B&O BeoVision MX 7000 TV « modelrail.otenko

8Jan/190

B&O BeoVision MX 7000 TV

So this is nothing short of weird... After having to walk half-way across Melbourne to get home (thanks to the train lines being shut for upgrades), I find this unit sitting out the front of my apartment building. The weird part is this: I swear this is the exact same TV I saw in a 'vintage shop' in Geelong around a year ago. Geelong is a long way away... and for this ridiculously heavy unit to appear in front of my apartment... in dirty-but-OK condition, is totally surprising.

Of course, this is Melbourne and just maybe there's a lot of rich people with expensive+vintage TV sets just sitting around...

Does it work?

I threw caution to the wind and found a protected power board to plug it in to. A quick visual inspection before hitting the switch and click... we have a red stand-by light! A quick search of the front panel found a power button bottom-right and, tapping this, the unit came to life!

No remote control

Not a deal-breaker... or so I first thought. Turns out B&O decided to use a non-standard IR frequency and standard universal remotes just won't work. LIRC was fun back in the day, so I installed WinLIRC and tried to load up the easy-to-find Beo4 Configuration. Before even trying to hack together a transmitter, I was hit with errors trying to load the configuration.

Not very helpful at all! I hacked around with configuration file and found that it didn't seem to like the area between the raw_codes begin and end. Darn... maybe it's an archaic Windows version... so I installed Mint on the old Intellistation Z and tried again...

After booting into Linux Mint, I installed lirc with sudo apt install lirc. No issues here, so I downloaded and copied the Beo4 configuration to /etc/lirc/lircd.conf. A quick sudo service lirc restart and syslog tells me:

steven@intelli ~/Downloads $ sudo cp Beo4 /etc/lirc/lircd.conf
steven@intelli ~/Downloads $ sudo service lirc restart
steven@intelli ~/Downloads $ tail /var/log/syslog 
Jan  7 19:11:47 intelli lirc[3220]:  * Loading LIRC modules
Jan  7 19:11:47 intelli lirc[3220]:    ...done.
Jan  7 19:11:47 intelli lirc[3220]:  * Starting remote control daemon(s) :
Jan  7 19:11:47 intelli lircd-0.9.0[3230]: error in configfile line 45:
Jan  7 19:11:47 intelli lircd-0.9.0[3230]: "KEY_0": must be a valid (unsigned int) number
Jan  7 19:11:47 intelli lirc[3220]:    ...done.
Jan  7 19:11:47 intelli lircd-0.9.0[3230]: reading of file '/etc/lirc/lircd.conf' failed
Jan  7 19:11:47 intelli lircd-0.9.0[3230]: reading of config file failed
Jan  7 19:11:47 intelli lircd-0.9.0[3231]: lircd(dsp) ready, using /run/lirc/lircd
Jan  7 19:11:47 intelli systemd[1]: Started LSB: Starts LIRC daemon..

Oh! Right! Here's the actual error! WinLIRC just 'failed', whereas I get proper verbose logging in Linux. Turns out the configuration file is just no good. I ended up browsing back to the lirc page, in a vain attempt to find a forum or mailing list to whinge to... but then... I found the real remote repo! Scrolling down... lo'n'behold is the Beo4 LIRC Configuration File with happy 'compatible' ticks. Opening it, I can see it's a completely different file!

steven@intelli ~/Downloads $ sudo cp Beo4.lircd.conf /etc/lirc/lircd.conf
steven@intelli ~/Downloads $ sudo service lirc restart
steven@intelli ~/Downloads $ tail /var/log/syslog 
Jan  7 19:13:39 intelli lircd-0.9.0[3231]: caught signal
Jan  7 19:13:39 intelli lirc[3467]:    ...done.
Jan  7 19:13:39 intelli systemd[1]: Stopped LSB: Starts LIRC daemon..
Jan  7 19:13:39 intelli systemd[1]: Starting LSB: Starts LIRC daemon....
Jan  7 19:13:39 intelli lirc[3478]:  * Loading LIRC modules
Jan  7 19:13:39 intelli lirc[3478]:    ...done.
Jan  7 19:13:39 intelli lirc[3478]:  * Starting remote control daemon(s) :
Jan  7 19:13:39 intelli lirc[3478]:    ...done.
Jan  7 19:13:39 intelli lircd-0.9.0[3489]: lircd(dsp) ready, using /run/lirc/lircd
Jan  7 19:13:39 intelli systemd[1]: Started LSB: Starts LIRC daemon..

Ok, neat... we loaded! What can we send?

steven@intelli ~/Downloads $ irsend list "Bang&Olufsen_Beo4" ""
irsend: 0000000000000001 beo4-tv-on
irsend: 0000000000000002 beo4-video-poweroff
irsend: 0000000000000003 beo4-tv-left
irsend: 0000000000000004 beo4-tv-right
irsend: 0000000000000005 beo4-tv-up
irsend: 0000000000000006 beo4-tv-down
irsend: 0000000000000007 beo4-tv-green
irsend: 0000000000000008 beo4-tv-yellow
irsend: 0000000000000009 beo4-tv-red
irsend: 000000000000000a beo4-tv-blue
irsend: 000000000000000b beo4-tv-exit
irsend: 000000000000000c beo4-tv-menu 
....

And that's as far as I got on Linux... For the life of me it wasn't worth the effort trying to work out how to use /dev/ttyS0. It seems that the kernel hogs it and you have to setserial and stuff... so I just re-booted back into windows... on a machine closer to the TV...

Just because Windows is easier and I'm lazy, I plugged the file into WinLIRC... It worked! We're set... time for some actual hardware to get the IR transmitting.

Transmitting signals...

I found some IR sensors that I had lying around... they're TCRT5000s and I only need the transmitting half. That's the half with the bevelled side (when you're looking at it) and the anode is up top. A 220ohm resistor was tied in-line to prevent excess serial current draw.

The contraption was pointed at the TV, but no amount of clicking would work to turn the TV on. I was about to give up, but decided that the transmit power could be an issue and held the IR LED 5cm from the receiver. Presto! Power-On worked!

I plugged the MSX into the SCART plug and got the following... more research to be done! I also need a better mechanism for pressing remote buttons if I'm going to go through the menu and adjust settings.

What about Arduino?

Having a whole computer to control a TV isn't optimal... so...Arduino time! Well.. it will be in the future... after I read this, this, this, this and this. The goal will be to build a controller with enough buttons to re-configure the input... hopefully... to get the MSX to display!

UPDATE: Arduino Remote works like a charm!

Sony Playstation

I suddenly realised that I actually did have a device to plug into this monstrosity. The original Sony Playstation gathering dust under my coffee table has Composite out! Of course, the TV does not have Composite in... so I had to improvise with a Composite-to-SCART adapter.