New EventGhost EventClient for XBMC available

bramblepants Wrote:Even spent a bit of time setting up multitap, so I can use the number buttons on the remote to type letters, which helps with jumping to movies and typing etc etc

One tiny issue I have is with the repeat delay when navigating up, down, left and right as sometimes it jumps a little...can you advise what you have yours set to?

I'm having a lot of problems with the "smoothness" of my remote pressing. I have to press very slowly and be very determined to get any kind of response from XBMC. Any suggestions as to what this can be (considering the fact you seem to have it working). I'm on Vista x64, if that's even somewhat relevant.

On my skip key question I've answered this elsewhere, and it's because the eventserver in XBMC is not context aware like the old keymap used to be, hence when you press a key evenghost passes it to the event server, and it's the event server that causes the two actions to occur (ie skip and move within the OSD menu). I'm not sure there is much that can be done about this.

I'm running XBMC Atlantis Alpha and Eventghost with the MCE XP remote.

Control is pretty good except I can't for the life of me get scrolling up/down in the file lists to be fast or smooth. I've dropped the repeat time to 5ms in the event server settings and changed the MCE remote repeat in eventghost to be 0.12seconds and it's still not as smooth as on my XBOX.

I've tried and tried all sorts of settings.

Does anyone have some settings that work? Or is it simply the processing overhead of eventghost that causes the stutter?

Ta

Byron

byronl Wrote:I'm running XBMC Atlantis Alpha and Eventghost with the MCE XP remote.

Control is pretty good except I can't for the life of me get scrolling up/down in the file lists to be fast or smooth. I've dropped the repeat time to 5ms in the event server settings and changed the MCE remote repeat in eventghost to be 0.12seconds and it's still not as smooth as on my XBOX.

I've tried and tried all sorts of settings.

Does anyone have some settings that work? Or is it simply the processing overhead of eventghost that causes the stutter?

Ta

Byron

The only way I got smooth scrolling to work was to not disable the HID service and not mapping the up/down/left/right/select on the MCE remote because they work beautifully out of the box. The only problem with doing that is there are a number of keys that you can't map to XBMC because they will start up Windows Media Center (Recorded TV, Program Guide, Live TV and the big green button). You also won't want to map a number of other buttons since they also work out of the box (0 to 9, clear, enter, vol, mute).

LaTropa64 thanks for this. I went down the HID enabled path and it was painful.

The new plugin at the eventghost forums looks like it might be the go since it solves the skip problem as well, and might reduce some of the delays.

http://www.eventghost.org/forum/viewtopi...5&start=90

See the 2nd last post by miljbee.

I'm going to try it tonight.

Byron

Heilage Wrote:I'm having a lot of problems with the "smoothness" of my remote pressing. I have to press very slowly and be very determined to get any kind of response from XBMC. Any suggestions as to what this can be (considering the fact you seem to have it working). I'm on Vista x64, if that's even somewhat relevant.

Heilage - sorry for the delay in replying!

For me, what made the most difference with navigating around XBMC was not mapping the MCE Remote to XBMC Up, Down, Left and Right, but mapping it to keyboard presses via "Emulate Keystrokes", found in EventGhost. Once I'd got this setup it meant navigating was smooth, fast, and I could hold down a button and it would repeat.

Apologies if you already know how to do this, but it might be useful for other people...

* Fire up EventGhost (I'm using EventGhost 0.3.7.r851)
* Load the Keyboard Plugin
* Create a new folder, named something like "MCE Remote + Keyboard"
* Create 4 new macros named Up, Down, Left and Right
* Press Up on your remote, then drag the Event over to the "Up" macro
* Whilst in the "Up" macro press the "Add Action..." button, go to Window and add the Emulate Keystrokes action.
* In the Text To type box type {Up} and press OK.
* Press the "Add Action..." button again and go to EventGhost, and choose "Autorepeat current macro".
* In the settings for Autorepeat put:

0.40
0.15
999.00
0.15

I'm still working on these timings, as it occasionally skips a little further than I want. Just looked at another thread which suggests the following, but I haven't tested yet.

0.60
0.30
2.00
0.03

You could try either...

So, under your "Up" macro you should now have, in this order:

MceRemote.Up
Emulate Keystrokes:{Up}
Autorepeat current macro: 0.4

if it's not in that order, drag them to the correct order. You will also need to disable the Up Macro under XBMC, in EventGhost, otherwise you'll get double presses.

At this point you could save your settings in EG, then fire up XBMC and see if it makes navigating any speedier? Compare Up to Down, Left and Right. If it's better, then just repeat the above process for Down, Left and Right, using {Down}, {Left} and {Right} as your keypresses to emulate. Make sure you disable the same under the XBMC macros.

I have also used the Emulate Keystrokes for the volume control, which made that smooth as well. You just need to map it to + for volume up and - for volume down.

I am also doing all this with the HID service disabled with all the special buttons working, and the Green button launching XBMC...

If this helps anyone please let me know, as I'm considering writing instructions for setting up EventGhost + MCE Remote + XBMC from start to finish, including repeat delays, launching XBMC from the green button, sleep and standby and Multitap.

Worked like a charm! The timing is not spot-on at the moment, but it's about 1337% better than before. A few keys are difficult to fix though, like the stop button and context menu (for this one I used the XBMC-function instead of a keboard emulation).

When I'm finished I'll be glad to throw the configuration out to the world.

Heilage Wrote:Worked like a charm! The timing is not spot-on at the moment, but it's about 1337% better than before. A few keys are difficult to fix though, like the stop button and context menu (for this one I used the XBMC-function instead of a keboard emulation).

When I'm finished I'll be glad to throw the configuration out to the world.

OK, that's good to hear. I've updated my post above with some timings which may be better. I'm at work at the moment though so cant test them. You could try these?

I've also left my context button as the XBMC function, and I think it's working ok for me. Might be worth double clicking your "Microsoft MCE Remote" plugin in EG and making sure the Button release timeout is set to 0.15?

I ended up mapping quite a few of the MCE buttons to keyboard presses, as I found they work better. For Select just create a new Macro, named "Select". Press OK on your remote, drag it over to the "Select" Macro, add an Emulate Keystroke as {Enter} and disable Select under the XBMC macro...No need to add an autorepeat on this one...

You could also add them for Page Up, Page Down, Back, Delete etc etc...just make sure you disable the same under the XBMC folder and macros.

Guys,
thanks for working out the timings... I have noticed this is an issue with the latest plugins.

btw... I never had any timing issue using the keyboard emulation, everything was very fast and smooth. I wonder if the 'issue' is with the Eventserver - or the new plugin?

bramblepants Wrote:Heilage - sorry for the delay in replying!

For me, what made the most difference with navigating around XBMC was not mapping the MCE Remote to XBMC Up, Down, Left and Right, but mapping it to keyboard presses via "Emulate Keystrokes", found in EventGhost. Once I'd got this setup it meant navigating was smooth, fast, and I could hold down a button and it would repeat.

Apologies if you already know how to do this, but it might be useful for other people...

* Fire up EventGhost (I'm using EventGhost 0.3.7.r851)
* Load the Keyboard Plugin
* Create a new folder, named something like "MCE Remote + Keyboard"
* Create 4 new macros named Up, Down, Left and Right
* Press Up on your remote, then drag the Event over to the "Up" macro
* Whilst in the "Up" macro press the "Add Action..." button, go to Window and add the Emulate Keystrokes action.
* In the Text To type box type {Up} and press OK.
* Press the "Add Action..." button again and go to EventGhost, and choose "Autorepeat current macro".
* In the settings for Autorepeat put:

0.40
0.15
999.00
0.15
<snip>.

I'm attempting to get a Cyberlink remote control working with XBMC though eventghost. Will the basic premise for setting up as posted above, work for that remote also?