How to use Keene Kira modules to control AC units

KIRA modules are designed primarily to store and reproduce infrared codes for AV equipment, and these codes are of a certain size. Nearly all general purpose IR codes are less than 50 data "bits" in length. In fact all of the common IR protocols - RC5 RC6 NEC Sony etc - are less than 50 bits. Panasonic at 47 bits is the longest. To ensure smooth operation KIRA modules default to a bit length of less than 50.

Whilst this is fine for most equipment it does cause an issue should you want to control air conditioning units. AC units need to send all the information from the hand held remote to the air-con unit in one long IR code which can be up to 128 bits in length. The length varies quite a bit according to what it is sending but can easily be more than twice the length of a standard IR code.

To solve this problem we have created some special firmware for the KIRA128 modules that allows storage of much longer codes. As each code requires more space there is only room to store 47 codes rather than the usual 128.

To use:

Download the IRAnywhere zip file and extract to a folder.
Browse to the folder called "Kira47"

There will be two files, l7.hex (the firmware) and kira47.bin (the web pages). Launch the Kira utility program

Discover the module.

Make sure there is only one module on the network

Go to the top menu-> view-> network and firmware utilities.

Browse to find the new .hex file

Right click the browse and set to Kira128 standalone

click 'upload' - it takes about 30 seconds

Once the module has rebooted allow the Kira utility to find it again and then open the web pages from the top menu.

In the browser address bar You will have something like http://192.168.1.123/ manually type into the browser bar to append add some unfindable text to the end, eg http://192.168.1.123/rubbish. THis will foce the module to return "404 not found" error in the module.

You will be redirected to a page that allows you to upload the new web page file, so click browse to find it and then upload to send it. Again it takes about 20 seconds.

That should be it, it will now load and save much longer IR codes

In the IR code you see in the utility the second byte is the number of bits in hex eg K 0A28 is what you would get for a basic Sony code. 0x0a bits in length ( decimal 10) and 0x28 (decimal 40) Khz IR

the max for a standard 128 would be K 32xx fr 50 bits

The Kira47 can be up to K 80xx or 0x80 (decimal 128 ) bits of data.

As always, please get in touch if you have any questions.