 Re: Universal Remote
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Joined: Oct 2003
Posts: 1,349
connoisseur
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connoisseur
Joined: Oct 2003
Posts: 1,349 |
There's no doubt Harmony is easy to program. I have the 890 model. But you pay for that simplicity. For example, you can't have extensive macro's. With my MX900, I have a macro that deletes programs from my DVR. It takes 8 or nine clicks (list, navigate, select, delete, confirm, go back etc...) If you say so. I have many Macros on my One. Some moderately complex ones (IMHO); turning off gear, turning on other gear, entering menus on one component to configure settings a specific way for Music vs. Movies, even changing speaker sizes or trim levels based on source component, etc. Perhaps you've discovered some command limit or there's something even more complex that you need to do. AFAIK, if it can be accomplished with a series of repeatable button presses, you can make a macro for it. They're just sequential button presses - menu, select, select, down, down, enter, up, pause 5 seconds, left, select, exit, etc. And once created, the macro can be assigned & used just like any other command.
With Harmony, I'm at the mercy of Logitech to provide an update. while that's true for URC as well, I can just learn the RF if I want to. That's what I did with on the MX900 for my Oppo until the update came out.
Do you mean learning IR commands? Both my One and my previous 550 could learn IR commands from any OEM remote. Be it to override one button from an existing product, or all of the IR commands for some new product that isn't even in Logitech's database. There are a few oddball IR commands that Logitech doesn't have for my gear (most notably my older AVR), and it was pretty easy to teach the software the required command. Once learned, the commands act just like any other command that Logitech had in it's database already. You can assign them in any way you wish. Even use 'em in macros.  But true, the One can't do RF learning because the One doesn't do RF. One glaring omission of the Harmony One.
M80v2 | VP150v2 | QS8v2
SVS Pci+ 20-39
Emotiva UMC-1 & LPA-1
M22ti + T-Amp, in the Office
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Re: Universal Remote
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Joined: Jul 2004
Posts: 1,443
connoisseur
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connoisseur
Joined: Jul 2004
Posts: 1,443 |
Peter,
I have a Lutron remote light dimmer - I never could figure out how to incorporate a dim command with a sequence like "Watch DVD" It always did something weird even though I was telling it to leave other devices on, it would turn one or the other off inexplicably. Am I missing something obvious?.....Rob
"A fanatic is someone who can't change his mind and won't change the subject" Churchill
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Re: Universal Remote
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Joined: Oct 2003
Posts: 1,349
connoisseur
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connoisseur
Joined: Oct 2003
Posts: 1,349 |
Peter,
I have a Lutron remote light dimmer - I never could figure out how to incorporate a dim command with a sequence like "Watch DVD" It always did something weird even though I was telling it to leave other devices on, it would turn one or the other off inexplicably. Am I missing something obvious?.....Rob I don't have any fancy-pants ( ) dimmers in my system, nor do I have the Harmony software in front of me and it's been at least 6/8 months since I last tinkered with it. So bear with me.... When you switch between activities, by default, the Harmony software will have coded the remote to power-down the un-needed components in your system. This could certainly have undesired consequences with your dimmers if the remote doesn't understand when it needs to (or to-not) trigger them. You can override this behavior and modify the start/stop commands for each activity. I want to say that you go to the Activities setup and there's a "customize" feature in there, where you can change which commands are sent. I know that I do this on a few of my activities when I wanted to tinker with sound modes and what-not. So long as the dimmers are IR-controlable, you should be able to teach the remote the proper commands. Then you'd need to tweak each activity with respect to what each should do with the dimmers. It could be a bit tricky to do, but I'd be surprised if there isn't a way to do it. Do first make sure that the remote can actually control the dimmers. I don't know if your dimmers respond to simple more|less brightness commands, or if you send it a value, or whatever. But before trying to put the automatic dim/bright commands in activity startup/shutdown routines, just put the brightness commands in soft button(s) in some activity to see if you can manually control the dimmers. Once you know that works, and you can reliably dim|brighten them manually, then you can tinker with adding those same commands to various activity changes. But one word of advice, even if the Lutron dimmers are listed in Logitech's database, I would try overriding them by re-teaching the software with whatever IR remotes actually came with your dimmers. I say that because with my AVR, even though the model was listed in Logitech's database, a couple of the obscure commands didn't work correctly, and so I had to override them from the original remote. After that, no problems. Good luck. I'm sure someone else with dimmers + Harmony (there must be someone here...) can chime in with better advice. If I remember, I'll try to poke around with the software this weekend and see if I can find anything else in there that might help you with your dimmers.
M80v2 | VP150v2 | QS8v2
SVS Pci+ 20-39
Emotiva UMC-1 & LPA-1
M22ti + T-Amp, in the Office
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Re: Universal Remote
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Joined: Dec 2008
Posts: 110
veteran
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veteran
Joined: Dec 2008
Posts: 110 |
Speaking of dimmers, you can get Z-wave dimmers and if you have the 890 or now I think it's the 900, you don't need line of sight for them, it's all RF. I have this for my living room and it works like a dream.
HG Cherry M60's,VP150,Qs8's,EP350
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Re: Universal Remote
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Joined: Nov 2008
Posts: 1,789
connoisseur
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connoisseur
Joined: Nov 2008
Posts: 1,789 |
I still haven't been able to get rid of my RC-8000 that came with my Denon 4808. It's big and bulky, so I've tried Harmony and a few others (never tried URC) for a slimmer, more stylish remote, but nothing has been able to give me all the flexability of the 8000. I've never found a command it couldn't learn, the batteries are replaceable, not rechargable, and last a good year or better before they need replacing.
And the one thing I simply could not trade was the ability to personally name each button whatever it was I wanted it named, and incorporate many different commands on one screen instead of having to flip through different screens to run different devices. For instance, when I hit 'Watch DVD', it turns on my TV, my Denon, my DVD player, switches the Denon to DVD and NEO-6, turns the TV to DVD and dims all my lights to a desired level that I've preset myself (Lutron light dimmers all around here too). Then from my DVD screen I have put in light dimmer up and down buttons, and a light on/off button right there along with my play, stop, rewind and all that jazz. So I can do all of that from that screen instead of having to switch over to the Lutron screen everytime I want to change the light settings. And I also have added a few of the different tv screen settings that I play with (full screen, wide screen), and Denon's THX and Neo-6 buttons on that screen as well since I sometimes swap between the two during some movies depending on what it is I'm watching.
Sounds lazy, but it's very handy. And like I mentioned, I can simply go in and name these buttons whatever I please instead of having to search through a bunch of generic names to give it. That in itself is worth putting up with the bulky eyesore IMO. But if the URC remotes have all of these features, I may just give one a try.
My Stuff :
M80's
QS8's
VP150
EP800
Denon 4802
Emotiva XPA-3
Samsung BD-P3600
Sharp 65 Inch Aquos LCD
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Re: Universal Remote
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Joined: Jul 2004
Posts: 1,443
connoisseur
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connoisseur
Joined: Jul 2004
Posts: 1,443 |
Peter,
I have a Lutron remote light dimmer - I never could figure out how to incorporate a dim command with a sequence like "Watch DVD" It always did something weird even though I was telling it to leave other devices on, it would turn one or the other off inexplicably. Am I missing something obvious?.....Rob I don't have any fancy-pants ( ) dimmers in my system, nor do I have the Harmony software in front of me and it's been at least 6/8 months since I last tinkered with it. So bear with me.... When you switch between activities, by default, the Harmony software will have coded the remote to power-down the un-needed components in your system. This could certainly have undesired consequences with your dimmers if the remote doesn't understand when it needs to (or to-not) trigger them. You can override this behavior and modify the start/stop commands for each activity. I want to say that you go to the Activities setup and there's a "customize" feature in there, where you can change which commands are sent. I know that I do this on a few of my activities when I wanted to tinker with sound modes and what-not. So long as the dimmers are IR-controlable, you should be able to teach the remote the proper commands. Then you'd need to tweak each activity with respect to what each should do with the dimmers. It could be a bit tricky to do, but I'd be surprised if there isn't a way to do it. Do first make sure that the remote can actually control the dimmers. I don't know if your dimmers respond to simple more|less brightness commands, or if you send it a value, or whatever. But before trying to put the automatic dim/bright commands in activity startup/shutdown routines, just put the brightness commands in soft button(s) in some activity to see if you can manually control the dimmers. Once you know that works, and you can reliably dim|brighten them manually, then you can tinker with adding those same commands to various activity changes. But one word of advice, even if the Lutron dimmers are listed in Logitech's database, I would try overriding them by re-teaching the software with whatever IR remotes actually came with your dimmers. I say that because with my AVR, even though the model was listed in Logitech's database, a couple of the obscure commands didn't work correctly, and so I had to override them from the original remote. After that, no problems. Good luck. I'm sure someone else with dimmers + Harmony (there must be someone here...) can chime in with better advice. If I remember, I'll try to poke around with the software this weekend and see if I can find anything else in there that might help you with your dimmers. I have taught the Harmony a couple of commands that were missing and it is probably laziness on my part that I have not stuck with it long enough to figure out what was going wrong. It has been probably 6-8 months since I tried and I really don't remember what went wrong anyway. As for Fancypants Dimmer  It came from Lowes home improvement - not one of the whole house deals.
"A fanatic is someone who can't change his mind and won't change the subject" Churchill
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Re: Universal Remote
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Joined: Feb 2007
Posts: 602
aficionado
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aficionado
Joined: Feb 2007
Posts: 602 |
Peter, I have Harmony's 890 so I don't know how the One behaves. But in the 8x0 series, you can't have a macro that has more than 7 steps. Since lot of the these DVRs require constant, click A to continue, click this to do that etc...the number of things a remote has to do can quickly add up. Micah, Here's how my MX900 works. It has two main hard buttons if you want to use it. WATCH and LISTEN. For me, it defaults to WATCH. Then it has six nameable hard buttons: (Limited to 7 or 8 char though) CABLE, BLURAY, PS3, XBOX360, WII, HD DVD The CABLE button does the followoing 1) Turns on the TV 2) Turns on the Denon 3) Turns on the cable box 4) Sets a variable for the cbl box state to ON. 5) Pauses for 5 seconds 6) Sets the input on the TV to HDMI1 7) sets the input on the Denon to component used by the settop. 8) Goes to the CABLE submenu. Once you get to the CABLE submenu, the hard buttons (that had CABLE, HDDVD etc) now change the labels to LIST, REPLAY, LIVE, A, B, C. The nice thing about the URC is that it has a "punch through" option for volume. It basically tells the remote to use the Denon for the volume by default. So if you go the the CABLE submenu, you don't have to tell it to use Denon's volume. The variables are now for TOADs (devices w/o discrete on or off). Since I set the variable of CBL STATE to ON, if I hit WATCH, CABLE again, it will not power on the CBL box. Pretty handy. The other cool thing is that I can load up a different profile at will. When I had to take my Marantz in for FW upgrades, I had another profile that would turn on the TV, use the TV's volume etc. This image below shows the main UI of the program (for programming the remote!) [img]http://www.box.net/shared/ilfubvrsqz[/img] This one below shows the "sub menu" of CABLE after hitting the CABLE hard button. [img]http://www.box.net/shared/4alsq3c182[/img] Finally, this one shows the MACRO involved with the hardbutton "CABLE). To avoid inputs not being recognized, I have my remote send the signal multiple times. [img]http://www.box.net/shared/0mpea41mdh[/img] It's hard to explain it, but I really am attached to my remote!  PS: tried to embed the image, but I guess it didn't work?!?
Last edited by Hansang; 12/19/09 04:09 AM.
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Denon 4520, EPIC80/500/VP180 Speakers
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Re: Universal Remote
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Joined: Dec 2008
Posts: 1,361
connoisseur
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connoisseur
Joined: Dec 2008
Posts: 1,361 |
Peter,
I have a Lutron remote light dimmer - I never could figure out how to incorporate a dim command with a sequence like "Watch DVD" It always did something weird even though I was telling it to leave other devices on, it would turn one or the other off inexplicably. Am I missing something obvious?.....Rob I have done this with the Harmony 890: turns on the projector, turns down the lights, fires up the AVR - but won't turn on the amp because I was born without a remote trigger.
Panny 3000 PJ, 118" Carada, Denon 3300, PS3, Axiom QS8, PSB 5T, B&W sub, levitating speaker wire
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Re: Universal Remote
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Joined: Apr 2007
Posts: 4,877
connoisseur
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connoisseur
Joined: Apr 2007
Posts: 4,877 |
I've held outthis long, so I'm gonna hold out until they release one with blue tooth built in for the ps3 and other devices. Surely can't be too far around the corner...
-David
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Re: Universal Remote
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Joined: Dec 2003
Posts: 10,420
shareholder in the making
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shareholder in the making
Joined: Dec 2003
Posts: 10,420 |
Other than the Wii, I do not know of any other HT equipment running blue tooth so it could be quite far down the road.
Jason
M80 v2
VP160 v3
QS8 v2
PB13 Ultra
Denon 3808
Samsung 85" Q70
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