USB-UIRT Forum

Does USB-UIRT support HTPC wakeup from standby? My system is WinXP SP2, with an ASUS A8N-SLI Premium motherboard. I have the following USB peripherals:

- Gyration (2.4GHz wireless) mouse and keyboard
- Firefly RF remote
- iMON IR remote
- USB-UIRT

There is nothing on the MB or in the BIOS to control USB wakeup from standby but all USB ports are powered on by default and I see the USB-UIRT and iMON LEDs blink when the system is in standby and I send an IR command with any remote, only the Firefly RF receiver LED is off in standby. Without any registry hacks and without USB-UIRT the system will suspend to S3 and can only be revived with a short power switch push. With the USB-UIRT plugged in, the system will suspend only to S1 (fans still running). If I use dumppo.exe to set minsleep=S3 the system will refuse to enter standby because the USB-UIRT driver will not let it. With the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\usb\USBBIOSx=DWORD:00000000 registry hack the system will go to S3 even with USB-UIRT plugged in. The Gyration mouse and keyboard do have a Power Management property tab and if you enable "Allow this device to bring the computer out of standby" check box you can revive the system by shaking the Gyration mouse or pressing a keyboard key. The other three USB peripherals do not have the Power Management tab and they are not able to get the system out of standby no mater what I do. I have also tried the USBBIOSHACKS registry entry but this one has no effect whatsoever. The fact that the Gyration works points to a problem with the USB-UIRT (and the the other two USB remotes). However, it is not acceptable as a solution for me since you cannot enable independently the Gyration mouse and keyboard (well you can, but enabling the keyboard also enables the mouse) and if you just sneeze over the Gyration mouse the system will wake up.

So my questions are:

1. Has anybody managed to wake the system up from S3 standby using USB-UIRT. If yes, can they please document what they did to achieve that?

2. Assuming the answere the question 1 is positive, would it possible to program USB-UIRT so that it wakes the system up only with a particular IR sequence? For example, I would like to be able to control my HDTV and/or audio receiver with an IR remote without having the HTPC wake up on any key press. I want to be able to wake up the HTPC with a particular IR remote control key.

In general I am happy with USB-UIRT, for example, I can control BeyondTV with the Firefly RF remote or the Gyration mose and have USB-UIRT change the STB channel but this standby issue really bugs me. But I would need a positive answer to my two questions above to really be able to use USB-UIRT to wake up my HTPC from standby.

You question #2 is the key to your issues. The USB-UIRT will *not* wake the system *unless* it sees a preprogrammed IR code which has been flashed into the USB-UIRT's non-volatile memory. You can program up to four different IR codes to wake the PC. You can program these slots using the lrnHelper utility: www.usbuirt.com/lrnhelper_0_0_3.zip -- use the Wake-Up configuration menu.

-Jon

First of all, the lrnhelper version 0.0.3 that you have posted above does not work. When you try to run it, it reports Run-time error '713': Class not registered. You need the following file to installed on your machine. MSSTDFMT.DLL.

Version 0.2.0 however does work and it has the Wake-up Configuration nicely hidden in the File menu (I had no idea that this feature was available, otherwise I would not have asked for it). I did program the first wake-up slot but this had made no difference. Is this function working in version 0.2.0 of lrnhelper? If so I assume this would solve issue 2 if problem 1 would go away.

The fact is that the USB-UIRT driver does not have a Power Management tab on which to check the awake from standby checkbox. I would say that this is an issue with my Win setup were it not for the fact that the Gyration mouse and keyboard, which are also USB devices do have such a tab and they do wake up the system from standby when enabled to do so.

So forget about question 2 and let's reformulate question 1:

Is anybody able to wake up from S3 standby in WinXP using USB-UIRT? If so, do they have a Power Management tab in the Device Properties for USB-UIRT? What exactly are the steps required to achieve this functionality in WinXP?

For the record again. Programming the wake-up IR command with version 0.2.0 of lrnhelper did not work and I was not able to test version 0.0.3 due to the lack of a DLL. But, programming the wake-up command through the Girder USB-UIRT plugin _did_ work. So USB-UIRT can indeed wake-up a WinXP HTPC from S3 standby and the presence of a Power Management tab in the device driver is not required. What is required is the USBBIOSx registry hack and successful programming of the wake-up command (only the Girder plugin seemed to work for me). Right now I can wakeup and enter standby with the iMon IR remote and I can also wake up the system remotely using VNC and then enter standby with a keyboard shortcut and Girder. Gyration wakeup also works but I turned it off as it is of no practical use - floor vibrations are detected by the mouse and are enough to wake up the system unexpectedly.

In conclusion, I was able to use USB-UIRT the way I wanted but the lrnhelper tool proved once again the weakest link. It is not clear what is the latest version of this tool (is 0.0.3 newer than 0.2.0 for example?), where one would get it from and its use it is not as straight forward as it could be. USB-UIRT is a great piece of hardware that could benefit from beter software support and documentation, please take this not as a rebuke but as a suggestion for improving an already great product. I would like to commend Jon Rhees for the outstanding support he is providing.

Hello,

As I am very interested in the USBUIRT product and am thinking strongly about purchasing but would like to clear a few things up first:

Going from the above post do we only need girder to program the USBUIRT device to get it to wake-up from S3 Standby when an IR signal is sent to it.

Has the Irnhelper been updated to correctly program the USBUIRT yet? If not and the above paragraph is true then I will have to find a copy of Girder to do the job? Is this correct?

Does the programming of the USBUIRT device though girder or Irnhelper do the same job as if there was a 'Power Management tab' in the device driver for USBUIRT with the checkbox 'Wake me up from standby...."