Tutorial Summary

This lesson covers how to create a simple interface custom universal remote with buttons to control the channels of a Satellite receiver.

Topics Covered In This Tutorial

• How To Create a new Panel
• How To Rename a Panel
• How To Add a new portrait Page
• How To Rename a Page
• Explain grid
• How To  Use existing image library to create the buttons
• Explain the ghosted images
• Use existing Devices to map the commands
• Explain the tree interface filling up as the user drag and drops images and commands
• Images can be moved around the commands follow
• How To Save Panels

Transcript

Welcome to the iRule tutorial video. Lesson 1, creating your first interface. In this lesson, we will create our first interface to control the channels on a satellite receiver.

Begin creating a new Panel by clicking on the drop down triangle next to Panels and select create item. You will see a new Panel appear in the hierarchy tree. Go to the properties window and rename the Panel to Lesson 1.

In this tutorial, we will create a Portrait page. In later lessons we will add Landscape pages and additional functionality, such as the Entrances, Motions and Gestures. Right Click on the Portrait Pages to Add a Portrait Page. Rename the Page in the properties window to TV for this tutorial.

Notice that the interface is divided into a grid. By default, the grid is 8x4. You can adjust the grid in the page properties. The images will snap to the centers of the cells when we create the interface.

Go to the Images Tab on the right and expand the common image library by either double clicking on the folder or clicking on the plus sign next to the folder. Within the folder you will see the images available to build the interface. In this tutorial we are using some default images, but you can browse the library for additional images as well as upload your own.

To create a button, drag and drop the + button from the folder onto the main interface window. Notice that when the image is above a cell, the cell will light up in blue to indicate where the image will be placed. If you dropped an image in the wrong cell, you can just drag and drop it within the main interface window to the correct cell location. We now have three buttons in our interface. Next we will apply a command.

Click on the Devices tab at the top right. For this tutorial, we have already imported the required devices. Expand the DirectTV Satellite and expand the Database Codes. Within the Database Codes, you will notice all of the available codes for this device. Scroll to find the CHANNEL UP, CHANNEL DOWN and PREVIOUS CHANNEL codes. Select the CHANNEL UP code and drag and drop it onto the + button. Notice a blue box around the button is used to indicate the button where the code is being assigned. You will also notice that after a command is assigned to the button, the button is no longer grayed out. The graying out of buttons without commands is used to help visually identify which buttons do not yet have the commands without navigating up and down the Panel Tree. Repeat the code assignment for the remaining two buttons.

The only thing left to do is to save the interface to the server. Click on drop down triangle next to Panels and select Save Panels. Also, you can click on the Save icon. Your interface is now ready to be downloaded by the iRule.