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User

14.04.2013 10:39:11

Remote buddy doesn't work when application freezes

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This posting is older than 6 months and can contain outdated information.

When I use plex, there are times when it freezes. When that happens, I have no way to launch the remote buddy menu or custom actions. I had written an applcescript action that kills the plex process and restarts it, but the action doesn't work when the application freezes.
Is there any way around this?
-Dan

These entries from the FAQ may be relevant to this topic:

Configuration

How do I add a new action to a Behaviour - f.ex. an emulated key press or AppleScript? (FAQ015E0153)
1) Open the Remote Buddy Preferences via the pulldown-menu and choose "Mapping".
2) Choose the mapping you want to modify.
3) Select "Custom actions" for the button you want to map to an action of your own.
4) Create the action you need using the appearing editor.

Hardware

Remote Buddy does no longer react to button presses on the remote. (FAQ015E0222)
- Please make sure you have the latest version of Remote Buddy installed. If in doubt, download the latest version, quit Remote Buddy, delete it, empty your trash, then copy the downloaded version of Remote Buddy to your harddrive and start it from there.
- Please make sure, that you have installed the latest version of the Remote Buddy drivers. You can install the drivers using the Setup Wizard (=> access it via the Remote Buddy pulldown menu).
- Check your Remote Buddy settings in the Hardware category. Your remote control should be listed there and the lamp next to it should be green. If you don't find your remote control there, either the Remote Buddy drivers were not installed or installed in an outdated version - or - there is a general problem with the device. For USB devices, plugging the device to another port or resetting the PMU and/or SMC-unit of your Mac® (=> find guides on how to do this for your Mac® in the support area of apple.com) may help. If you can't find it under "USB" in the System Profiler (=> /Applications/Utilities) either, a hardware defect is as well possible.
- Check the batteries of your remote control.
- If your remote control has an on/off switch: make sure that your remote control is switched on.
- If your remote control requires additional receiver hardware: make sure that it is correctly attached to your computer and that it turns up in System Profiler.
- If you use an Apple® Remote, you should also check your system settings. Quit Remote Buddy, then open System Preferences.app > Security. Please make sure that the option to disable the infrared receiver is NOT active and click on "Unpair" should you have paired your Apple® Remote with your Mac®. After that, start Remote Buddy. If your Apple® Remote still doesn't work with Remote Buddy, please also check its preferences for the Apple® Remote. They can be found at Preferences > Hardware > Built-in IR receiver. If support for multiple remote controls is enabled there, ensure that your remote control is checked in the right table (=> you can find the correct entry for your remote control by pressing a button on it).
- If you are using a Keyspan™ RF Remote for Front Row, re-pair its remote control and receiver by simultaneously pressing the small knob on the back of the remote control and the knob on the receiver stick (the knob looks like the blinking LED, except it does not blink).

Hardware - Apple® Remote

After uninstalling/quitting Remote Buddy, my Mac® no longer reacts to the Apple® Remote. (FAQ015E0241)
To enable you to use all capabilities of the IR Receiver of your Mac®, Remote Buddy is using its own driver. In contrast, all other applications with integrated Apple® Remote support usually use the OS X Apple® Remote subsystem.

As long as you're running Remote Buddy, Remote Buddy and its driver are responsible for turning the received button presses into actions. As soon as you quit Remote Buddy, this task is again handled by the OS X Apple® Remote subsystem.

If other applications don't use the interface to the OS X Apple® Remote subsystem correctly, this can lead to the effect that nothing happens when you press a button on your Apple® Remote. For as long as you're running Remote Buddy, issues like this are covered by Remote Buddy and it's driver and are therefore not visible to you. However, as soon as you quit Remote Buddy, the OS X Apple® Remote subsystem is back in control and any issues caused in it by other applications become visible.

Therefore Remote Buddy is neither the cause of the issue nor is it responsible for it. Instead, the cause of the issue exists independently of Remote Buddy. It's located elsewhere and can also only be solved there.

Although our products can't cause any such issues, we're regularly contacted about such issues and asked for help. In order to make locating and fixing the cause of such issues as easy and efficient as possible, we've developed a free diagnostics tool: Remote Control Diagnostics. It can locate issues with a single click and will provide you with information about the issue as well as with instructions on how you can fix it.

User

16.04.2013 09:50:02

Re: Remote buddy doesn't work when application freezes

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This posting is older than 6 months and can contain outdated information.

Thanks for asking.

AppleScript works by sending a message to the targeted application and waiting for a response. If you send a command to a hanging application, it won't send a response. This will then also lead to a hang in the application that executed the AppleScript, because it now waits for a response that will never come.

You can specify a timeout after which AppleScript stops waiting for a response by surrounding your code with "with timeout of X seconds" / "end timeout". Please see

https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/#documentation/applescript/conceptual/applescriptlangguide/reference/ASLR_control_statements.html

for Apple's reference. Depending on what you do, you may also look into "ignoring application responses".

However, a script for quitting another application that depends on the target application to respond to messages while it's already hanging can't work as the application in question is already unresponsive when the scripts tries to send it a message.

Best regards,
Felix Schwarz

User

16.04.2013 09:56:51

Re: Remote buddy doesn't work when application freezes

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This posting is older than 6 months and can contain outdated information.

Thanks for the response Felix.
I understand what you are saying. So I want to clarify things a bit. The reason I first wrote this application was because Plex was freezing, and during this time I could pull up the remote buddy window, but when I tried to force quit the application, it wouldn't work. Actually no matter what I try to do in the menu once the application is frozen, doesn't work. So I thought to myself, I'll write an applescript to kill the actual process of the app that is stuck.

Can you clarify or verify that this is normal behavior? Or do you have another workaround you can suggest?
-Dan

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