ChyTV USB Installation Tips

We’re aware that some customers have encountered difficulties installing the USB Driver for ChyTV. While USB devices enable plug-n-play, they can be temperamental. Most of us have experienced at one time or another a USB device such as a mouse, hub, read/writer, etc. that has required some sort of reset. The following document discusses diagnosis and a progression of steps to follow when USB installation problems are encountered.

Installing ChyTV USB Driver

When any USB device is connected, a message is sent to Windows identifying the new USB device with a unique ‘ID’ code (for ChyTV, this is 15F2). This causes Windows to invoke the ‘Found New Hardware’ wizard. In most cases, letting Windows automatically search for an appropriate driver will find the driver on the CD and install it.

However, it seems that sometimes the ‘ID’ code is not transmitted correctly, perhaps due to a timing issue, cable, or some other unknown factor. This may result in an error such as ‘Driver not found’. In general, the problem is not that the software can’t be found, but that the software’s ID and the ID returned from the device are not matching.

Taking the following steps in order will usually rectify the situation:

1. Power down both the ChyTV and PC.

2. With USB cable detached from both ChyTV and PC, power up ChyTV.

3. After color bars display on ChyTV, plug in USB cable to ChyTV only.

4. Power up PC. Wait for Windows to load completely.

5. Plug in USB cable to PC.

At this point, the ‘Found New Hardware’ wizard should run, and should have the correct ID. Follow normal driver installation procedures.

Checking ChyTV USB Driver

The ChyTV USB driver installation can be verified independent from ChyTV Tools. View the Device Manager window by navigating to:

Control Panel > System > Hardware > Device Manager

and expand the Universal Serial Bus controllers tree. When correctly installed and functional, the first entry in the USB tree should read:

ChyTV after ReNumeration (15F2-ChyTVLdr.sys)

If this is not the case, the driver had not been successfully installed. Do not expect to run ChyTV Tools successfully.

ChyTV Tools USB Operation

Note: A new version of ChyTV Tools (ver 2.1) will be released in September 2005. This will contain features to address general USB reliability.

When ChyTV unit is running, USB commands from ChyTV Tools utility have a lower priority than the ChyTV unit’s executing schedule. Therefore, when the ChyTV Tools utility is run, a command is first issued to the ChyTV unit to pause the schedule.

If a schedule is running, delays may be noticeable in the ChyTV Tools interface updates. Depending on the complexity of animations and crawls and such, there may be too little bandwidth on the ChyTV unit to process USB commands, and the application may appear ‘hung’, when in fact, it’s waiting for the command completions.

To improve interface performance of the ChyTV Tools interface, always click the Stop button to pause the running schedule whenever performing updates.

Some users may wish to use Task Manager to stop the ChyTV Tools application if the response time is taking particularly long. This is fine to do, however it may be necessary to unplug the USB cable for Windows to complete the application termination.