The pronto does not control one of my units despite the fact that it(pronto) learned the codes. The unit is a cable music choice box by General Instruments. I tried copying the IR code of the unit to another remote and then to the pronto to no avail. The baffling thing is that pronto learns the codes. All my other remotes work the unit fine. I also tried the suggestions given on "Sony DVD S7000 and the Pronto" a few postings down but no success. Does anyone have any suggestions, and has anybody else experienced similar problems?

I initially had a problem getting the learned
IR signals from my cable box remote to work
through the Pronto.

It turned out the batteries in the cable remote were very weak and I had initially taught the Pronto in my living room under bright daylight.
With fresh batteries and in a darker room, I relearned the signals and no problem. Also, make sure there is no misallignment between the
Pronto learning eye and your teaching remote.
As an example, my cable remote is very thin so
if it is placed too close to the Pronto during
learning, the windows are really offset. So try
those three things.

I think even though the Pronto may come up with
'OK' for a given IR signal your sending it, that
doesn't necessarily imply that it is checking
whether or not the signal is valid for the device.
I think as long as it receives a minimum signal
strength of recognizable frequency, then it
comes up with 'OK'. Of course other IR junk
from room lighting or misallignment etc. could be
mixed in.

Good luck.

Tony,

I would also suspect that Pronto has not seen sufficient actual IR code. As previously noted, Pronto does not confirm a code to be valid, simply that it has seen what woudl seem to be an IR code.
While I was teaching one of ny demo Prontos the Meridian codes, I found that some of the buttons registered in the PC software although I knew they were RC codes and therefore should have registered as . Upon relaerning teh codes with better alignment, they indeed registered as RC codes, as they should.
Unless the software when released includes "truth" table of some sort (unlikely) this only works for RC (Philips/Marantz)codes that are internal.
However, I hope this provides some indication about how noise and low ouput/misalignment can affect correct learning.

The other issue that might prevent a successful capture is having the remote too close to Pronto, particularly if it's one with a powerful IR emitter. Pronto's IR receiver can become 'saturated' and unable to detect all the details of the IR code being received. Unfortunately there's no simple way for Pronto to detect this and warn the user. The best advice I can offer is to experiment a little with the positioning of the two remotes.

The other thing to be wary of is cheap compact flourescents. These sometimes use elecronic balasts in the 50 kHz range, and put out a lot of 50 kHz IR energy - which cannot be distinguished from a remote signal by Pronto. This can cause problems with operating IR-controlled equipment in general, not just with Pronto. Philips compact flourescents don't have this problem, of course :-)