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Controlling Multiple VCRs?

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sjaguar13

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I am looking to control multiple VCRs together. I seen some really expensive VCRs that had a wired remote control. The VCRs could be daisy chained so that the buttons on the remote worked all VCRs connected. My idea has to somehow make a row of buttons and then wire them up to each VCR. I don't really know if this would work or how hard it would be do to it. I decided to look stuff up on Google and found something interesting.

https://wiredremotecontrol.blogspot.com/

This guy took the IR sensor and solder in some 3.5mm jacks in serial. Then the jacks could be connected to each other, disabling the remote, and only using the commands sent from the VCR it was plugged into. I am thinking I might be able to actually figure out where to solder the stuff to get this method to work.

He mentioned IR emitters. Would having the remote of one set off an IR emitter to each other VCR work? The problem I see is that not all the VCRs are the same brand. After looking around, I found WinLIRC and computer-based remotes. I think this falls into the same problem, though, that not all the VCRs are the same, so the remote commands could be different.

What would be the easiest way to go about controlling all of them at once?
 
what's the end goal here?

you won't be able to get the vcr's to sync up, since they'll all have a slightly different delay between pressing the button and coming to life

transistors on the switches of each, wired to a master switch panel is probably the only way of getting dissimilar units to work together.
 
Are they all the same brand of VCR? If they are all you need to do is make sure the IR remote is visable by all of them at the same time and all of them will react to it. If not you're really going to need a micro controller to do it, you could just wire an IR blaster to the front of each VCR (basically just an IR led taped to the VCR's remote window) and wire them up to a different I/O pin for each different VCR. Generating remote signals is pretty easy.
 
Slight delay isn't a problem, but a major delay is. The master switch panel was what I want to do, but I can't figure out how to connect the panel to the VCR. It seems easier to have the remote do the work.

They aren't the same brand. How would I control the IR LEDs, and how would I figure out what signals do what functions for each VCR?
 
Assuming you want to do this?, although your reasons aren't very clear, you will need VCR's that use identical remote control signals - so at least the same make, and preferably the exact same models.

You are aware that VCR's are essentially obselete now?.
 
Well, at the TV station i work at, we had a setup where there are all of these little IR emitters on long wires that were double-sticky taped to the receivers on each individual VCR(or DVD player). The emitters were interfaced to a special card that went into a computer.

Then, there was software that allowed us to choose when to play, stop, pause, etc. It was very useful until we upgraded our equipment.
 
Marks256 said:
Well, at the TV station i work at, we had a setup where there are all of these little IR emitters on long wires that were double-sticky taped to the receivers on each individual VCR(or DVD player). The emitters were interfaced to a special card that went into a computer.

Then, there was software that allowed us to choose when to play, stop, pause, etc. It was very useful until we upgraded our equipment.

May I just say that sounds a REALLY cheap and crappy TV station!.

Many years ago I took part in the Sharp Electronics Service Competition (which I won twice), and one year it was held at Yorkshire TV Studios in Leeds. They had a wonderful 'machine' that did pretty well all the station output from tape, including adverts and news clips. It had a number of Beta-cam VCR decks, and a robot arm. You simply opened the cabinet door and placed your tape in one of the slots inside, when you closed the door a robot arm scanned the bar code on the tape - so the computer knew what tape was where. Everything else was controlled by the central computer, with a robot arm placing tapes in and out of machines as required, and the computer activiating them at the right moment. Even the autocue was run by the central computer, so you could do VERY fast changes while the news was life, deleting one tape and adding another, and automatically updating the autocue.

This was well over ten years ago, I presume now it's probably mostly done from hard drives?.

Incidently, they showed us their 'new' studio, where they actually recorded on multitrack VCR's - and editted afterwards. When I mentioned I'd always presumed that was how it was always done I was told not! - it was recorded and mixed live as the show went on, so multiple cameras and only ONE tape, with the production crew mixing and fading in real time!.
 
Call it cheap an crappy if you must, but we have come a long way. Now we have a central server plus a video server. Now all we do is burn our video straight to DVD(yes, while we are actually recording stuff), then we edit the video, and save it to a hard drive.

We also just bought a $5000 HD Video Camera, and we have over $7000 put into our main video system(nice P4), plus a Casablanca video center, and quite a few video cameras and other misc.

The station only serves our town, which is pretty small. It isn't anything professional or commercial, but it is getting pretty good.
 
Marks256 said:
Call it cheap an crappy if you must, but we have come a long way. Now we have a central server plus a video server. Now all we do is burn our video straight to DVD(yes, while we are actually recording stuff), then we edit the video, and save it to a hard drive.

We also just bought a $5000 HD Video Camera, and we have over $7000 put into our main video system(nice P4), plus a Casablanca video center, and quite a few video cameras and other misc.

The station only serves our town, which is pretty small. It isn't anything professional or commercial, but it is getting pretty good.

Fair enough, it's just a DIY station for a small town - we don't have those in the UK - although I believe the Isle Of Wight has a VERY small station of it's own for some regional opt outs.
 
I am liking the WireRemoteControl.BlogSpot.com thing. One question I have, though, is how come you can wire VCRs from different manufactures together without any problems? Does the IR receiver convert the remote signal to something every VCR understands? Why wouldn't it send the same signal it received, making it no different than having each VCR pick up the remote signal?
 
sjaguar13 said:
I am liking the WireRemoteControl.BlogSpot.com thing. One question I have, though, is how come you can wire VCRs from different manufactures together without any problems? Does the IR receiver convert the remote signal to something every VCR understands?

You can't, and it doesn't!.
 
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