Re: Serial IR receiver problem

["Robert Green" <ROBERT_GREEN1963@xxxxxxxxx>]

"Erk" <mrman_man@xxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:1180295227.457454.28750@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Bobby, thanks for your reply. I don't however think this has to do
> with stray IR light emitted from the skype adapter or som other
> source. The adapter doesn't have any IR transmitters and the behavior
> of the IR receiver doesn't change with the distance of the remote
> control either.

I misread your reply.  I assumed when you said you had moved the adapter to
another machine that you also unloaded the driver software.  My advice at
this point would be to uninstall all your USB and serial devices and
reinstall them, starting with the most necessary or quarrelsome first, and
that sounds like the Skype.  If that didn't work, I might pick up a $20 USB
card with a different chip than what's in your machine and would trying
running Skype from a totally separate USB controller.  Separate USB ports on
a PC usually are connected to the same USB chip so changing from one port to
another usually doesn't change much.

> That the problem should stem from a sharing problem of some resource
> like a hardware timer sounds very possible to me due to the "feel" of
> things. I'm not sure what a hardware timer is or what I should do to
> confirm that this is the problem though. I guess it comes down to how
> the skype and winlirc softwares are designed and therefore there is
> not much to do if you're right?

Without cost risk, the best you can hope for is find a driver configuration
that suits your hardware.  You may have some luck if you can detail the
problem and report the issue to the Skype people.  Have you contacted them?

When debugging drivers, I've found the newest ones are usually the most
buggy and I start there.  But the issue here could be any piece of USB or
serial driver code running on your system.  It just took the Skype driver to
break the camel's back.

The results of your test sound like a resource contention problem where two
different programs are vying for access to the same hardware.  Lots of HW
makers improve the apparent performance of their devices by breaking
resource sharing rules. Sometimes that can be resolved with a change in the
driver load order or the driver configuration or hardware settings, but
often there's nothing to do but wait for an upgrade if you're married to the
underlying hardware.

> One idea I have to solve this is to buy or build an USB based IR
> receiver hoping that the skype adapter won't affect it. I can't really
> assess the risk with this approach.

I would try an inexpensive USB hub that also contained a serial port
connector before I took that route.  Then I might buy $20 PCI USB card and
try that while waiting for a reply from Skype.  I'd also check for newer
drivers for all the serial and USB devices on your system.  As I said, the
problem could be with any one of them and their interaction with your newest
device.  Good luck!

--
Bobby G.