Best Strategy

Other Devices & Integrations Home Theater & Smart Speakers
1

I have an AV closet. Currently I leave the door open so I can use my IR remotes.

I would like to have IR repeater near my TV that would forward to the AV Closet. I also want Vera to be able to send commands to both The TV and AV Closet. It looks like I need something like one of the following for the living area and the closet:

[ol][li]SQ Blaster[/li]
[li]Logitech Harmony Link[/li]
[li]USB-UIRT[/li][/ol]

AND I need a separate solution for the IR Forwarding
Are there any simpler solutions ?

2

How do you connect your downstream components to your AV rack? HDMI or Component etc?

The SQ blaster is a good place to start (wait for the plus version though), as its much more flexible.
If you start with the SQ blaster, it gives much better stand-alone/direct control (repeat keys etc for volume control) and makes it easier to create plugins for automation purposes on Vera thanks to the work that @Guessed put in integrating it.

I actually use a combination of RS232, a USB-UIRT, an SQBlaster, HDMI-CEC and some IR injectors (sends over HDMI CEC channel).

I think once we know how you distribute video, it’ll be easier to make some recommendations.

3

That’s pretty much what I do. I have a wired IR Repeater (Xantech) hanging underneath the TV, and the AV gear is in a rack in the garage.

Behind the TV, I’ve tucked a SQBlaster… that can blast to the TV and down the IR Repeater to the rest of the gear.

At least, that’s how I originally had it, and it worked fine. I test stuff for SquareConnect, so I have 2 Blasters at the moment, but the other config worked fine.

Over time, I’ve also replaced the IR interface with custom, where possible, but there’s a ton of devices that it’s not easy to do (AppleTV, GoogleTV, PlayStation, etc, etc)

At one point I was using wireless IR Repeaters (Powermid?) but those didn’t work too well, YMMV

4

New house … I ran 3 CAT6 cables to each TV location in the house.
Currently I use dual CAT6 to distribute my HDMI. The 3rd is available.
Ultimately I want to distribute video to my other rooms as well.

How many IR ports does the SQLBlaster+ support ?

I assume I can change the topology from guessed and place the SQLBlaster in the AV Closet. And then I can direct a command to a particular IR port, as I have similar TVs in each room. Then I could also setup IR repeaters in all rooms that blast back in the AV Closet.

I wonder how well Cat6 would be for slow speed IR signals ?

5

The reason I have the IR Repeater going from the Living room to the AV closet, is so that the Mrs can continue to run the traditional remote control… which she prefers.

I think I ran a new wire for the repeater, as I only have 2x CAT-5e cables, and HDMI (which I wanted to use the HDMI-CEC on… originally). The Garage is on the other side of the wall, so it wasn’t hard to pull the extra wiring :wink:

The SQBlaster+ has 5 Total Channels. One of these is “built in”, in that it’s using the LED’s inside the enclosure. The other 4 have 3.5mm connectors on the side of the enclosure. It looks like the picture in my sig, but more detailed pictures are in their pamphlet (squareconnect.com)

Each Channel is separately controllable. I modified the SQBlaster Plugin a few wks back so it’ll detect the newer model and handle it accordingly (see SQBlaster for details)

6

I tried the following:

  1. SQ Blaster
  2. IR over HDMI
  3. Logitech Harmony 890 Pro

Eventually landed on 890 Pro as primary remote, with SQ Blaster used for some things. My set up has 3 TV locations including a Theater with Projector and uses HDMI for distribution and a 4x4 Monoprice HDMI Distribution device. The IR over HDMI lead to some issues with long runs of HDMI cable with certain devices (WD LiveTV) giving color issues on the projector. The 890 Pro gave me room control and an interface for the video components that my wife could use so that was chosen as primary control. I also have distributed audio in the same cabinet running to 4 locations with separate amp and Aton audio distribution. This I control with SQ Blaster and it works well. I can also control Video components with SQ blaster and set up the screens to do it.

7

The output of the SQBlasterPlus is very high, and can drive signals over many feet - I think cat5 cable is the best to run the IR on. You can also adjust the output with some internal jumpers to reduce the voltage if you find your emitter at the other end is too high, or you get interference.