Getting Started

First of all, plug in a power supply. Once you've done that, you should see the LED on the Slink-e glow green. There is no power switch.

Now, do some basic tests of the ports.

A simple test for the Slink-e IR port is to point an IR remote control at the IR port Zone 0 sensor and press a button. If the Slink-e picks up the signal, the LED will flash orange intermittently or continuously while the button is pressed.

A simple test for the Slink-e S-Link port is to plug an S-Link device into one of the four S-Link ports using the supplied cable or one of your own. If you turn a S-Link device on or off you should see a brief orange flash on the LED indicating that S-Link messages are being received. (S-link appliances typically send power on and power off messages). most devices)

Connect To A Computer

To do anything really interesting with the Slink-e, you'll need to connect it to a computer via the serial port and run a program on the computer. The slinke program from the Slinketools package is excellent for this.

Connect the Slink-e's serial port to one of the computer's serial ports, using a straight-through (not null modem) cable as described in Serial Port. Invoke slinke and watch it work. See slinke documentation for details. The suggestions that follow are not detailed enough to be useful to you unless you read the slinke documentation.

Assuming slinke makes contact (it will tell you that it has, and prove it by displaying the Slink-e's serial number), you can use slinke commands both to receive and send IR messages. To verify that it is receiving IR messages, enter a getirmsg command at the slinke prompt, then point a remote control at the IR port Zone 0 sensor on the Slink-e and press a button. slinke should print a message telling you it received an IR message.

To verify that it is sending IR messages, you should plug into the IR Zone 0 jack an IR emitter that includes a visible light LED (some do and some don't. The one that comes with the Slink-e does). Enter a playcmd command at the slinke prompt, and you will see the emitter light up. Place the emitter in front of an IR-controlled appliance, and you will see the appliance respond. As you will see when you read the slinke documentation, you'll have to teach slinke at least one IR command before you can use playcmd.

If you can't make slinke talk to the Slink-e, one thing that will help enormously is an RS-232 analyzer. That's a little box with 7 LEDs that show you the RS-232 signals. You plug it inline in the serial line. You can thus see if any signals are coming out of the computer or coming back to it. If RS-232 commands are reaching the Slink-e, the Slink-e's LED will flash orange as they arrive.

If the lights show that RS-232 communication is taking place, but slinke still reports that it can't make contact with the Slink-e, use the -debug option at various levels to see as much detail as it takes to figure out where the communication gap is happening.