BenQ Projector Serial Control

TurnipTruck
TurnipTruck Junior Member
in NetLinx Studio
Greetings,

Has anyone dealt with serial control of a BenQ "Professional" series projector? I have some PB8250s, and their protocol is nothing less than convoluded. I will attach the protocol document and see if anyone can make heads or tails of it. The "Event Packet Type Commands" on page 9 work, but none of the longer length commands later in the document.

If someone could make an example of "Select PC 1" I would appreciate it. I tried sending it as the 32 bytes shown, but nothing happens. I was sending the commands from a "Control a Device" window in Studio. Earlier in the document it seems like they are saying that the command needs to be sent in a few seperated parts.

Hmmmm?

Thank you.
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Comments

  • DHawthorne
    DHawthorne Junior Member
    I've never used the product, but as convoluted as the protocol structure seems to be (you have to automatically have bad feelings about start bytes being called a "Magic Number"), they greatly simplified things by telling you the full strings for your commands in the chart at the end. You do send the entire thing in one shot - the multiple packets refered to early in the document is for multiple commands. They seem to just be telling you to wait for a response and not send a new command out for another 100ms.

    That said, I can see no reason why your simpler commands wold work, but not the 32 byte one. Perhaps it is the way the command window sends it out. I would Telnet into the master and try using a send string to the port, like so: send_string 5001:1, "$BE, $0F, $03, $19, $00, $C8, $4B, $01, $DA, $02, $CC, $CC, $00, $00, $00, $00, $00, $00, $00, $00, $CC, $CC, $CC, $CC, $CC, $CC, $CC, $CC, $CC, $CC, $CC, $CC" (adjusting device number as needed, of course).
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  • Danny Campbell
    Danny Campbell Senior Member
    The command should look something like this:
    SEND_STRING dvPROJ1,"$BE,$EF,$13,$19,$00,$C8,$4B,$01,$DA,$02,$CC,$CC,$00,$00,$00,$00,$00,$00,$00,$00,$CC,$CC,$CC,$CC,$CC,$CC,$CC,$CC,$CC,$CC,$CC,$CC"

    However, my experience with BenQ projectors has been that their documentation is generally not correct. I have worked with a different model, and I had a document similar to yours that I downloaded from their site, and then had another that their tech support emailed to me. Neither was 100% correct. I ended up trying out commands from both documents when they were different to discover which one really worked.

    Plus their on-hold music really sucks!

    Danny
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  • TurnipTruck
    TurnipTruck Junior Member
    My bad. The "Control a Device" window supports something less than 32 bytes. Telnetting a SEND_STRING controlled the projector with the longer commands.

    Thanks!
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