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How To Program a Philips Pronto Using USB on Mac OS X

Sun, 3 Mar 2013 21:10:35 GMT

This article explains how I got my Philips Pronto Universal Remote editing working under Mac OSX using a USB-to-RS232 Adapter.

Philips Pronto Remote Control

No universal remotes made today are as versatile as the original Philips Pronto line. My two TS-1000’s are still going strong, although they are wearing out. These remotes have been discontinued for a few years now, and earlier this year Philips Home Entertainment division was sold off so there’s little hope they’ll make a come back. We’re still waiting for someone to produce a reliable touch-screen remote with programable button designs and IR commands. The closest match on the consumer market today I can find is the L5 Remote, which adds an IR dongle to an iPad or iPhone, however its macro ability is limited and it freezes frequently if you press buttons too quickly (due to a hardware limitation of the dongle and iOS interface). I have the L5 and I’ll post an article when I get it working satisfactorily.

Connecting a Philips Pronto to a computer requires rs-232 serial communications, using a special cable that converts the minimal 4 pins of a 9-pin connector to a male 4 “ring” 1/4″ phone plug. This cable comes with the Pronto, so if you don’t have one you’ll either need to make one or find one on the Internet.

USB to RS232 Adapters

RS-232 and USB are both serial interfaces using different hardware technologies and speeds. Conversion between the two requires more electronics than wiring for different pinouts. There are several “rs232 to usb” adapters on the market, ranging between $15 and $30. They are based on either the Prolific PL-2303 chipset, FTDI chipset, or custom chipsets, and the reality is that most of these work better on Windows and Linux than on the Mac. The reasons for this are that the Linux kernel has always had good drivers for the popular serial technologies, and manufacturers usually focus on writing Windows drivers, so the Macs are a bit of a half-hearted effort. It also doesn’t help the situation that the switch from Snow Leopard to Lion or Mountain Lion was also a major change from 32-bit drivers to 64-bit.

I own all three of the most popular USB rs232 adapters:

Plugable USB to RS-232 DB9 Serial Adapter (Prolific PL2303 Chipset, has an OpenSource Mac driver)
Belkin USB SERIAL PORT ADAPTER F5U409 (MCT/Philips P87C52X2BA Chipset)
Keyspan by Tripp Lite USA-19HS Hi-Speed USB Serial Adapter (Custom TI Chipset)

For Linux the PL2303 Chipset is probably the best choice. For Windows all three are suppose to work but your milage will vary depending on the OS version and the device you are connecting. However for the Mac OS X, despite the fact the PL2303 chipset has an OpenSource driver for the Mac to play with, the only one I recommend and could get working with the Pronto Remote was the Keyspan USA-19HS:

The Keyspan USA-19HS adapter is also hackable and programable, although I did not need to do anything special like that to get it working.

ProntoEdit and Tonto

ProntoEdit is the computer application provided by Philips that allows you to download, edit, and upload the detailed configurations for the Pronto Remote. There are versions called “ProntoEdit” and “ProntoEdit Professional”, which are tied to specific devices and which version of the software you need will depend on the remote you have. ProntoEdit only runs on Windows (and likely only older version of Windows). The only way to use this software on a Mac or Linux is in a Virtual Machine and is beyond the scope of this article. If you are looking for this software it’s getting hard to find because Philips closed down the web site, so your best course is to start HERE. The manual for using this software (and it applies to Tonto as well) can be found HERE.

This article is going to use Tonto as the editor.

Tonto is an OpenSource project to replace ProntoEdit and the software works enough like ProntoEdit that if you are familiar with one you can use the other. The Tonto project itself is no longer active and replaced on SourceForge by another project with the same name, but the software can be found HERE. The important thing to know here is that this application only works in “32-bit” mode.

Snow Leopard, Lion, and Mountain Lion. Although the Keyspan USB adapter will work on all MAC OS X releases, because it’s a 32-bit only application I have not been able to get the Tonto software working on Lion or Mountain Lion. It’s working only on Snow Leopard. It’s a Java application, so you might get it working on the later OS releases if you limit your system to “Java J2SE 5.0 32-bit”, or just running Snow Leopard in a VM, but I did not spend a lot of time trying those out. For the purposes of this article I’m going to focus directly on Snow Leopard.

Steps For Getting Tonto Working With Philips Pronto On Mac Snow Leopard

This section describes the steps I took to get the Keyspan USB Serial adapter, Mac OSX Snow Leopard, and the Philips Pronto Remote all working together.

REMOVE CONFLICTING DRIVERS
If you’ve ever tried any serial adapters on your system, make sure you have no conflicting USB RS-232 Serial Drivers installed. Using a Terminal Window, type the following:
sudo -s cd /System/Library/Extensions ls | grep -e KeyspanUSA -e Prolific -e BelkinF5U -e 2303 -e USBSerial
This should produce a list of possible kext directories for serial USB adapters. You need to be careful about this step because if you have used other specialized USB devices with this computer those drivers may also appear in this list and removing them may cause that device to no longer work when you plug it in. I highly recommend that you perform a “cp -r ” command and copy any directory listed to another safe location in case you have to put it back later.
For each of the drivers you plan to remove, perform the following steps (in all cases replace the string “drivername” with the name of the kext driver listed from the above ls command):
kextunload drivername cp -r drivername ~/Downloads/USBdrivers/drivername rm -r drivername

Reboot your computer.
INSTALL THE DRIVER
Making sure first that the Keyspan adapter is NOT PLUGGED IN, install the “Driver for USA-19HS (Mac OS X 10.6.x to 10.8.x)” from the Tripp Lite website. Then as a precaution, perform the following actions using the Terminal program:
sudo -s cd /System/Library/Extensions kextload KeyspanUSAdriver.kext
You may or may not get an error on the “kextload” command, depending on whether the driver was already loaded or not. After this reboot your computer.

CONFIGURE THE DRIVER
Plug in the Keystone RS232 adapter into a USB port. If the system prompts you to go into System Network preferences, do so. If it doesn’t, then go to System Preferences and select Networking. If there is already a “Keyspan USA-19H” service listed then highlight it and click “Advanced…”. If there isn’t one, click the “+” sign in the lower left corner, select the “Keyspan USA-19H” interface, click “Create”, then click “Advanced…”
Once in the “Advanced…” settings, set the Vendor to “Null Modem” and click “OK”, then “Apply”. If you see more than one Keystone network device make this change for all of them. You can now exit preferences.
Lastly, verify that the OS has actual serial devices by running the Terminal program and performing an “ls /dev/*erial*” command. You should see pairs of “KeySerial” device files, one called “cu” and another called “tty”.

Note that the Network Preferences “Connect” button will never produce a successful test, but it will make the LED on the adapter flash while it’s being attempted.

My Interview on “The Ron Knights Show”

Thu, 24 Feb 2011 05:18:29 GMT

Video: The iPad Disassembled

Fri, 2 Jul 2010 05:10:39 GMT

Video: Social Media Revolution V2

Fri, 2 Jul 2010 05:10:39 GMT

www.youtube.com/watch?v=lFZ0z5Fm-Ng

BarCamp Orlando Spring 2010

Fri, 2 Jul 2010 05:10:39 GMT

April 3rd was my first BarCamp Orlando – a free event run by the community and for the community. These occur throughout north America. Anyone can give a presentation on anything, but often they are about technology, publishing content, or social media. Due to sponsors, the event came with a free t-shirt and hot lunch (which was a great pasta buffet). You are asked to contribute in some way, helping with presentations or cleanup are obvious ways.

It was held in downtown Orlando, near the public library, at Slingapour’s, One Eyed Jacks, and Gibson Guitar Center.

Check-in Desk

Schedule Board

I attended the following sessions:

The GoWalla API

- A brief overview of the GoWalla API calls, which are limited to read-only access to the location based service.

HTML 5

- Discussed the doctype, HTML differences, new audio and video tags, etc.

Singularity U

- Conducted by a friend of mine, BJ Price, this session discussed the experience of being selected to attend this unique learning opportunity.

BJ Price discussing Singularity U

New Media Discussion

Free forum discussion about new media and news & video publishing.

Video without Cameras

- Discussed xtranormal – a web site that allows you to easily map text to animated characters and their vocal recitation.

You can relive the experience through the hastag’ed Twitter posts.

Celebration FL Google Fiber Update

Fri, 2 Jul 2010 05:10:39 GMT

The deadline has passed, and Celebration FL submitted it’s RFI for the Google Fiber for Communities. Google is now reviewing all the submissions and will eventually announce which town(s) will win installation contracts.

Celebration residents banded together to create this video postcard message to Google:

www.youtube.com/watch? v=qOP8eBYCZV4

As well as:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=rmloi- j630I

But the town didn’t stop there, if they win the contract Celebration plans to permanently rename one of their streets “Google Lane”:

Most of credit for the effort goes to Teddy Benson, who did a fantastic job moving quickly, creating the video, and submitting the RFI. I think it’s important to note that this was really all pulled together and produced in 2-3 weeks time, while other towns in the country began their promotional efforts in Feb.

My show of support at the Celebration Task Force meeting

You Can Help Celebration FL Win Google Fiber

Fri, 2 Jul 2010 05:10:39 GMT

Celebration FL Wants Google Gigabit Broadband

Fri, 2 Jul 2010 05:10:39 GMT

The town of Celebration FL has a unique history. It’s the town that Disney originally provided the land for, designed, built, and operated. Several books have been written about it. Disney no longer operates the town but they continue to occupy most of the office buildings.

When the town was originally built, it was promoted as being very networked. In the mid-1990’s it held the world’s record for “most connected town” in the country. SmartCity, the firm that supports the phone and network infrastructure at Disney World, also wired up Celebration and still provides the phone service. Cable broadband and television stations are provided by Comcast, in partnership to the SmartCity infrastructure. SmartCity provides telephone and DSL. All of it buried in ground. This was back in 1992. As nearby cities today get high-speed cable broadband and FIOS, those services are not including the town of Celebration because of it’s private infrastructure. Residents have sometimes been caught by Comcast finger-pointing to avoid responsibility when trying to resolve service problems.

I live in this area and my Internet bandwidth usage is beginning to have some concern. I “cut the cable-TV cord” recently, so all of my television, movies, news, conversation, downloads, and my VOIP phone comes to me via my broadband connection. I’ve already neared Comcast’s 250gig limit once, and I haven’t started my live streams yet.

So it’s very exciting on many levels that Google may offer a solution.

Enter Google

Google is offering a ‘contest’, where they will wire up a few small towns with their new Gigabit broadband service, and a letter went out to Celebration residents encouraging them to participate:

Celebration Residential Owner’s Association, Inc. Celebration Non-Residential Owner’s Association, Inc.

Submissions are due by March 26. Every submittal increases Celebration’s chance.

Google Fiber Initiative Town Meeting
Tue, March 16; 7:00 p.m.
851 Celebration Avenue

Given the famous nature of the town (it was also a premier town for the Segway scooter), and it’s proximity to Disney World, both Celebration and Google would benefit from this arrangement. As would I

WordCamp Orlando 2009

Fri, 2 Jul 2010 05:10:39 GMT

The first annual gathering of WordPress users and programmers took place Saturday, 12/5. WordCamp Orlando was held in 2 buildings on the beautiful Rollins College campus in Winter Haven. There was free WiFi but AC Power was a little difficult to come by, so more than once I had to seek out space on crowded wall outlets. Everyone agreed the $15 conference fee was well worth the information and presentations shared (plus it included a t-shirt and a good BBQ lunch), There were roughly 72-100 people attending, a list of people who had specified Twitter accounts can be viewed here.

This event was unique among WordCamps in that for the first time, all 4 WordPress developers were together in attendance and available for Q&A (could being near Disney World have had something to do with that?). It was also the first time I personally have seen GoogleWave used as a main communications means for the people attending. The photo stream for the WordCamp is on Flickr, and the Twitter hashtag was #wco.

The schedule was divided into 2 tracks – a developer track and a user track (i.e. WordPress.com), with some sessions of each held simultaneously. Having personal interest in both tracks, I had to bounce back and forth between session rooms.

Time	Track 1	Track 2
8:00 am	Registration Open
9:30 am	Welcome
10:00 am	Geno Church & Eric Dodds People are the Killer App	Mark Jaquith What I Hate About WordPress
11:00 am	Jane Wells The User Experience of WordPress	Barry Abrahamson High Performance WordPress
12:00 pm	Lunch – BBQ at the Cornell Campus Center
1:00 pm	Dan Maccarone & Andrew Zipern Why Online Products Fail	Chris Scott You’re Doing it Wrong
2:00 pm	Jeremy Harrington A Site Seeing Tour	John James Jacoby BuddyPress
3:00 pm	JC Hutchins From Podcast to Print	Brian Johnson WordPress on Windows
4:00 pm	Sean Brown Moving to WordPress: One Publisher’s Journey	Eric Marden WordPress as a CMS
5:00 pm	Matt Mullenweg State of the Word: Q&A
5:50 pm	Closing
7:00 pm	WordCamp Orlando After Party – The Globe at Wall St. Plaza 19 N Orange Ave Orlando, FL

What I Hate About WordPress, and High Performance WordPress

These sessions discussed the problems and growth behind the WordPress.com hosting site. WordPress.com has about 850 servers in 3 data centers. ~350 web/php servers, ~300 DB servers, ~60 memcacheD servers.

These presentations can be viewed online here and here

You’re Doing It Wrong

This was the most useful session for me, as it gave examples on the best way to code WordPress plugins and PHP so that they survive upgrades and changes.

Chris Scott telling us how to code correctly

Chris’s slides are viewable online.

A Site-Seeing Tour

Various web sites and blog were presented, with commentary about what was done well and poorly. One of the sites presented was Disney Parks Blog, which was an example of a site done well. The brand was clear, the colors consistent, and the comment section easy to view.

Another interesting point brought out is how things have changed. Web designers use to design their pages with the most consideration “above the fold”, meaning the main screen viewing area. People who still do this are out of touch, as mobile devices, especially if they tilt, no longer have a consistent fold.

Buddy Press

I did not attend this session but the content is viewable online

From Podcast to Print

Narrated by book author JC Hutchins, without any projector or slides, JC discussed his attempts to get his book “7th Son” published. While a fan of “just-in-time” self publishing when it makes sense, traditional publishers don’t look favorably on it and he wanted to have his book appear in book stores. What he did do was read his book a piece at a time in his own podcast. This allowed him to “self publish” in a way that was more accepting to traditional publishers, and was more interactive with his audience. He leveraged blog and podcast mediums to build an audience and sell the final commercial product of his book. Story-telling podcasts as a method to publish, while protecting themselves from duplication, is an interesting use of the medium. In his words, “If you build it they will come” doesn’t work by itself. You need to “tell them where to go”

I personally believe that major book publishers, instead of fighting it, will eventually embrace and create self-publishing divisions for new authors, moving them to print if/when they sales reach certain numbers.

WordPress as a CMS

Another good session. WordPress is a CMS, as is anything that helps you manage content. Some companies do nothing but set up sites and CMS environments using just WordPress. What works best will depend on the diversity of the content being managed, the skill-sets of the people involved, and what needs to scale.

Eric Marden discusses WordPress as a CMS

Eric’s presentation can be view online also.

State of the Word: Q&A

Matt Mullenweg, a person that I swear acts and sounds just like actor/comedian Dave Foley, ran a great Q&A session. With all 4 developers present people had a unique opportunity to discuss almost anything.

A topic receiving much discussion was the “Elastic Theme“, A GUI driven theme designer similar in concept to what people see on SquareSpace.com

Conclusion

I did not attend the after-party, but I well enjoyed my first WordCamp. Every year you hear about major WordCamps on the west coast and in NY, and it’s great to finally have one local to Orlando!

UPDATE: There is now an Orlando WordPress Users group – OrlandoWordpress.org

NASA STS-129 Shuttle Launch Tweetup: The Impact

Fri, 2 Jul 2010 05:10:39 GMT

My wife and I were 2 of 100 social media users chosen to participate in NASA’s Space Shuttle Atlantis TweetUp on 11/15/2009. This 2-day gathering of Twitter users began with presentations by NASA technical, media, and astronaut staff, a tour of the Kennedy Space Center property, and a visit to the shuttle from just 1/4 mile distance. The 2nd day we were set up with a private press tent near the giant countdown clock and Vehicle Assembly Building, and watched the shuttle launch from only 3.5 miles away — the closest people are allowed to be when it lifts off.

You can re-live NASA TV’s entire 5 hour coverage of the event, including interviews with the TweetUp attendees and the launch.

For the attendees, the return on their investment (ROI) was obvious. Participating in Twitter (a free service) and registering on a web site (also free) resulted in a once- in-a-lifetime experience of being part of a select group allowed to view a launch on site, plus receive lots of press attention. It’s safe to say that most of the people were excited just for the opportunity to see the launch up close. Some came from as far away as Britain and New Zealand.

What about NASA’s ROI?

From a social media perspective

While the event was run by NASA public relations and social media groups, much of it was set up physically using volunteers and staff personally excited to be a part of it. There were actual costs obviously; the conference room, people’s time, the shuttle buses, gasoline, the tent, press kits, etc. This was actually their 5th tweetup, but the first one centered around a shuttle launch. As a social media event it was done very well. They setup a special hashtag (#NASATweetUp), every table on both days had free Wi-Fi and AC power, the front of the room had large displays showing the Twitter feeds, the event was simultaneously streamed to the Internet, and there was an expectation by presenters that people would be actively involved but would be looking at their laptops most of the time. Attendees were treated like press; and received press kits with mission details, CDs of data, and more. More than once NASA made it a point that they were open and would discuss anything at all — after all, it’s your space program. Your tax dollars paid for it.

Almost all of the people that participated were selected on a first-come, first-served basis, having little to do with their social media standing, number of followers, or areas of interest. It was driven by the passions of the people wanting to attend. The only exceptions were FOX News, Laughing Squid, and Space Tweep Society, who received specific invitations, which again NASA was very open about.

NASA estimates the 100 people represented over 150k of personal followers. Conversation was so active that #NASATweetUp became the 3rd most popular trending topic on Twitter during the first day of presentations, ahead of the press conference discussions about water being discovered on the moon. By the end of the first week the event had generated over 10.4k “tweet” postings referencing the #NASATweetUP, plus a lot of blog, podcasts, and main stream media content. Speaking for myself, I picked up about 40 additional Twitter followers because of it.

Twitter Traffic Rockets into Space Along With Shuttle Atlantis

Here is where the ROI becomes a bit more obvious and interesting

First; there’s little question whether this was reaching the target audience. While the group was a mixture of diverse people and interests, everyone that went to that web site to register and traveled at their own expense to be there was passionate enough to be the target audience. Also their friends and family would be included in this circle. They didn’t have to be paid, so there little doubt to their motivation. Everyone was as excited to be there as the people at NASA were on their first day of employment.

Social Media is about sharing the experience, in whole. While the mainstream press frequently focuses on the downside of the news and mostly attends launches in case there is a “tragedy”, the social media press had nothing but excitement and positive things to report. Every moment generated a Twitter/Facebook/FriendFeed/blog post. In fact the interaction with the TweetUp press was so much more involved and positive, that the monitors displaying the mainstream press conference were turned off after about 20 minutes of their depressing questions.

Unlike when the mainstream press posts a single story about a launch, and one about the landing, the social media continued to discuss the events every day for over 2 weeks. Furthermore, because the TweetUp itself was news, generating additional stories, and the people attending were interviewed by their own local press when they returned home, there was more mainstream coverage about this than would have otherwise occurred.

Some of the simplest things, like the massive eagles nest on property, or that an armadillo was spotted living at the Kennedy Space Center visitors complex, made social media news. The human experience, shared.

When the van carrying the astronauts stopped on route to the shuttle so the press area could to wave them off (a NASA tradition), because of the TweetUp it was the largest gathering of people there since Apollo 11 — NASA history in the making.

Perhaps one of the most unexpected ROI results was that in the wake of massive budget cuts and an ending shuttle program, a grassroots organization was created by some of the attendees to help save the NASA space programs. Their main point? With all the wasted government spending, and bailouts of deceptive financial institutions, why remove support from an organization that is actually working well?

There is also a documentary in progress concerning the event, again, being created by one of the attendees.

The TweetUp generated hundreds of additional photos and videos compared to the mainstream press. A large number of friendships also resulted, and I’m sure some NASA staff renewed their energy about working there.

NASA Pushes Social Media Experience to New Heights (press release), also published on RedOrbit

NASA Blogs: Tweet,two,one … Liftoff!

NASA considers the event a success and is planning on holding another one — pehapps larger this time. They are aware the general public views things they take for granted like seeing a rocket launch, talking with an Astronaut, or learning the complexities of putting it all together, as bottled-up treasure that should be shared.

Social Media Coverage

Many of the 100 TweetUp attendees posted blogs and podcasts of the event, relating in their own words their experience:

Skylog: Looking Up!

This is How NASA Will Win the Public Back

The Sociology of Tweeting and How It Affected a Space Launch: The Incalculable Benefits of Social Media on Geeks

STS-129 NASA Tweetup: Return on Investment

NASA Tweetup — Space Shuttle Atlantis Launch — Day 1 and Day 2

Attend a Shuttle Launch In Person — YES!

Birgit Pauli-Haack Photostream

NASA STS-129 TweetUp Photostream

There’s also Space Tweep Society post listing many more sources

And there were some social media stories:

Houston, We Have a Tweet: NASA’s Latest Social Media Launches

How to Launch an Effective Tweetup: Recent NASA Tweetup Offers Four Easy Lessons for PR

Mainstream Media Coverage

The presence of the TweetUp people was itself news, and caused the mainstream press to extend their coverage of this launch compared to others. CNN made a video and interviewed several of us:

CNN Coverage of NASA TweetUp

And many media outlets ran stories containing interviews or tweets from our group:

Atlantis Blasts Off On Space Station Supply Mission

Tweeps come from around the world for NASA Tweetup at Kennedy Space Center

Amador County local ‘twitters’ from NASA space shuttle launch

WSJ: Space Shuttle Atlantis Lifts Off

From a Personal Perspective

I’ve already mentioned this event caused my Twitter followers to increase, as well as my making many new friends and renewing my interest in space science. I can’t imagine not going to another one and doing an even better job of covering it for myself and others. One problem that became obvious to me was that I need to make a few changes to my blog and web site so I can more rapidly publish photo and video material. Things happened very fast.

My launch video was shown on CommandN as a video pick of the week, and my blog entry as a web pick. I also could not resist creating the following 2 photos:

Summing It All Up

The NASA TweetUp is a good example of how and why companies should embrace social media, instead of fearing a lack of control over it. Such control is mainly an illusion, since any employee or visitor with a cell phone in their pocket or eventual access to the Internet can publish a message or photo to thousands instantly. It’s better for companies to allow access and address employee issues as they would with any other individual concerns. In many ways, Social Media is exactly what marketing has been complaining they’ve wanted for years — to be able to target the people most trusted to spread the word about their product to friends and families. The problem is that people are honest and direct about products. Social media is not compatible with deceptive advertising or spin. You have to actually have a great product and earn trust. By participating in social media and hosting events, companies become an active member of the conversation. NASA took shuttle mission #129 and made it as special as #1, generating weeks of positive press and excitement.

NASA is already planning to host another TweetUp. I will try my best to be a part of it!