USB Data Port Drops Connection

[ki162]

I have designed a small board that contains a microcontroller which talks to the DirecTV D12 via the D12's USB port. The microcontroller uses its UART to communicate to a Prolific PL-2303X which then connects to the D12. I know that the recommended USB part is a PL-2303, but that is obsolete. The PL-2303X seems to work fine for awhile and then will randomly drop its connection to the D12. The connection will not resume until I pull the USB cable and reconnect.

Has anyone seen this problem? Is there a work around?

[Draconis]

Thats not something I have ever tried, but here is the official material on it. I hope this helps.

http://www.sbcatest.com/DTV-MD-0058-DIRECTVSet-topInformationforInstallers-V2.2.pdf

Here is the site I found that on.

http://www.sbcatest.com/techsupport.htm

[ThomasM]

Interesting! I originally posted that link to the USB port info years ago and was always curious if someone had actually decided to communicate with the receiver via USB.

Will the port go dead if you program your equipment to periodically send an inquiry command to the receiver (even if you discard the data)? Perhaps the port is set up to become active when it detects a connection and then shuts down after a given interval with no commands to conserve CPU time in the receiver.

[ki162]

I had hoped that pinging it would keep it alive, but it does not. I send a dummy command (I think it is version request) every 5 sec. It doesn't keep it alive but I do know as soon as it goes dead :-)

[MasterChef]

You might consider buying the cable available from Paterson Tech described here (http://www.patersontech.com/support/UsbTvtInstallation.pdf). It works with Tivos and ReplayTVs.