CurtPalme.com Home Theater Forum

[PortlandGTS]

I bought an Extron System 4LDxi video switcher on eBay, partially because it claims to control various projectors, including the NEC XG series. That is, it's supposed to be able to turn the projector on and off, and switch memory banks within the projector as it switches the sources it feeds to the projector.

I'm having trouble getting the control features to work with my XG-85, and I'm wondering if anyone has experience that would be useful to me. I've talked to the tech support at Extron, but they consider this an ancient product, and I haven't gotten very far. The tech support people aren't trained on this product, so they have to go back to engineering to get questions answered, and they're very reluctant to do this.

My first question is: should the System 4LDxi be able to control my projector? Today Extron tech support said they couldn't find the XG-852 in the list of supported projectors. They did find XG-75 (which I'd never heard of), along with XG-110, and XG-135. As far as I can tell, all the XG series projectors use the same control protocol, so if the Extron unit can control one, it should be able to control all XG projectors. Can anyone confirm this?

Beyond that, any tips on getting this to work would be very useful. I've been using the projector and Extron switcher together for awhile, but am just now trying to get the control functions working. I've been able to control the projector using my PC and the NEC control program. I'm pretty sure the Extron switcher is working properly and configured properly, since I sent it to Extron shortly after I purchased it - they checked it over and configured it to control NEC XG projectors.

Now, to connect the two units, I had to wire up a custom cable, and switch the projector to RS-422 communications. With help from this forum, I was able to get the projector switched to RS-422. Based on info I got from Extron, I made a cable with the following pin connections:

NEC XG-852 Pin-- 1 2 6 7 9 15
System 4LDxi Pin 7 3 2 8 15 1&6


When I try this cable, I get no response from the projector to commands from the switcher.

Any help will be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
Tom