DirecTV IP Driver

This driver supports DirecTV Satellite Receivers over ethernet.

Driver History

1.11 - Initial release of driver

1.2 - Adds the ability for multiple tuner instances per driver. Adds selected device

1.21 Adds control support for older deivces (for example: T1B 433Mhz), Adds boolean variables for selected tuner and a current tuner integer variable, Adds text variables for tuner names listed in Config.

1.3 - Adds an update on how the client communication port is handled, clients are assigned the same comm object and command stack as their Genie, this will eliminate any conflicts when communicating to both Genie and client at the same time and prevent comm port lock up. Adds a keypad object that will send channel data once "Enter" is pressed. Adds a 'Set Send To All" function that toggles a boolean variable, when set to true, keypad commands will send to all devices in the configuration file. Adds an "All Tuners" option to the "Direct Channel Tuning" function, this will send the desired channel to all devices in the configuration file.

1.31 - Force HTTP disconnects after each response and force HTTP opens if additional commands are queued.

1.32 - Adjusted heartbeat timeout and added XPDiagnostics high level heartbeat pass count.

Configuration

New to version 1.2 a "Use Selected Device" option was added. When the check box is not enabled, only old version functions and variables are visible and tagged with "(Single Instance Version)". When the "Use Selected Device" box is checked, the selected variables are visible as well as the older versions. The single instance version of variables and functions, while still visible, should not be used when using selected or multiple devices.

To configure the driver you must set it to the correct type of receiver. For a standard receiver or DVR you must enter the devices IP address. The driver has to relay commands to a client through the DVR it's connected to so you have to put that IP address in and then the MAC address of the client box.

In the receivers themselves you must enable both External Access and Current Program. This is in the Menu under Settings/Whole Home/External Device where you must set both options to "ALLOW". The IP configuration of the device is also under Settings in Internet Setup/Advanced Setup/Advanced IP Config.

The amount of data sent by the receivers is pretty large. In a large commercial installation that doesn't require this metadata you can drastically reduce the amount of data on the network by unchecking the 'Get Receiver Feedback' checkbox. This will keep the driver from continuously polling the receivers to get the feedback data and will only display power and connection status

Commands

The driver supports basic emulation of the remote control. It does not provide transport status, but it does allow direct station tuning through a single command.

Variables/Metadata

The driver displays metadata from the currently playing program as well as the title/artist/album for the music channels. It also has variable that tell you what type of program it is (music or not) so you can display the correct metadata variables,

Presets/Favorites

Allows users to create presets that automatically get labelled with the channel number and network abbreviation (SONIC stations are labeled with the actual station name), when using selected device presets are tuner based and will show across all devices that have that tuner currently selected.