Unofficial Philips TS1000 Pronto Intelligent Remote Control FAQ Compiled by Will Cunningham (will@madravings.com) http://www.madravings.com/startpronto.html Version 1.02 April 27, 1999 Table Of Contents 1-0 INTRODUCTION 1-01 What is the Pronto? 1-02 Where can I find more information? 1-03 Where can I get a Pronto? 1-04 How much does a Pronto cost? 1-05 How big is the screen? 1-06 How many colors does the screen display? 1-07 What are the lines on the bottom of the screen? 1-08 What is that buzzing noise? 1-09 What frequencies can the Pronto learn? 1-10 What do I do if the Pronto will not power up and I hear 4 beeps? 1-11 How do I handle switching Video Inputs? 1-12 Why can't I get the Pronto to learn a particular device? 1-13 How do I find discrete on/off codes? 1-14 What do I do if my buttons stop working? 2-0 PRONTOEDIT 2-01 What is the ProntoEdit software? 2-02 Where can I get the ProntoEdit software? 2-03 Where can I get a serial cable for the Pronto? 2-04 What does CCF stand for? 2-05 How do I define a custom grid? 2-06 How do I add text to panels? 2-07 Can I make ProntoEdit work on a Macintosh Computer? 2-08 Why won't just tapping the button always work? 2-09 How can I group buttons together? 2-10 Why Can't I rearrange the buttons on the home panel? 2-11 What is the IR Label with Spaces bug? 2-12 What is mouse mode for? 2-13 What are alias's and how are they used? 2-14 Can I add more fonts to the Pronto? 2-15 ProntoEdit Tips 3-0 ACKNOWLEGEMENTS Introduction This FAQ is a compilation of posts from www.remotecentral.com and www.prontoedit.com. It was created with the hopes that someone would decide to use it as a starting place for a more complete document. Feel free to use it as you please, add to it, or modifiy it. 1-01 What is the Pronto? "The Pronto is a universal learning remote control that combines elegance, flexibility and ease of use. It features both a large touchscreen display with an intuitive user interface and direct-access buttons to conveniently provide home entertainment control." - Philips 1-02 Where can I find more information? http://www.pronto.philips.com, http://www.remotecentral.com, and http://www.prontoedit.com are great places to find more information. You can find the most current version of this faq at http://www.madravings.com/startpronto.html. 1-03 Where Can I get a Pronto? You can order it online or you can call philips at 1-888-486-6272 to locate a dealer. There are lists of online dealers at www.remotecentral.com or you could order it from www.prontoedit.com. 1-04 How much does a Pronto cost? The Pronto's MSRP is $399, but some people have reported getting it for $299 or $349. 1-05 How big is the screen? The screen resolution is 240 x 320, but much of that screen is used by the OS. The editable area of the screen is 240 x 219. 1-06 How many colors does the screen display? 4 colors: white, black, light grey, and dark grey. 1-07 What are the lines on the bottom of the screen? There is an off by one error in the pronto software that causes the lines to show up ocasionally when switching between pannels. It will be addressed in the next update of the software. 1-08 What is that buzzing noise? The very faint buzzing sound is made by the inverter, a part of the circuitry that generates the higher voltages needed for the display's backlight from the low voltages provided by the battery. It's normal, nothing to worry about. You have to be in a pretty quiet environment to hear it. 1-09 What frequencies can the Pronto learn? The Pronto can learn frequencies up to 56KHz. It can send frequencies that are higher, all you need to do is find a CCF file that has the codes you need. 1-10 What do I do if the Pronto will not power up and I hear 4 beeps? This usually indicates a corrupt ccf file in the pronto, try uploading a new one with prontoedit. Don't forget to try re-flashing the current software as that may be a required step. You flash the software by using the tools->update pronto menu option. If you are having trouble flashing the software, you should try reseating the serial cable in the pronto. It may help to wait a while before you retry after a failed update before trying again. 1-11 How do I handle switching Video Inputs? The best solution is to find an IR code that switchs you directly to the input you are interested in using. Some devices respond to these codes evne though the remote they shipped with only had an input toggle button. You should search http://www.remotecentral.com and www.prontoedit.com to see if your device has these IR codes or any special tips. Unfortunately many devices do not have direct input codes, so for these devices you will need a different work around. One trick is to find something that puts the TV (or other device) in a consistent state. On some TVs, entering a channel number (e.g. '2','enter') always takes you to the tuner input ('TV') even when you have an input selected. This means you create a few action lists to take you to specific inputs. for example,if the previous example works for you, create a button with just '2','enter' on it, and call it 'TV'. Create another that's '2','enter','input' (or whatever cycles through the inputs) and label it 'Video 1'. Create another which contains '2','enter','input','input' and call it 'video 2'. 1-12 Why can't I get the Pronto to learn a particular device? There are a number of factors that can affect the learning process. The first thing you should try is to increase the distance between the remote you are learning from and your pronto. Some remotes are so powerful that 1-2 feet of space is required for the pronto to learn from them. Things that affect the learning process include direct sunlight and some lamps, so avoiding those things can help too. You may want to check and make sure you are not trying to learn RF signals. There are some DSS systems that can use RF and IR, so make sure everything is configured for IR. If you are still having no luck, you can always look and see if someone else has posted a CCF that supports your device. 1-13 How do I find discrete on/off codes? The best solution is to find an IR code that explicitly turns your device on and one that explicitly turns your system off. You should search http://www.remotecentral.com and http://www.prontoedit.com to see if your device has these IR codes available or any special tips. Unfortunately many devices do not have discrete on/off codes, so for these devices you will need a different work around. You could look into the SmartLinc and HouseLinc systems as they may offer work arounds. You may have another option to consider. Some devices respond to play as a power on. If your device supports this, you could use the following: Power ON = Play,pause,Stop Power OFF = Play,pause,Stop,pause,Power Toggle 1-14 What do I do if my buttons stop working? There have been a few cases where people have reported that after a period of everything working fine, some buttons eventually stop working. This can be fixed temporarily by hitting the reset button on the back of the pronto. The better solution is to disable the Pronto's audio feedback, so it will no longer beep when a button is pressed. You accomplish this by going into the setup menu (press and hold the pronto icon) and setting the touch and button volume to 'X'. ProntoEdit 2-01 What is the ProntoEdit software? The ProntoEdit software is used to edit or backup your pronto configuration using a computer. It is a very powerful tool that has allowed many people to come up with really cool customized UI enhancements. 2-02 Where can I get the ProntoEdit software? You should be able to download ProntoEdit from http://www.dvx8000.com/components/rvprontoedit.html 2-03 Where can I get a serial cable for the Pronto? Philips is providing them for free, if you ask for one. If you don't want to wait for them to send you one, you can use a Kodak DC210 digital camera cable or you can make your own using the diagram available at http://www.prontoedit.com. 2-04 What does CCF stand for? It actually stands for 'Cabernet Configuration File'. 'Cabernet' was the philips codename for the Pronto. 2-05 How do I define a custom grid? - define your own special grid for a panel - make it a default grid (menu Settings, option Set default grid) - save your grid setting(s) (menu File, option Export grids...) - take a look at the txt file that's been created The first 10 rows define the horizontal gridlines, the last 10 the vertical. Each pair of 2 hex numbers define a gridline. 2-06 How do I add text to panels? The best way to do this is to add a frame and double click the frame so that you can label it. It will place text in the center of the frame and then you can resize that frame to be just larger than the text. Once you've done this, you can move the frame(text) around as you wish. Make sure when you entered the text that you selected a font. 2-07 Can I make ProntoEdit work on a Macintosh Computer? Make a pronto cable as per the diagram on http://www.prontedit.com. Then use a standard db-9 to mac din08 adapter to connect it to the serial port on the macintosh. You can also make one of these. Use Zterm to upload the CCF file from your pronto to your mac. Set Zterm to use 115200 baud, 8bits,no parity, 1 stop bit. Hold the Left and Right buttons on the pronto while inserting the pronto cable quickly. You may notice that a bad connection occurs if you insert the cable slowly. Type "dl ccf" then hit enter. Select Xmodem recieve. The pronto should then send the CCF and you'll see the xmodem progress bar. Bring the CCF into ProntoEdit under VirtualPC. Customize it. Now download the CCF back to your pronto by typing "dl ccf" and hitting enter. 2-08 Why won't just tapping the button always work? IR Codes sent from a macro are always sent a small number of times. The reason for this is that some equipment needs to receive the same code a number of times in succession before it will respond to it. That's why just tapping the button isn't working - Pronto is only having enough time to send the code once or twice before the finger is lifted, which is not enough for the equipment to consider it valid. Try creating a new button containing several aliases to the button with the IR code you're having trouble with - that should work better. 2-09 How can I group buttons together? First, you need to "Add Frame" (Alt + A) while on a panel. Then, you can either: A. While the new frame is selected, "Add Button" (Alt + K). This will add a button to the frame, but it will have no icon, of course. You can hold down "Alt" and copy an existing button on top of it, to add an icon. B. Copy/Cut (Ctrl + C or Ctrl X) an existing button from a panel, select the frame you want to copy to, then paste (Ctrl + V). Once you have all the buttons in the frame, and the frame is resized to encompass them, you can change the color of the frame, if desired. Once you have this done, it is far easier to move the buttons as a group, and you can also copy/paste the frame itself (with all included buttons) if you want to reuse the frame somewhere else. 2-10 Why Can't I rearrange the buttons on the home panel? You have to disable the automatic aliases e.g. by renaming the first home panel into something other than 'home'. 2-11 What is the IR Label with Spaces bug? Do not use any spaces in IR code labels. This causes a potential crash and will be fixed in a future update. 2-12 What is mouse mode for? Controlling the DVX-8000, a product from the same group within Philips. The DVX-8000 is a convergance product that combines computers and home theater. 2-13 What are alias's and how are they used? Aliases allows you to refer to an action list you used somewhere else. For example, suppose you created some buttons that went directly to favorite channels on your DSS receiver. Each button would have an action list equivalent to pressing something like '1','2','3','enter' on the numeric pad of the DSS remote control. If you didn't have aliases, you'd have to store the actual IR codes multiple times, in each macro. A royal pain. Instead, you would store aliases to the buttons on the numeric pad page, so there's one 'master' set of actual IR codes stored for your DSS receiver. In effect, an alias is a 'placeholder' that allows you to say 'use that action list over there I've already defined'. a) it saves memory, big time. An alias is way more compact than an entire action list (or just onelearned IR code). b) if you want to share a CCF, using aliases, rather than storing the same IR code all over the place, makes it much easier for them to adopt your CCF. In the DSS example I gave, if the channel buttons use aliases, and someone has an RCA DSS receiver rather than a Sony one, all they have to do is learn the Sony codes for the numeric pad, and all the channel buttons will just work without further effort. Neat, huh? 2-14 Can I add more fonts to the Pronto? You can't really add new fonts to the Pronto, but you could create a custom bmp using the font you want and import that. Even though you can't add additional fonts to the Pronto, you may not be running ProntoEdit with all the built-in font sizes enabled. When I installed ProntoEdit, I only had font sizes of 10, 14, and 18 available to me. But, in actuality the Pronto can do sizes 8, 10, 12 ,14, 16, and 18. By editing your pronto.ini (in the your windows directory) you can enable them. Here's what mine looked like originally, and what I've changed it to (and I've tested the sizes, they do indeed show up on the Pronto just fine): [fonts] 0 = pronto, 8 1 = pronto, 10, * 2 = pronto, 12 3 = pronto, 14, * 4 = pronto, 16 5 = pronto, 18, * [ccf] size = 380 [version] symbols = 1 Now my pronto.ini looks like this: [fonts] 0 = pronto, 8, * 1 = pronto, 10, * 2 = pronto, 12, * 3 = pronto, 14, * 4 = pronto, 16, * 5 = pronto, 18, * [ccf] size = 380 [version] symbols = 1 Note: The symbols will only be available for the default fonts. 2-15 ProntoEdit Tips Tip 1) Label your learned IR codes if you have several in an activity list. Just double click on the Learned item and then click on the text in the lower left of the "IR Sequence Edit Box", standard keyboard pops up. Tip 2) Those with Pioneer Players may have stumbled into this. The Pioneer player wants a "Are You Sure" when ever you hit stop. So you have to hit stop twice. But if you have a power down macro, the power off wants a stop confirmation as well. So I added a STOP followed by Power toggle (for power off) and it works very nicely now. Tip 3) This should be obvious to most of you but you can drag Learned IR codes up and down in the action list. Actually, you can drag anything up or down the list. This is to make up for the fact that all new items are added to the end. Alsom instead of dragging, you can use CTRL + UP and CTRL + DOWN to move the selected item up or down a list. Tip 4) If you start a Home Panel fresh the Order of how buttons are drawn is the order they will be mapped to devices. You can change this order with the "Move to Back" and "Move to Front". For example lets say you add a new button at the top and you want the first device assigned to it them do a "Move to Front" on it. Tip 5) If you don't want a device to show up on the home panel then drag the device to the bottom and don't provide enough buttons to reach it. Tip 6) A really quick way to duplicate a button (standard in many drag and drop Windows applications) is to hold down the control key (CTRL) before you select it with the left mouse button. Keep the control key and the left mouse button down and drag the new copy to it's destination (no Cut/Copy/Paste is needed). Tip 7) Use the cursor keys to fine tune the position of a button, it's a lot easier than the mouse. You must select the button with the mouse first. Again this is pretty standard but some folks might not realize it. You can also hold the SPACE bar while using the arrows for larger (but equal) jumps (I think it's 10 pixels). You can also hold the shift and shift+space key to expand or contract your image. Useful for extending lines. Tip 8) If you rename panels/buttons/devices/macros, all references to the item are kept intact. If you drag a panel from one device or macro to another, all references are kept intact. if you cut it and paste it to a different panel/device/macro, the references are destroyed. Tip 9) I've been experimenting with full screen backgrounds and been stumbling into a problem where once you select the background you can't select anything else on the panel. So I looked for a way to unselect (or select something else) and there is a shortcut key for "Next Sibling" which is simply a . So if you get stuck like this just hit . It may be a handy way to check if you have anything hidden too. You can also use the tab key for selecting the next button/frame and hitting ESC will unselect the current selection. Tip 10) Hold down the Alt-key and click-drag the new icon onto the old button, this will retain all the old button's properties but use the new graphics. Acknowledgements Thanks to everyone who has helped make the Pronto kick so much butt! Here is a list of people (in no particular order) who provided the info contained in this faq. If I left anyone out, please let me know! Thanks! George Mills, Kieth Barrett, Jan van Ee, Eric Shapiro, Ivan Luk, Daniel Tonks, Wim Koopman, a helpful person, Jack Schultz, SMACK, LVS, Brooks Weisblat, Michael Lynch, Jesse King, Kevin Calvano, Joel C, Chris Loker, Joe Saccio, and Darian.