[WINDOWS] HOW-TO use a Logitech Harmony Remote with XBMC

(2013-04-13 22:40)rattyjunk Wrote:  Is it correct in assuming that the majority of the general buttons go in tab 2??

One last thing, I see jjd-uk suggests adding a third device, seeing as I have the 1100 is this recommended, and how does this factor into the MCE Keyboard and XBMC (sw) configuration?

Anyway, any quick pointers or suggestions would be appreciated and thank you to sufreak,vanOert, and jjd-uk for all the nice info.

Yes. Since the 1100 has only few hard buttons, the majority of the buttons should be in LCD pages. They must be there so you can program them in activities.

The 3rd device is MCE SE? it's needed for combo keys such as Alt-F4, Ctrl-xxx, Win+n,.... The power signals from the MCE SE also are more reliable.

When you create activity, you will select devices to add into it. So if you want to use a button from a device in activity, select them from the drop-down arrow on each line.

To bind a key to an XBMC action, see this:
http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid...#pid735331

Hope this helps!
-bodhi

I redid my install and have a few issues now:
1. Xbmc is pinned as 4th item on my taskbar but the Win+4 and Alt+F4 on my "Microsoft Windows Media Center SE Media Center PC" device don't do anything
2. I can't seem to shutdown my HTPC when running XBMC (or in windows 7 for that matter) via the power button on my Harmony 900. Am I missing any power settings in Windows 7 / Xbmc 12?

(2013-04-17 10:22)daffeh Wrote:  I redid my install and have a few issues now:
1. Xbmc is pinned as 4th item on my taskbar but the Win+4 and Alt+F4 on my "Microsoft Windows Media Center SE Media Center PC" device don't do anything

2. I can't seem to shutdown my HTPC when running XBMC (or in windows 7 for that matter) via the power button on my Harmony 900. Am I missing any power settings in Windows 7 / Xbmc 12?

If you can't shutdown Win 7, it could be:

- Power setting in Win7
- Harmony device: try a different button on MCE SE. If it does not work either then you can try re-update your Harmony remote profile (just reload it).

Based on your number 2, it's likely the problem is with the Harmony device. Restart Win 7 first, if does not work, reload the Harmony profile.

For anyone searching for this.
This is what I did for windows 7, Xbmc 12.0 and a Logitech Harmony 900:
Mobo: A55 Pro3 - ASRock (check wake on usb in bios)
Receiver: IR605Q (rc6, shows up as genuine in device manager)
I can now start from cold boot and shutdown again.

The only thing that doesn't seem to work is sending Win+# & ALT+F4 (other softbuttons work)

I started by following the guide from the sticky
http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=54466
I added a Microsft MCE Keyboard and a Microsoft windows Media Center SE
Then i added my devices (TV, Receiver)
The I configured the activity buttons like in that thread (except i bound back to esc)
I configured the softbuttons and optimized the speeld to 1500/0/1000/500) and put the two troubleshooting speed values to 0
The I adjusted the power settings for my two MCE devices to 'off when not in use' and with one button for both which I configured to powertoggle

I also added this to
C:\users\<USERNAME>\AppData\Roaming\XBMC\userdata\keymaps\keyboard.xml

I bound U to red button and L & t to green and yellow (subtitle controls)
I bound Tab to blue button (for quick 'honey, what's the time actions )
I also bound up arrow and down arrow (not up and down) to leftbracket and richtbracket because many people would use those buttons for + - 10 mins.

Now try out your activity. It should all boot up. If the pc does not boot up, push the help button and do a guided help. When you arrive at MCE keyboard, try to turn it on. It should now boot up. 1/10 I need to do this, no clue why.

Now I installed XBMCLauncher (http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=136798) and set XBMC to my shell. Add a 5 second delay if your mappings are never there.

Ok, great you now have a fully working XBMC HTPC that looks awesome when booting up (no more people saying that it's a pity you pass via windows)

Now for the shutting down part.
Whenever I shut down (via power on harmony), everything would shut down except the PC.
I enabled debug and saw that the PC does in fact not try to shutdown as my remote sends the S key when shutting down which just opens the exit context menu.

One way is to open your keymap file and everywhere replace the action for <s> to XBMC.Powerdown but that is not what I wanted.

Go to Windows power options and change shutdown action to shutdown and sleep action to nothing (so you don't sleep and think you shut down). Some harmony remotes send a sleep.
Then I used this post (http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid...pid916467) as follows:
Now go to the registry and look for this key:
you need to change binary value ReportMappingTable from
to
You can try to edit it directly with regedit, but that is not really straightforward for the not IT savvy.
Here is a simple trick:
right-click the key (745a17a0-74d3-11d0-b6fe-00a0c90f57da) and export it to a reg file
Edit the reg file (with notepad++) and you will find something like this:
Search for the first 0c entry, leave the next three 00 values, change the next 04 to 03, then 00 to 81 and the 16 to 00.
Exit and shutdown your PC.

Start up your activity again and now shutdown should work

that's all folks

TL;DR: My guide for Wake from S5 + XBMC shell + shutdown via harmony 900 with AsRock wake from usb mobo and IR605Q receiver

(2013-04-02 18:07)bodhi Wrote:  

(2013-04-02 10:08)prawnee Wrote:  I did have the powertoggle on the original mapped to sleep/wake. I've now changed it to launch the shutdown menu and I've just set the pc to sleep after 5 minutes of idle so I don't actually turn it off using the Harmony, just to wake it up. It seems it now responds to power on using my activity. If I change activity it sends the same power on key to end the activity, but obviously this key doesn't do anything (please correct me if I've got that totally wrong!)

Check your HTPC power settings, is it set to "use the power button to sleep/wake" ? that setting allows you to use the power toggle to sleep/wake it.

I use my harmony to turn on and off my htpc. There is the ability for a dedicated on and off button but it only works with some ir receivers.

I have problem with my harmony 900 remote. If I set "Computer – Media Center PC – Microsoft – Windows Media Center SE”, everything works and I can control my htpc. But when I try to use "MCE Keyboard" instead of "Windows Media Center SE", it seems that htpc does not correspond at all. Any ideas what could be the reason why MCE Keyboard is not working?

My mce remote is this one: http://www.hd-plex.com/hdplex-internal-m...ntrol.html

Could it be possible that my mce remote is somehow not compatible with harmony 900? If so where I could buy a remote which works also with mce keyboard?

Is there a way to prevent the power button on my Harmony 900 from putting the PC to sleep? I want to leave the computer on all the time since it stores all my music. I'm running Windows 7 and have all the power setting to stay on all the time. I just want the power button to turn off my TV and receiver. I've tried searching through this thread but came up empty. Thanks!

Yeah, there is a setting for that device where you can tell it that you don't want the device to turn on or off. I don't have the software in front of me right now, but go to the device tab, and go to the MCE Keyboard and/or SE device, and go to power settings and set it to not turn on or off.