Winvu Guide

Introduction

After reading this simple, easy to follow guide, and following all the instructions exactly, you will be able to emulate your Bell Expressvu or Dish Network IRD using a program called Winvu. The simplest explanation of emulation is connecting a cable between your AVR board (which will be in the IRD) to your computer and running a program that "emulates" your smart card. This guide will assume you have some basic knowledge and know how to download files off the internet and unzip them. I'll also assume that you know how to program your AVR board with Jeepers. Please note I take no resposiblity for any damage you may cause as well as any laws you may be breaking. Please read the disclaimer on the home page. This guide is for educational purposes only. Enjoy.

Difficulty Level

The difficutly level of setting up Winvu is 7 on a scale of 1-10. This project does not require you to be an expert with a soldering iron and is rather easy to complete. If all goes well, you should be able to complete it in an hour or less.

What's Needed

Winvu 2009
- download Winvu 2009 from here
IRD2PC Hex File
- download it from here if you have pins jumpered and have a 6000 IRD.
Bell Expressvu or Dish Network IRD
- you MUST know your boxkey
AVR Board
- must have DB25 connector on it (all new AVRs do). Note this isn't 100% necessary but the instructions in this guide pertain to an AVR with a DB 25 connector
Computer:
- Windows 95 or higher
Soldering Iron
- any wattage will do
Wire
- you will need to figure out how far your computer is going to be from your receiver. Take that number and multiply it by 3 and that will be the total amount of wire you will need. The reason for multiplying by 3 is you will need 3 different wires of equal length that are the length of the distance between your IRD and PC.
Solder
- any 60/40 solder
DB 25 Connector
- the gender of the DB 25 connector depends on the gender of the DB 25 connector on your AVR board. If you have a female connector on your AVR board, you will need a male connector. If you have a male connector on your AVR board, you will obviously need a female connector
Female DB 9 Connector

Optional (but recommended) Materials

Resistors
- 2 1000 Ohm (1K Ohm) 1/4 Watt
Zener Diodes
- 2 5.6V 1 Watt

Atmel Flashing

The first thing you're going to do is program the flash memory of your AVR. The first step is to erase your Atmel. You can do this in Jeepers by selecting "Atmel 8515" then "Erase Flash/Eeprom". Erase the Atmel again because Jeepers doesn't always do the best job at completely erasing the Atmel. Use IRD2PC if you DO NOT have pins jumpered (10-12 for 40 pin DIP Atmel, 11-14 for the 44 pin Atmel). If you haven't download the file, do so now. If you do have pins jumpered, download IRD2PCV2 . If you're not sure if you have pins jumpered or not, the easiest way to tell is, if you see a chip on your AVR board that says 24LC256 on it, then you most likely do have pins jumpered. What the IRD2PC hex file does is convert the 140,000 Kb/s coming from your IRD to a more standard 115,200 Kb/s which is useful to your serial card. Unzip the file to a new folder of your choice and run the Jeepers program that came with it. Connect your AVR board to your computer. Once you've connected the AVR board, click Full Monty. MAKE SURE YOU SELECT THE PROPER IRD2PC FILE DEPENDING ON IF YOU HAVE PINS 10-12 or 11-14 JUMPERED OR NOT!

Building the Cable

Unprotected Method

Now, disconnect your AVR board and put it in a safe place. The next thing you want to do is wire your DB 25 and DB 9 connectors together. There are two different methods that I will discuss when wiring the cable. The first is a little bit easier, but CAN be risky. This method does not require any zener diodes or resistors. I say it CAN be risky because there is the potential that you can damage either your Computer, IRD or Atmel chip. The voltage coming from your computer is something like 11V and the Atmel chip is really designed to run at ~5V. It is possible to run without the zener diodes and resistors and have things work fine, but remember, YOU'VE BEEN WARNED! To wire the 25 pin connector to the 9 pin connector, follow this simple chart:

DB 9 Pin #	DB 25 Pin #
3	7
2	8
5	25

Diagram:

All of the other pins are left alone. Make sure that when you are soldering, you don't accidently leave a solder spike that connects pins together that shouldn't be connected.

Protected Method

The proteced method is highly recommended and does reduce your risk of screwing something up. It requires 2 1000 Ohm (1K Ohm) resistors and 2 5.6 V 1 Watt zender diodes (available at electronics stores). The wiring is similar. Connect 1 resistor to pin 7 of the DB 25 and 1 resistor to pin 8 of the DB 25. Now connect the wire to the other end of each resistor. The setup is the same as the unprotected version so far, except now you have 2 resistors added to the cable. The next step is to add the zener diodes to the cable. If you look at the diode, you will notice that there is a band on one end. Connect the end with the band on it to the resistor and the end without the band on it to the wire coming from pin 25 (ground). This sounds confusing, so look at this diagram so you can understand what I'm saying:

Installing Necesary Files The next step is to install Winvu on the computer that you will be emulating with. As mentioned in the "Whats Needed" section, you want to download Winvu 2009 . You will want to create a folder called "Winvu" to extract all the files to. To create a folder, right click on your desktop, put your mouse over "New" then select "Folder". Give the folder the name "Winvu". If you are running Windows 95, you may need a file called MSVBVM60.dll . You can find out if you have this file already by going to Start>Find>Files or Folders and then typing in "MSVBVM60.dll". Even if you have Windows 98 or higher, I'd still suggest doing this step to make sure you have the file. If you don't find it, you can download it here . Once you've downloaded it, open up the .zip file and extract it to "C:\Windows\System". This may vary. You might have to install it to "C:\Windows\System 32" or "C:\Win95\System32" but "Windows\System" is the most common. The next step is to copy MScomm.ocx to your "C:\Windows\System (or whatever your folder might be)folder. Note that I'm assuming C is your hard drive in both cases. Now Winvu will have all the required files that are needed to run. Once you've extracted it to the proper folder, you now must register MScomm32.ocx. To do this, go to Start>Run and type "regsvr32 C:\Windows\System\MSCOMM32.OCX" without the quotation marks. If everything is correct, you should get a pop up box telling you the .dll file was registered succesfuly. You have to type the correct path to where ever your MSCOMM32.OCX file is.

Configuring the Com Port The next step is configuring your Com port settings. To do this follow these simple steps:

Right click on "My Computer" on the desktop
Select "Properties"
Select the "Device Manager" tab at the top
Click on the "+" (plus sign) next to "Ports (Com and LPT)"
Double click on your Com port
Select the "Port Settings" tab at the top
These are the settings you must have:

Bits Per Second: 115 200
Data Bits: 8
Parity: None
Stop Bits: 1
Flow Control: None

Configuring Winvu Now we are starting to get closer. The next step is to open the Winvu program (It should be in the folder you created on your desktop). Where it says IRD-CAM, this is where you enter your IRD and CAM number IN HEX with no spaces.. If you don't know how to convert these numbers to hex, do the following:

Open up Windows Calculator (Start>Programs>Accessories>Calculator) Select view and choose "Scientific" Make sure that the Dec radio button is selected. Now enter in the following numbers of your IRD number: R 00 XXXX XXXX - nn. ONLY ENTER THE 8 "X"s into calculator. The once you've entered them, select the Hex radio button. This will convert your IRD number to Hex. If you get a 7 digit number, you must do what is called padding. Do this by adding a 0 in front of your number. You might even get a 6 digit number. Once again, you want to "Pad" to 8 digits so this time add two zeroes infront. This is necesary because Winvu expects an 8 digit number. Now, enter this 8 digit number into Winvu. You must repeat this step for your Cam number (I've heard that a CAM number is not necessary but I've never tested it. If you don't have a CAM, try leaving this at 8 zeros). Clear out the number in Calculator and go back to the Dec radio button. Enter in the following 8 digits into Calculator: S 04 XXXX XXXX-nn. Enter in the "X"s. Now select the Hex radio button and you'll have your Cam Number in Hex. Remember to pad if it's a 7 digit number. Enter this number into Winvu. Another way to convert is to use this simple Java Script. Enter in the numbers under decimal. Then just click your mouse anywhere on the web site to have it converted to Hexadecimal:

As an example, if your IRD Number was R 00 2654 2654 -25, you would enter 26542654 where it says decimal. When you click, you will get 195023E. When you enter this into Winvu, you must enter it as 0195023E NOTICE THE EXTRA ZERO INFRONT! THIS IS THE SAME FOR CAM NUMBER!

The next step is to enter your boxkey in Hex with no spaces. Your boxkey will most likely already be in Hex (If fact, I've never seen anyone express their box keys as a decimal number).

You can leave FW-BS (FW stands for Firmware and BS stands for Bootstrap) at default 0. These numbers will automatically fill in later. You can leave Key 0 and Key 1 at default 0 as well. Now enter in your zip code (Or leave it at default), your time zone and if you want to run Bell Expressvu select 0901. If you want to run Dish Network, select 0101. Select which Com port you want to use and select 115 200. CPU will determine how much CPU Winvu uses..

Now, check off Autoroll, Ird2Pc and Disply. Then click Apply. Clicking Apply will save your changes.

Getting Ready What I recomend doing is put your regular CAM or AVR board that will get some form of TV (even if it's the free channels) and once you get video, pull the power plug on your IRD and leave it unplugged for about a minute. While it's unpluged you can plug the DB 9 connector to the proper serial port on your computer and the DB 25 connector into your AVR board and put your AVR board into the IRD. Now, press "Start" in Winvu. Make sure you have "Display" checked off as well as "Autoroll" and "Ird2Pc". After a few seconds you should see a whole bunch of numbers on your display in Winvu. You can now go in and plug in your IRD and turn it on. You should now have TV, Enjoy!

Troubleshooting

Ok, I've been getting lots of e-mails and PMs on mIRC from people who are having problems so I decided to add a troubleshooting section to this guide. Here I'll list some things that can cause problems:
-It would be a good idea to erase the atmel chip before you load IRD2PC on it. To do this in Jeepers click "Atmel 8515" and then select "Erase Flash/Eeprom". Then program with IRD2PC.
-Make sure that there are no wires touching together where there shouldn't be. Also make sure when you were soldering the wires to the connectors that you didn't let solder connect anything.
-Make sure that you DO NOT put spaces where you enter your Boxkey, Cam number or IRD number.
-Make sure you pad your IRD and Cam numbers. By this I mean, add a zero INFRONT of the number if the Hex digit is only 7 digits long.
-Make sure IRD2PC and Autoroll are checked off in Winvu
-Make SURE your box key, IRD number and CAM number are correct. TRIPPLE CHECK these. Make sure they are in hex (use the method stated in the guide to convert to hex). Also, make sure that letters are CAPITALIZED.
-Try doing a reset of your IRD (Menu>6>3>Info>Right>Left>TV/Video>Unplug IRD)
-I like to get Winvu running first, then turn on the IRD.

This guide was written by The Dishnewbies Team . If you have problems, please ask on the message board or the #Dishnetwork or #Expressvu channels on irc.dishnewbies.tv .

Decimal:
Hexadecimal: