BARCO CRT PROJECTOR POWER SWITCH UTILITY v1.1

I wrote this utility so I could create remote control macros to
power up my home theater system including my Barco 1208s CRT
projector.  The projector provides no discrete on/off codes on
its remote control, just a power toggle button, so there was no
way to ensure that the projector ended up turned on.

The answer is to hook the projector up to a PC and use its RS232
interface instead of its IR remote control.  The PC is able to
ask the projector for its status and switch the power on or off
accordingly.

Usage is simple.  If you have the projector plugged into your
COM1 port, just run "barcopower /on" or "barcopower /off".
If you're using a different port, use the /port flag, e.g.
"barcopower /port com2 /on".  There are other options too
(run with the /help option for a list) but they're mostly for
debugging.

The app runs silently unless something goes wrong, in which
case it pops up an error dialog.

I use Girder (www.girder.nl) and an IRMan (www.evation.com) to
invoke this app in response to a signal from my remote control.

Source code (for VC++) is in the src subdirectory.  It's quick
and dirty code but it gets the job done.

This utility will NOT work for Barco LCD projectors, which use
a different serial protocol than the CRTs.  Barco's Web site
has documentation for the LCD protocol, so if you own an LCD
projector and want to tweak this app to control it, please feel
free.  If you modify it in such a way that the CRT code still
works, send me your changes and I'll fold them back into the
master copy.

-Steven Grimm <koreth-barcopower@midwinter.com>



VERSION HISTORY:

16 July 2001: Initial release.

17 July 2001: v1.1.  Retries up to 3 times if the projector
doesn't respond.  Also logs error messages to a logfile
(default C:\temp\barcopower.log, change with /log option)
rather than popping up error dialogs; the downside is no more
visible indication that something went wrong, but the upside is
the app isn't sitting there waiting for user input forever.