2013-02-03, 13:14
Hi All,
Fairly new to XBMC but have been testing it out on three different machines - a Windows XP PC, a Dell laptop hackintosh running OS X 10.6.8 and now a 2007 Mac Mini (1.83Ghz Core 2 Duo, 1GB ram) also running 10.6.8.
The problem I'm having is that the remote control doesn't work reliably on the Mac Mini, button presses are frequently "lost", as often as 1 in 3 to 1 in 5 button presses just go missing regardless of whether I press rapidly or slowly. This is most apparent when scrolling through lists one by one but happens elsewhere on the main menus etc.
I am using a harmony one remote and had been setting up the Plex Player profile with XBMC set in "Multi Remtote (Harmony)" mode, and the functionality of the buttons is all working fine, and after tweaking the inter key delay to 100ms and reducing repeats to 1 (as advised elsewhere) most of the response lag is gone as well, (harmony remotes are notoriously laggy at the best of times...) however a slight lag combined with roughly 1 in 5 key presses ignored makes for a very frustrating user experience.
I decided to go back to basics in troubleshooting the issue, so I changed XBMC back to "Standard" Apple remote and did some testing with the original white apple remote. Although there is slightly less lag than the Harmony one (as expected) the intermittent loss of button presses is still there and just as bad! Sometimes even 1 in 3 button presses is lost, sometimes 1 in 5 or so. It seems to vary with how "busy" xbmc is, for example it occurs less often scrolling sideways in the main menu and more often scrolling at the bottom of a list of movies.
Now thinking that perhaps I have IR interference in the room, a flat battery in the remote etc, I decided to test the white Apple remote under the same room conditions in Front Row - absolutely PERFECT. Not a single lost button press when scrolling through lists even when clicking fairly rapidly. So that rules out the remote, the room, and the IR receiver in the mini.
I do currently have Candalair drivers installed however I only installed them in an attempt to fix the problem, the problem was there with the standard apple IR drivers, in fact candalair doesn't seem to have made any noticeable difference to anything so I may remove it.
I've tried both exclusive mode ("Allow start of XBMC using the remote") and shared mode - no difference.
Now heres an interesting thing - the hackintosh machine, which is a Dell Insipron 1520 running 10.6.8 has an IR receiver of its own, when I add a profile for the dell IR on my harmony one (which I assume is some sort of MCE remote, or maybe proprietary) it works with XBMC under Mac OS for standard 4 way direction, menu and ok, and running the same version of frodo with the same OS version the remote works perfectly - a slight lag as always with a harmony one, but NO lost button presses even when vertically scrolling in lists!
So I can only assume there is some problem in Frodo with the Apple IR receiver. No doubt if I connected a 3rd party IR receiver to the Mac Mini I could solve the problem but I'd really like to get the internal one working properly if I can since the machine was bought specifically to build a HTPC, and I'm quite happy to do various testing/debugging to find out what it is if I know where to start looking.
In all other regards Frodo is working brilliantly even on the old Core 2 Duo, everything works fast and reliably (apart from the remote) high def video plays perfectly, so I'm otherwise very impressed with it.
Fairly new to XBMC but have been testing it out on three different machines - a Windows XP PC, a Dell laptop hackintosh running OS X 10.6.8 and now a 2007 Mac Mini (1.83Ghz Core 2 Duo, 1GB ram) also running 10.6.8.
The problem I'm having is that the remote control doesn't work reliably on the Mac Mini, button presses are frequently "lost", as often as 1 in 3 to 1 in 5 button presses just go missing regardless of whether I press rapidly or slowly. This is most apparent when scrolling through lists one by one but happens elsewhere on the main menus etc.
I am using a harmony one remote and had been setting up the Plex Player profile with XBMC set in "Multi Remtote (Harmony)" mode, and the functionality of the buttons is all working fine, and after tweaking the inter key delay to 100ms and reducing repeats to 1 (as advised elsewhere) most of the response lag is gone as well, (harmony remotes are notoriously laggy at the best of times...) however a slight lag combined with roughly 1 in 5 key presses ignored makes for a very frustrating user experience.
I decided to go back to basics in troubleshooting the issue, so I changed XBMC back to "Standard" Apple remote and did some testing with the original white apple remote. Although there is slightly less lag than the Harmony one (as expected) the intermittent loss of button presses is still there and just as bad! Sometimes even 1 in 3 button presses is lost, sometimes 1 in 5 or so. It seems to vary with how "busy" xbmc is, for example it occurs less often scrolling sideways in the main menu and more often scrolling at the bottom of a list of movies.
Now thinking that perhaps I have IR interference in the room, a flat battery in the remote etc, I decided to test the white Apple remote under the same room conditions in Front Row - absolutely PERFECT. Not a single lost button press when scrolling through lists even when clicking fairly rapidly. So that rules out the remote, the room, and the IR receiver in the mini.
I do currently have Candalair drivers installed however I only installed them in an attempt to fix the problem, the problem was there with the standard apple IR drivers, in fact candalair doesn't seem to have made any noticeable difference to anything so I may remove it.
I've tried both exclusive mode ("Allow start of XBMC using the remote") and shared mode - no difference.
Now heres an interesting thing - the hackintosh machine, which is a Dell Insipron 1520 running 10.6.8 has an IR receiver of its own, when I add a profile for the dell IR on my harmony one (which I assume is some sort of MCE remote, or maybe proprietary) it works with XBMC under Mac OS for standard 4 way direction, menu and ok, and running the same version of frodo with the same OS version the remote works perfectly - a slight lag as always with a harmony one, but NO lost button presses even when vertically scrolling in lists!
So I can only assume there is some problem in Frodo with the Apple IR receiver. No doubt if I connected a 3rd party IR receiver to the Mac Mini I could solve the problem but I'd really like to get the internal one working properly if I can since the machine was bought specifically to build a HTPC, and I'm quite happy to do various testing/debugging to find out what it is if I know where to start looking.
In all other regards Frodo is working brilliantly even on the old Core 2 Duo, everything works fast and reliably (apart from the remote) high def video plays perfectly, so I'm otherwise very impressed with it.
So much so that the remote control is almost unusable as out of 10 button presses as many as half will be lost. Trying to use the remote control to enter a search term with the on screen keyboard is nearly impossible unless you have the patience of a saint.
