you drop in.

Like many others I have all that I need to keep my Pronto PRO's alive and happy. I have not tried PEP3 as all I intend to do is just maintenance and PEP2 is fine.

I really want to sit down with the Cocoa manuals and figure out how to program the iPad natively. I will get to it, probably after the summer. Right now I am too busy reading with my Kindle.

I have played with iRule on the iPad and modified my Theater PC to accept commands from the iPad. I had to make some minor changes as the Pronto is a two way device and the iPad/iRule currently is not. I sometimes send things back to the Pronto and had to work around that for the iPad. The iRule developers are going to release a 2-way version, but I have concerns as to how well it will perform. The Pronto did two-way communications so well because you had all of JavaScript, aka ProntoScript, available to process the response. In todays world a Pronto coupled to a Global Cache gateway instead of an RFX-xxx for RS232 and IR would be my choice of how to go. In My Theater the Theater control PC handles all IR using a Global Cache iTach, and all RS232 using a USB to RS232 8 port converter. I have seen such converters in 8 or 16 ports for under $100 on eBay.

I have rebuilt the theaters librarian so that it is a stand alone system and runs on a small asrock atom PC (~$320). It is in sleep state except when I start the theater at which times it gets a WOL. It is put to sleep when the Theater is shut down. In fact the main theater control PC is normally in sleep state and the Pronto sends a WOL when I power up the theater and then probes the PC to see when it is awake. Those interested in the Movie Librarian can check my website for some screenshots (bottom of the main page - www.the-gordons.net). The theater control PC uses the Librarian PC as if it were another component in the Theater communicating with it over TCP/IP. When I select what I want to watch the librarian sends the theater PC the needed information to start the Dune player whaich is already ready (out of standby). The movie starts in 7 second BR or DVD, with no previews, warnings, etc.

Getting back to iRule; it seems they have just negotiated a deal with an Australlian distributor covering Australia and New Zealand which appears to lock out the DIYer. IMHO that was not a smart move, at least the way they have done it. I think it will come back to bite them.

First of all the professional installer does not want to deal with the likes of us (DIYer's). We are a royal pain in the ass, always wanting changes and not wanting to pay for them. Secondly, Professional installers can gain a lot of insight and assistance from experienced DIYer's. Lastly I do not believe DIYer's are a threat to the Pro Installer. The markets are really different. An advanced DIYer will not use a pro installer if they can't get it, they will just use a different product.

Hi Barry,

In some ways I'm in the same boat as you. I'm well set on my Prontos and I'm using the two-way communications across IP from the Pronto to a couple of devices. Unlike you, I'm not using an intervening PC based "controller" (yet).

I've also been experimenting with IRule on the iPad and have bought a Global Cache IP2IR to control my IR only devices from iRule. I saw in your description you mentioned using the Global Cache gateways through your PC controller. Have you made any attempt to control the Global Cache gateway directly from your Pronto?

Also, I'm in complete agreement with your points about iRule's decision to go professional installer only in Australia and New Zealand. It was ugly enough when some home automation vendors used their control over proprietary hardware to enforce this kind of policy. But iRule is now going to used a completely cloud-based software solution to enforce this. In my mind a completely self-defeating strategy. I'm sure iRule could have found a much better solution to allow professional installers to protect their intellectual property (e.g. encryption) without completely locking out the DIY user.

Jeff

What is iRule going to do for us DIY'ers who've spent the $50 on a license fee? Are they gonna refund the $$$?

They're only enforcing the "professionals only" policy for customers in Australia and New Zealand. Apparently they have some scheme in mind that will block access to the iRuleBuilder site from any IP addresses in those countries except for authorized professional installers !

Jeff

Hi Guys.

Interesting comments. Good to see there is still some some activity here. I thought I would drop in to see what was still going on in the Pronto forum.

I originally went for Pronto a few years ago because of the reasons mentioned above - the community was much more welcoming and accepting to the techie enthusiast who is happy to contribute their own experience and resources but has no intention of ever using a third party professional installer. Help from a number of the people on this forum was instrumental in getting me to where I was (particularly Lyndel & Barry). The most useful thing was the huge archive of great information and advice – almost anything I tried I found someone had done something similar before. I was disappointed when Pronto went down (RIP) as I'm in the process of building a new house and I had already created a lot of the security monitoring, entertainment, media, lighting/C-Bus control, and other toys to work with Prontos, when I had to find something new to start again.

I've recently been re-invigorated by some of the alternative systems I have been looking into. Although it's taken a few paradigm shifts in approach, I've pretty much managed to replicate everything I was planning to do with Prontos on a couple of other platforms which seem similarly welcoming and don't try to enforce "professional installer/distributor only" lockout policies. In addition, the different approaches to control application building have opened a number of other interesting avenues and ideas for me.

With the portable device evolution happening currently, I gave up on ever finding another accessible and fully programmable smart remote alternative (with screen + hard buttons) that was not artificially restricted or stupidly overpriced. However if you’re happy to try things like Globalcache gateways combined with other user interface devices (tablet/PC/iWhatever/Android), you can do some pretty cool stuff now.

If you want to use Windows PC or tablet, Stardraw Control 2010 is a bit pricey to get a licence (although you can have a play with a working time limited trial version), but once you get your head around the approach, it is also very powerful. You’re back end coding needs to be in C# rather than Javascript/Prontoscript, (nothing a few hours Googling won’t help you get around). If you create a “driver” for 2 way control, you can expose it to the graphic programming interface and use it that way from then on. Interestingly, if you do pay for a licence, the company will undertake to build a 2-way driver for any device you request if you can provide the documentation. And you can use your existing Pronto CCF/Hex codes for IR programming. Then you can create either stand alone applications in windows, or client-server set-ups at compilation time. The forum and company help are very helpful too. Although the reference material is OK, probably the only drawback is that there is so much capability which is not fully documented (maybe it’s obvious to someone who had grown up using C#, but I kept having “I didn’t know you could do that!” moments). There’s some good teaching videos too.

Alternatively, I also recently started trying CommandFusion which is also very powerful, but another mindwarp to get into the underlying paradigms if you’re coming from Pronto land. Although initially created for iPhone clients, there is now an iPad client, with current development for GUI clients for Android, Windows and Web browser based control. Although there was already ability for 2-way control, the most recent release includes full Javascript support as well, giving much more flexibility, and allowing me to port most of my existing Prontoscripts. I was forced to learn about RegEx for parsing feedback, but in retrospect I am now grateful I did. Again, there’s a lot of powerful features and methods which are barely documented, but simply emailing for help gets pretty comprehensive answers fast, and an enthusiastic helpful community is already growing for it. Got to re-learn or convert you CCF/Hex codes to Globalcache, but I hear they are negotiating with IR database providers. A recent e-mail chat with one of the people there revealed they are about to release a range of back end hardware devices as well. They’re Australian too! (Not sure if it’s just my perception, but seems us Aussies are over-represented in these areas – maybe because we have different automation products to most of the world, and overpriced low volume tech is even more overpriced by the time it gets sold here!).

I was also planning to look into OpenRemote again, but I just have not had the time. A quick look at the forums shows they are also pretty proactive and helpful also.

I still think it would be great if either some Chinese/Taiwanese company found a way to licence and build cheap Pronto clones, or if the firmware could be ported into software host/emulator (for iPads, Windows, Android, etc – which should be easy given the Simulator could already do most of it anyway), so that everything that has been created for Pronto by both professionals and hobbyists was not going to waste.

I’ve got no business interest in these areas, and am never likely to have one. Just thought I’d share the experiences as a fellow Pronto Hobbyist Geek who was despondent at the death of Pronto, but have since found new exciting alternatives that allow me to re-use at least some of the effort/coding/knowledge I had put into my own Pronto set-ups.

Best wishes all.

Roti,

Thanks for a very interesting post. Good to see that Australians are in the forefront of all this.

I am going to stick with the Pronto for the time being but recognise that, at some time, I am going to have to move platform. For me, hard buttons are an absolute must so my hope is that, at some time, smartphone or equivalent devices with hard buttons begin to appear and that my Prontos don't break down before that. Also, because of the programming investment I have made, javascript is an absolute must. Finally, I don't want to get caught in the Apple or Microsoft proprietary thing, so Android is the obvious way to go for me.

Given all this, from your post, my current shortlist of software options is:

a. CommandFusion.
b. OpenRemote.

Anyone like to add to that list?

Does OpenRemote support javascript or, if not, is it likely to in the future?

Since the Pronto is dead I think what's needed is an open source solution and hardware with hard buttons. Really taking one of the android phone design and adding hard buttons and even different profiles (e.g. 9400/9600/9800 size and layout). Also other layouts like conventional remote with small touch screen area and extra hard buttons. Devices should have ir in and out (i believe ir is cheap to add (?) ), bluetooth, and wifi tends to be standard.

Vizio is reportedly working on an IR emitting tablet:

[Link: electronichouse.com]

I thought one of the reasons Philips gave for discontinuing the Pronto line was that EU or national regulations prevented them from out-sourcing their manufacturing to lower their costs? My TSU9600 says "Made in Belgium", for example.

I happened to pass a display of cheap consumer electronics items in a pharmacy, and just to kill time I picked up a bunch of different Philips-branded products. The boxes all said "Made in China".

I'm confused...

I have been playing recently with Command Fusion, and I must admit I do like it.

Their GUIbuilder (GUIbuilder=PEP2) is pretty simple to get used to and offers good control for graphic placement. Buttons have 2 states (pressed and released) as we are used to and you can set those states, causing the image to change, in many ways. They have implemented Javascript and have done a decent job of interfacing it to the screen, it does take a little getting used to as it is different then what Philips did. The Guibuilder produces an XML file which describes the configuration and references the graphics and a Javascript object, and an xml file is just a text file. Think of the configuration file in the xcf.

They have provided an object called CF which is used to interface to the configuration and manipulate it much in the same manner as the Philips object extensions they had for the same purpose. Terminology is IMHO a bit obtuse. For example they refer to a "Join" which can be thought of as the "Id" of an object, where in pronto you assigned a prontoscript tag.

I have given some thought to writing an xcf to gui converter but I first have to get more familiar with what they (CommandFusion) have done. It would not do a 100% conversion but would provide a leg up in porting a Pronto PRO configuration. My initial thought was to place an image of the 9800 right on the iPAD screen so all the buttons would be there with the screen area at the correct size. That would solve all of the graphic scaling issues and provide soft versions of the physical buttons. Probably also put out a list of all Javascript references that are on the buttons and pull all the Javascript code into a single module so that th user could rewrite it. Don't think it is worth the effort to do a 100% conversion.

They (CommandFusion) are planning on writing more viewers. The viewer they have now runs on the iPAD and is driven by the xml file out of the GUIbuilder. They do plan to do an android based viewer that would take the same file. Once again graphic scaling may be an issue.

I believe it has more to do with changing a current state of things. Ramping down a current operation to send it elsewhere seems complex and costly with some of the labor laws in Europe. Plus, tablets and smart phones are changing the economics for flat panel manufacturers. I would no longer pay the dollars I paid for my TSU9800. The price for the 9400s was steep, but not so bad.

Paul