I had a macro that worked intermittently and adding delays made it more reliable. I was wondering if there is a reasonable 'rule of thumb' value to use for the time of delays. I'm guessing that a given device needs some IR 'dead time' in order to frame the IR commands and that this varies with the device.

I set my macro delays to .2 sec, what delay values have others been using? Is there a typical safe value? Are delays needed mainly when changing between devices or sometimes between commands to the same device as well?

DW

For some of my macros, (Several at 200+ commands each) I require a .1 sec delay or the unit (in this case my Sony SmartFile VCR) will go into a 'fast scroll' mode. I'd really like to try .075, .05, .025 delays to see if they would be reliable for my macro needs.

As far as 'normal' macros, I've never needed a delay more than .1

Craig.

P.S. What are the odds that ProntoEdit will come out today? And who's taking bets? ;-)

It's strange. The original macros that operated my Hitachi TV needed no delays -- as fast as the Pronto could go, the TV could go with no glitches. However I recently won (yay!) a 27" Sony and now I need a .2 second delay between TV commands else the next one is missed. I don't think there's any real rule-of-thumb, but .2-.5 should cover even the slowest of equipment.

I would suspect that delay duration may be dependant upon whether or not there's any buffering within the IR receiver/decoder unit.
If there's a buffer, a delay may not be necessary, if there's not, then I would think the delay will be needed. It's probably also dependant on wether the main micro is busy after the first command and if it's also doing the decoding.

Jack,
You're probably right, it could be buffering vs. IR dead time. This would imply you could do some fixed number of IR commands without having any problems, but you may eventually exceed the buffer size(with some killer macro).
DW