Controlling Sky+ from your PC and the Internet – review

submission by Paul Gale – following a post by one of the members of the UKHA_D mailing list, I recently purchased a home brew product that enables control of a sky or Sky+ box from a PC (Windows or Linux) and ultimately, the Internet. I’ve been searching for something to do this for years so thought I’d share my findings with my fellow HAers.

Joseph Heenan is the man who developed this box and the software. A bank transfer and a couple of days later I had one of his dual output boxes in my grubby mitts.

The box has a USB connector at the end of a short lead, two RF connectors (although the box is available with one as standard) and a red LED to show when it’s connected to the PC. This box enables the PC to send remote commands to the sky box through RF2, the RF connector on the back of sky and Sky+ boxes. The result is exactly the same as if you just pressed a button on the remote but without the associated problems and possible unreliability of IR transmission. It also makes home Automation control of one or two boxes a breeze. even much more excitingly is the possibility of finally being able to easily control a sky box from the Internet, something Tivo owners have long enjoyed. OK, so this is already possible by using an IR distribution system and controller such as HomeVision, but this is a much simpler and less expensive way of doing it offered you have a PC available.

The official software that Joseph supplies is as follows (taken from his web site):

Command line utility for linux and Windows to control sky/sky+ box

Script to integrate with mythtv on linux

Windows and Linux cgi scripts to enable control of sky+ through Internet (you’ll need a TV card as well)

Example prototype visual basic application for controlling sky box from Windows

At the time of writing, I’ve only evaluated the Windows command line utility and the Windows CGI scripts (installed on a Windows Apache server). The other items are available but I can’t vouch for what they’re like or how well they work.

Windows Command Line utility – After receiving the box, the first thing I did was to search a large stack of boxes for a suitable RF cable television – RF cable televisions are a rare sight in this high tech house! Plugging the USB connector into the PC resulted in the automatic install of a ‘USB human interface device’, no chauffeurs needed. The LED reassuringly glowing red.

Next came the first test – the command line interface. The command line interface is pretty easy and follows the syntax:

sky-usb-control.exe 0 12 1

This simply sends a ‘1’ to a Sky+ box on output 1 (shown by the ‘0’).

A full list of all remote codes are supplied for both the sky and Sky+ boxes, an example of some other codes are:

8: 12 8
9: 12 9
sky: 12 128
key_tvguide: 2 204
up: 12 88

I typed in the example shown above and hello presto, a ‘1’ appeared on the Sky+ TV output. Un buon inizio.

Internet control – As discussed above, there are also a set of CGI scripts to enable Internet control of a Sky/Sky+ box. The setup for this is a little much more complex but I still had it working in around 20 minutes. This requires several items to be installed on a Linux/Windows PC:

A TV or video capture card

Apache web server software

Activestate Perl software

The CGI scripts and associated support files (SkyWeb)

I had a couple of old Hauppauge ‘WinTV’ cards lying around so I installed one of these in one of my home Automation PC’s. I had two choices of PC, one being my main Windows 2003 Server and the other, my Geovision CCTV server. As the Windows server was full to bursting, I chose the Geovision machine. I was a little concerned at first that the specialist Geovision CCTV video capture card might interfere with the WinTV card but all went smoothly. I also installed the Windows WDM chauffeurs available from the Hauppauge web site.

Next came the Apache and Activestate Perl software installation. I’ve never installed the Windows versions before and was pleasantly amazed how easy the whole process was – just by following the default install options. The whole install took just a few minutes.

The last step was to copy the two SkyWeb directories across to the Apache install directory. There was just one variable to change in the main CGI script (text file) to set which output to use on the controller. In my case, however, this didn’t need changing.

All installation done, I excitedly (is that sad?) opened an IE window and typed in the relevant address. The following screen greeted me:

It wouldn’t take too much effort to change the still image get for a streaming feed using one of the numerous streaming video software packages around. maybe my next task?Clicking buttons on the picture of the Sky+ remote sent the relevant command to the Sky+ box and updated the still image in the video window a second later. Fantastico! The one second delay between pressing a button and the video screen updatingè necessario per consentire a Sky + Box di aggiornare – particolarmente essenziale quando nelle schermate Guide TV come il pianificatore può essere un po ‘lento da aggiornare a volte. Il ritardo è regolabile nello script CGI ma dopo un breve test l’ho lasciato a 1 secondo che sembrava essere ottimale. In uso, il ritardo non è troppo un problema ed è certamente utilizzabile.

Come si può vedere dall’ultima schermata, la pagina Web potrebbe finire con un po ‘di attenzione. Dopo un paio d’ore di lavoro, ho rovesciato la pelle seguente per legare con le pagine web HA HOME. Ho reso la nuova grafica disponibile per Joseph, dovrebbe desiderare di usarli.

Il seguente colpo mostra il controller in uso:

Per me, questo è certamente uno di quei “devono avere” bit di hardware HA, a parte il controllo Internet, ora potrò utilizzare il controller invece del mio controllo Flaky IR che richiede in genere sequenze da inviare più volte. Un’interfaccia XAP ad esso sarebbe buona anche. Non ho ancora valutato la versione Linux dell’utilità della riga di comando o l’app VB (che arriva come codice sorgente piuttosto che un eseguibile compilato). Al momento della scrittura, devo ancora vedere lo script di Linux Mythtv anche se non ho nemmeno usato MythTV.

Ok, probabilmente stai chiedendo quanto ho pagato – bene per la versione a doppia uscita, inclusa la spedizione, ho pagato £ 47,50. La versione di uscita singola è di £ 5 meno costosa – un affare penso. Giuseppe attualmente costruisce solo alcuni di questi dispositivi a settimana e li vendono su eBay anche se ha espresso interesse a costruire un numero maggiore se sa che vendono. Un dispositivo davvero fantastico! Bulk Acquista chiunque?

Ulteriori informazioni possono essere trovate sul sito Web dello sviluppatore: www.heenan.me.uk

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