Long story short.  A client just bought pre-existing home with Niles ZR-8630 along with other components in upstair closet.  System was in working order prior to they decided to renovate the home. 

Four out of six Cat5 from headend to keypad locations (all downstairs) either get butchered or damaged.  However, RG-6 and speakers connections are still intact.

It is impossible to re-run cat5.  Niles R-8 ir remote are now useless without functional keypad built-in ir.  TVs work with direct factory remotes.  I'm thinking about using four MX-980/MSC-400, but unsure how to connect ir out from MSC-400 to control ZR-8630 individually.

Niles keypad - Solo Master

Any input will greatly apreciated!!

The unit has ir input on the back side. You certainly can run it using that off your urc product.

You only need 4 conductors to make a keypad work on a 8630....

Pretty sure you'll have to put the actual keypads (solos) at the equipment rack and stick an emitter on each from the MSC-400 with routing.

The IR in gives you control over the common sources, not the actual receiver/zone.

This is accurate information.


Instead of doing this...


Consider this...

The Solo keypads have an RJ-45 IR sensor input and pin 2 = IR data and pin 3 = GND. With Solo keypads located at the equipment rack and using these IR inputs, the individually routed IR outputs of the MSC-400 can be connected directly to individual keypads for zone control rather than using an actual IR emiiter glued to the keypads.

Since ZR-8630 does have zone discrete code.  So, ir in back of unit does not yield great result.

Just picked half dozen Niles it emitters with hoods; also dug out some shielded 2 conductors wires and 3.5mm mono.  I schedule to come back next week, will post result.

Thank you guys :)

Terminated one end of Cat5 to RJ-45; spliced 2nd conductor to tip and 3rd conductor to ground on 3.5mm mono.  Powered ON/OFF the zone, switching, volume, mute work flawlessly within the zone page.

Built macro with simple conditions, variables, delays, and wait page .... presssed the macro, page jump shown after macro completed.... seemed nothing move at all.  Wasted almost 2 hrs reviewing the macros, ir routing... nothing work.

Accidently changed number repeat on one of the button on the zone page, one of the macro work in a sudden.  Waste another hour to track back what I have done to make it work.  Woohoo, time to get home before snow starts to fall.

ILO, Rob rounds of beer are on me!! Thanksk