Using Asterisk to control VDR or other device...

[mike557]

I feed my VDR picture throughout the house via a modulator, but wanted to be able to alter the channels while in other rooms.
The web interface (vdradmin) works well with a wireless tablet but it is not practical to carry around all the time.
The solution was to use my PABX (Asterisk), which runs on the VDR server. Now I can pick up any phone and dial extension 837 (vdr).

The PABX gives a beep and I then use the keys on the phone to navigate. By pressing 0 on the phone puts me into number mode and after 2 seconds the system reverts back to navigation mode.

If anyone else is using Asterisk and VDR, then this may be a handy dial string to include in extensions_custom.conf.

exten => 837,1,Answer()
exten => 837,n(start),Read(APCODE,beep,1)
exten => 837,n,GotoIf($[${APCODE} = 0]?vdr-numb,1:vdr-navi,1)

exten => vdr-numb,1,Read(APCODE,number,1,,,2)
exten => vdr-numb,n,GotoIf($[${APCODE} < 0]:?837,start)
exten => vdr-numb,n,System(/usr/local/bin/svdrpsend.pl HITK "${APCODE}")
exten => vdr-numb,n,Goto(vdr-numb,1)

exten => vdr-navi,1,Set(APCODE=${IF($[${APCODE} = 1]?Green:${APCODE})})
exten => vdr-navi,n,Set(APCODE=${IF($[${APCODE} = 2]?Up:${APCODE})})
exten => vdr-navi,n,Set(APCODE=${IF($[${APCODE} = 3]?Yellow:${APCODE})})
exten => vdr-navi,n,Set(APCODE=${IF($[${APCODE} = 4]?Left:${APCODE})})
exten => vdr-navi,n,Set(APCODE=${IF($[${APCODE} = 5]?Ok:${APCODE})})
exten => vdr-navi,n,Set(APCODE=${IF($[${APCODE} = 6]?Right:${APCODE})})
exten => vdr-navi,n,Set(APCODE=${IF($[${APCODE} = 7]?Menu:${APCODE})})
exten => vdr-navi,n,Set(APCODE=${IF($[${APCODE} = 8]?Down:${APCODE})})
exten => vdr-navi,n,Set(APCODE=${IF($[${APCODE} = 9]?Back:${APCODE})})
exten => vdr-navi,n,System(/usr/local/bin/svdrpsend.pl HITK "${APCODE}")
exten => vdr-navi,n,Goto(837,start)

Now I can use my cordless phones (connected to a PAP2 box) to control the
VDR completely.

The important line of code if you are unfamiliar with Asterisk is

exten => vdr-numb,n,System(/usr/local/bin/svdrpsend.pl HITK "${APCODE}")

This is running a program (svdrpsend.pl) and passing to it the code entered on the phone. This could be easily modified to send the data to a dbox2/Dream

Hope that helps someone