User

17.03.2010 15:04:27

First of all, congratulations on an awesome product. I am just testing it and its amazing what it can do in controlling a Mac based media center PC.

I'm using an approach to get better control of things using multiple virtual remotes with a Harmony One as outlined here -> http://funwithcomputers.wordpress.com/2008/03/01/using-the-harmony-880-remote-with-your-macs-built-in-ir-port/

I've gone through the whole process and when I try to use it, its not working. When I activate it through remote buddy from the menu button, the visual shows the graphic of the remote with only the menu button activated (and that's the way the first virtual remote is programmed), but none of the other buttons on the Harmony work at all. To recap what I did...

In Harmony, I created a new device and taught it all the functions according to the spreadsheet in the attachment. I'm pretty confident that this was done correctly, and then I created an Activity to use it. The one button defined in Remote Buddy for remote 1 works, so that leads me to believe that my problem is in the behavior in Remote Buddy.

In Remote Buddy, I went into Preferences and Hardware and created all the virtual remotes, and registered them by incrementing the remote and hitting Home to record the ID for each in the mapping spreadsheet. I then went into the Behavior construction kit and defined all the actions and tied them to keystrokes. Running the actors controls Plex as expected. I then created a behavior and dragged all the actions into the behavior. I didn't do any Default Mapping there per the instructions in the link. Finally I did a Compile, Test Drive and permanetnly installed scripted behavior. I went back into Preferences -> Mapping and mapped all my actions to the different virtual remotes.

Other than testing the actors, is there anything else I can do to troubleshoot this... How can I verify that the behavior is live and mapped. I does show up on the list when I activate it from my remote, but the virtual remote mapped actions don't work.

Thanks. 

User

17.03.2010 15:56:46

Thanks for asking.

One short general note: 
One should avoid to create a new Behaviour for an application that's already supported by Remote Buddy, because it really is an unnecessary waste of time spent on duplicating functionality that's already ready to use. Instead - if an action you need is missing - the recommended way is to extend the existing Behaviour via "Custom actions" (=> available in the action selection popup at Prefs > Mapoing > [Behaviour of your choice]).

What is likely happening in your case is that your Behaviour (and the mapping you defined for it) never gets used because there already is a Plex Behaviour and it takes priority. The way around this is to deactivate the "factory supplied" Behaviour by unchecking it at Prefs > Behaviours, so that your home-made Plex Behaviour is the only one that remains.

I'd also like to recommend you to take a look at this blog entry for an easier, faster (takes maybe one or two minutes) and proven way of using Plex' Harmony Remote Mode (including the Plex Harmony profile) and using the Harmony Remote as an Apple Remote replacement in all other applications:

http://www.iospirit.com/blog/article/131/Remote-Buddy-and-Boxee-Plex-and-XBMC/

Best regards, 
Felix Schwarz 

User

17.03.2010 20:14:29

Hi Felix,

Thanks for the information.

I created a separate behavior for this because it was greatly different from the built in Plex behavior, and I wanted to test this as an alternative without losing the built in. I did disable the original behavior for Plex and I also called the new one something different. Now that you mention it, however, the old one is still showing up in the selection menu when I activate RemoteBuddy. If it is unchecked in preferences, it should not be there, right? I'll have to check that again.

I am aware of the built in Plex capability that was built by Plex, but reading the forum entries about it, I believe this would be a better alternative. If you use their new approach, then you must configure Plex to not respond to normal Apple Remote commands, and this could lead to difficulties down the road. From what I read, they are also using a sequence of 3 commands to invoke each function... so 3 commands times the 6 buttons to get all the functions. This means that it takes 3 times as long to send each command vs. using the virtual remotes approach which sends a single command for each button press.

So back to my question, is there any way to troubleshoot this to test whether the actions are working correctly beyond what I described. Is there a way to exercise the behavior as a test without the remote? I am brand new to your product and still in the trial period, so forgive me if I'm not doing something correctly here.

User

17.03.2010 21:33:37

Ok, I decided to take your advice and remove the new Plex behavior I created and just map to the original one. I can't seem to figure out how to remove it. I tried deleting it in the construction kit, but its still in the list in behaviors in preferences and I don't see a way to delete it.

Also, what do the check boxes next to the behaviors listed in preferences do. I tried unchecking some of them thinking they'd drop off my menu, but they didn't. 

User

17.03.2010 21:47:12

Installed Behaviours are stored here:

~/Library/Application Support/Remote Buddy/Behaviours/

Once you (re)moved it from there and restart Remote Buddy, your Behaviour won't turn up in Remote Buddy anymore.

Best regards, 
Felix Schwarz 

User

18.03.2010 16:18:06

OK, after much frustration, I decided to go back to square one and try starting with your recommended approach. I want to get Plex, EyeTV, and a couple of other things going the best I can.

I setup my Harmony One for Plex Player and deleted all the virtual remote learning I had done with it. 
I configured Plex in Remote Buddy to use the virtual remote, according to the linked article, and I deleted the custom behavior I had built for it and deleted all the virtual remotes, and finally switched Remote Buddy to NOT use multiple remotes. 
I went into Plex and told it to use the Harmony remote, and I did NOT set it to be "always on".

As a test, I started EyeTV from Remote Buddy and its set to go into fullscreen mode. I then used Remote Buddy to start Plex. This seems to be working fine now. I have control over all the Plex stuff with the buttons on the Harmony beyond the few it uses out of the box. There are some timing glitches here and there and there is a definite lag, but this is much better than what I had before. This also disables directly launching Remote Buddy which I think is a good thing, but not sure. When I exit Plex, I come back to EyeTV which had been muted while Plex was running. That is all good.

So I decided to go into Boxee using the same approach. Without any configuration, it worked fine from Remote Buddy to go in and out of Boxee, but I wanted to set Boxee up to work like Plex. I went into Remote Buddy and mapped all the functions for the Boxee behavior to the virtual remote, just like I did with Plex. I then went into Boxee and told it to use the Universal Remote (Harmony) in the settings. I then tried launching this from Remote Buddy again. With these settings, I have nothing working in Boxee now. To recap, the Harmony is programmed for Plex Player and works fine with Plex. Boxee is set to use Harmony. Remote Buddy's behavior for Boxee is mapped to the virtual remote. Did I miss something in here, or shouldn't this work as I've set it up?

User

18.03.2010 22:11:47

Thanks for asking.

When you set up the mapping for the Boxee Behaviour as for the Plex Behaviour, Boxee will get all Apple Remote codes as if Remote Buddy wasn't running or installed at all.

If, however, you already have Plex' Apple Remote support installed in "Always On" mode, please be aware that Boxee technically can't get any access to the OS X Apple Remote driver (even if the Plex UI is not running, because the "Always On" mode means that Plex's Helper application keeps an exclusive lock on it, which prevents other applications from accessing it at the same time. The solution here would be to not set any application's Apple Remote support to "Always On". Since you're using Remote Buddy to switch between apps, using any "Always On" option has no benefits anyway.

If you're running OS X 10.6.x, you can use Remote Control Diagnostics (=> http://www.iospirit.com/labs/remotecontroldiagnostics/ ) to find out whether, and if, which application is currently holding an exclusive lock on the OS X Apple Remote driver.

Best regards, 
Felix Schwarz 

User

18.03.2010 22:53:00

I do not have Plex or Boxee set to "always on". Actually, if I did, then I wouldn't be able to work with EyeTV at all, and I wouldn't be able to launch anything, right? With Boxee set to Harmony and the Mapping in RB set to virtual remote, Boxee doesn't respond to anything... but everything else works fine... Plex, EyeTV, etc. With Boxee set to standard, and Mapping RB set to the apple IR remote, Boxee works fine but only with the basic buttons on the Harmony. 

User

18.03.2010 23:20:59

A bit more testing... When setup as Harmony in Boxee and Mapped to virtual... I am getting some sporadic remote function in Boxee, but not what is expected with the Harmony buttons. I ran the diagnostic while Boxee was operational... it gave me two issues:

boxeeservice is using the Apple Remote 
and 
Can't get exclusive access

Are these OK? I do NOT have boxee set for exclusive access... just set to Harmony. But it is definitely not working well like Plex does with the same settings. 

User

23.03.2010 16:55:32

Thanks for the info. This is what I'd expect and what I'd consider normal.

It appears then, that either Boxee requires a different Harmony profile - or - if you're running OS X 10.6.2, Boxee's Apple Remote support may not yet have been updated to be compatible with that version.

What happens if you quit Remote Buddy and use just Boxee? Does it work?

Best regards, 
Felix Schwarz