I wanted a remote control for my AG-7150 to control it from my PC when ripping videos.
Panasonic professional-grade VTRs generally use a 34-pin remote interface. It is a fairly basic interface with a couple of caveats.
The pin descriptions below are available online but I have added a little more information here.
Pins 19, 30, and 33 form an octal number to dictate the speed, as seen in the table below.
The first step was to obtain the correct connector. After some research I found it was a Hirose Sumicon 1600 34-pin connector. See datasheet. These connectors are going end of life so expect them to be unobtanium in the near future. I purchased just the connector (P/N P-1634BA) and later 3D printed the housing to save costs. If you want to purchase the housing you need P/N P-1634A-CA. I modeled my own case, before realising that the model was uploaded on DigiKey's site. I cannot vouch for this, but I would try it if I was doing this again.
From the above, there were a few requirements:
This leaves us with a pretty obvious choice, an Arduino Mega 2560. I bought the Embed version to solder to rather than using headers.
The Ardunio sketch can be found on my GitHub here.
The circuitry is fairly basic so I will not post a schematic. Get in touch if you have questions.
For the 5 input pins: Cassette In, Play Hold, Pause Hold, FF Hold, Rewind Hold (And Rec Hold/Dub Hold if implementing record), use a potential divider as below:
I used a 22k resistor on all 8 LEDs. This can be adjusted to fit your requirements. Connect the Anode to the Arduino. See image.
The input switches are wired between ground and the Arduino, using the built in pullup resistors.
The models for the case and knob can be found on Thingiverse. It is a fairly basic design but gets the job done. Use M4 screws to fasten together.
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