[AppleTV2] Logitech Harmony support for ATV2?

dazex Wrote:Not if you understand that XBMC runs as the user mobile. And you reset your user directories' ownership when you make any changes to it. Else, you'll encounter varying issues depending on which file you have touch.

Run the following command as root to reset the directory back to default.

Code:

chown -R mobile:mobile /var/mobile/Library/Preferences/XBMC/

I had posted best practice guide on how to sFTP into your ATV2 by creating two separate bookmarks, depending on which directory you are gonna modify if you want to look for that post.

I've been looking around for this guide, do you have any links to it? I've been using root for everything on my ATV2 and haven't noticed any issues, this is the first time I've seen someone mention I need to be doing things using the mobile account, I didn't even realize there was another account.

Why not add to the ATV2 wiki that after jailbreaking and installing XBMC they should install sudo and setup the mobile user with sudo privileges requiring a password and from hereon to use the mobile account whenever messing around with XBMC.

Not sure what I wrote, or where I wrote it. But perhaps this will get you on the right path:

(2011-02-28 19:28)dazex Wrote:  You can log in as user: mobile pass: alpine

Best practice to keep permissions proper is to create two bookmarks for your SFTP program.

I create one to log in as root if I need to manipulate anything in the actual XBMC installed directory: /Applications/XBMC.frappliance

For that SFTP bookmark, you can make the remote path go directly to /Applications/XBMC.frappliance/ to save the trouble of navigating there yourself.

For the second bookmark, for when I need to upload anything to the userdata directory. i.e. joystick.AppleRemote.xml, advancedsettings.xml, plugin zips, etc...

I create a bookmark with user of mobile and set the default remote path to be: /private/var/mobile/Library/Preferences/XBMC/userdata/

That way the files are correctly uploaded with the proper ownership.

In the world of linux/unix/etc....permissions and ownership is very important. So best to keep all that proper or at least be aware of them whenever one is modding any file. Or else, you can run into strange issues.

will thee ever nbe support so if i press the number "2" button 3 times it goes to the "c" section of my movie collection

Certainly possible, but it would require someone to hack/modify the IR receiver's drivers. That would be a major endeavor, if I understand correctly.

(2012-04-17 19:37)Ned Scott Wrote:  Certainly possible, but it would require someone to hack/modify the IR receiver's drivers. That would be a major endeavor, if I understand correctly.

well just out of interest how many people here would like this option i know for my collection would make it a whole lot easier to navigate and most other media centers have this option

(2012-04-17 19:56)cf125 Wrote:  well just out of interest how many people here would like this option i know for my collection would make it a whole lot easier to navigate and most other media centers have this option

This is a limitation of the ATV2 hardware and not XBMC

(2012-04-19 04:27)aaronb Wrote:  

(2012-04-17 19:56)cf125 Wrote:  well just out of interest how many people here would like this option i know for my collection would make it a whole lot easier to navigate and most other media centers have this option

This is a limitation of the ATV2 hardware and not XBMC

Doubtful that it is an actual hardware limitation, as the ATV2 can learn just about any remote signal, and the number of signals is just based on how many commands the native ATV software uses. It's just that the only people who know how to increase that number and map it in some way is Apple. Everyone else is guessing in the dark.

I moved from XBMC on a Mac to XBMC on an ATV2 just recently and wanted to share a few things I've learned, mostly a summary of what's in this thread or elsewhere.

First, unlike on a Mac, there is only a small set of buttons that the ATV2 can recognize and there's no way around this. This set has already been defined by Logitech in the Harmony Remote app under the "Apple TV" device, under Media Center PC -> Apple -> Apple TV. These are:



Second, most of these buttons are reasonably well defined by the default keymap in current builds of XBMC Eden. So basically if you add the Apple TV device in Harmony and make an activity (of type "Watch TV" which you would rename "Watch Apple TV"), there's not a lot you need to do further.

Now there are a few quirks and caveats that confused me for some time:

• In the default "Apple TV" device configuration, the hard "Skip Back" button is mapped to the device "SkipBackward" button while the hard "Skip Forward" button is mapped to the device "NextChapter" button. But it turns out that it doesn't matter because each set of SkipBack/PreviousChapter and SkipForward/NextChapter buttons send out the same button ID code: 21 for SkipBackward & PreviousChapter and 20 for SkipForward & NextChapter. And these are now mapped correctly in the XBMC default keymap, whereas in previous builds they had been erroneously reversed.

• What really made me dig into this was the glaring lack of any way to access either the "Info" or the "context menu" buttons in XBMC. So I was tempted to map those skip fw/back hard buttons onto those, and still may later. But I discovered that both each be accessed with long presses of the Select Button (for "Info") and the Menu Button (for "context Menu"). I don't see this point made obvious in any FAQ I've seen, and it's really key.

• It's apparently not possible to define a button in Harmony software as a long press button, so that hard buttons could be directly mapped without the need for a long press. Not possible even by learning Raw remote codes. (I tried.) I've read in forums that Harmony support could do this, but if you're out of your original 90 day support window, they won't do this without a charge. Perhaps someone who has recently bought a Harmony One and is reading this could get them to do that. (If you do, post here!)

• The only viable option for Info and Context Menu (or any other function you might need either a hard or a soft button for), in my view, other than the skip buttons, would be to give up the Page Up/Page Down buttons. But these are needed for browsing a library.

• If you did want to remap one or more of those buttons to other functions, you would need to edit a copy of the default keymap ("joystick.AppleRemote.xml") file and put the edited version in your userdata folder. There are FAQs etc on how to do that, I just mention it here for completeness.

• There are 3 additional buttons that's not included in the default activity for Apple TV but is included in the default device. These are: Video Mode, Pair, and Unpair. I chose to map Video Mode to a soft button, in the hopes XBMC would recognize it (by looking and /var/log/syslog). However it doesn't. It is intercepted by Apple TV and does go to a video mode (resolution configuration screen). So might be handy to have as a soft button but it's not useful for XBMC. I did not experiment with Pair and Unpair but I expect similar results.

• The Play/Pause hard button on the factory remote is handled somewhat strangely (both by Harmony and by XBMC). Play and Pause are mapped separately. This seems to work in XBMC as expected. But I found that it in aTV Black's Last FM application, neither play or pause works (as mapped). Select seems to serve the function instead. Strange. I don't yet know what other issues this might cause. (Be interested in comments on that.)

So in the end, I made only a few minor modifications to the default watch Apple TV activity, and did not edit the default XBMC keymap:

• mapped the hard "Exit" button (in addition to the menu button) to "Menu"
• mapped the hard "Info" button (in addition to the select button) to "Select" (though it requires a long press still)
• added the "Video Mode" button as a soft button
• changed the map of the "Skip Forward" hard button from "PreviousChapter" to "SkipForward", just for consistency's sake. (As noted above it makes no difference).

Hope that helps.

(2012-04-20 22:43)ctawn Wrote:  Hope that helps.

It actually did quite a lot! :-)
I was coming from XBMC on a Mac Mini with a perfectly working remote configuration and was wondering how to get this to work on the atv.

I used your suggestions and it already got better, the lack of an info button, however, is still annyoing me. How do you get the OSD to display in an easy way? And do your buttons also not repeat at all (meaning lots of clicks on my Harmony for scrolling up and down if you don't remember to use the dedicated up/down buttons)?

There is one thing that really makes me a decent amount of time everyday, the way I don't have a button to jump directly to the home screen (e.g. from browsing a video folder). How would one go about adding that?