Help newby with Harmony 300, XMBC + Win7

Hi guys

I have been using XMBC on my old skool original XBOX for the last three years but I have just built myself a HTPC running Win7 Pro 64-bit and XBMC.

I have a Logitech Harmony 300 that I use on my old XBOX but I would like to use it on my HTPC but I need an IR receiver.

Will any receiver do? I saw this one (http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/Mini-USB-IrDA...aab8a44f4) on eBay but I'm unsure if it will be ok nor am I sure if it will receive IR or is it just a transmitter? If its not suitable, can anyone recommend me one that will be ok?

Also, does anyone know if I can configure the Harmony 300 to be able to launch XBMC in Windows 7? I want my wife to be able to just turn on the HTPC and launch it without the keyboard and just use the remote instead.

Would appreciate anyone's help.

Thanks.

I might be a bit bias but I think Flirc is great:
http://xbmc.org/natethomas/2012/04/15/fl...trol-xbmc/

With flirc you'll be able to program a key combo and open an app:
http://forum.flirc.tv/index.php?/topic/8...st__p__480

Thanks, I'll check it out.

Meanwhile, can anyone confirm that the IR receiver I've posted in the link in my first post above (or similar) will work?

Checked it out, looks interesting but none available until early July

That receiver isn't an obvious choice for XBMC.

Generally speaking there are two ways the receiver interacts with the operating system, either it uses the Microsoft ehome driver (or equivalent on *nix) or it emulates a keyboard and sends the Windows Media Center keyboard shorcuts. XBMC works with both types of receiver. It isn't clear to me how the IR receiver you mentioned works, so I don't know how XBMC would see the signals from it.

If you want a cheap receiver look for an ORtek VRC-1100 - http://wiki.xbmc.org/?title=Remote_Contr...#VRC-1100. You probably won't be able to buy just the receiver, but the handset/receiver pair is still cheap. Note that the remote is usually not branded as ORtek, so if you're looking on ebay or Amazon you'll have to go by the appearance. I use the VRC-1100 receiver with a Harmony 300 and it works pretty well. The ehome receivers are normally better, but they don't work well with low end Harmony handsets.

(2012-05-07 03:30)tmarinos7 Wrote:  Checked it out, looks interesting but none available until early July

Indeed, It proved very popular with XBMC users.
As the article says, I found MCE stuff hard to setup etc and Flirc just seems to work (plus it supports a charity)
I'll shut up about flirc now - I can't help it that I like it so much

(2012-05-07 09:54)jhsrennie Wrote:  I use the VRC-1100 receiver with a Harmony 300 and it works pretty well.

Thanks.

Do I need to do anything special to make it work with the Harmony 300? What kind of remote do you configure the Harmony 300 to be used as?

(2012-05-08 04:04)tmarinos7 Wrote:  Do I need to do anything special to make it work with the Harmony 300? What kind of remote do you configure the Harmony 300 to be used as?

The Harmony has emulation for the ORtek VRC-1100 built in. It's a while since I configured my Harmony, but as I recall you just fire up the config app, search for the device, enter "ortek", and it finds the ORtek VRC-1100.

I tweaked the config a bit. For example I made the volume buttons control the volume on my amp, and I made the power button control the power on my TV.