I am using remote buddy with a 2012 Mac mini running 10.9. 
The system runs plex media server and the plex client. TV is connected to Mac via HDMI,

I have set plex to sleep the screen after some time. 
The problem is, that it seems that I cannot wake the screen no matter what, - my Mac never sleeps, only the screen, 
I can wake the screen by pressing MENU + RIGHT, I.e. I actually initiate a pairing process. This will wake the screen.

Any clues.?

From what I have read int he forums, is that there was a feature change since 10.7 which requires a real hardware keyboard input to wake a screen, but I also read that remote buddy would be able to wake a screen normally by remote. But it doesn't seem to work on my setup. 
The sc

This is an ongoing problem, I had it on 10.8 as well, so this is not Mavericks-only.

Thanks! 

it turns out, that screen sleep/wake doesn't matter at all.

Whenever I leave the Mac Mini untouched for a while (even without screen sleep), my Apple remote is not able to connect to the Mac anymore. 
My solution/workaround is to hit the MENU/RIGHT keys and perform a pair process. After that, the remote works again.

I have to do this EVERY TIME after idling for a while. This is quite annoying.

Any suggestions on how to solve this would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

I have a few questions myself, too, though ;-)

1) Any reason why you’d use a Plex setting to sleep your screen (for which there is no public API) when this is also available via System Preferences?

2) Do you use the actions in Remote Buddy’s Plex Behaviour - or do you forward button events from Remote Buddy to Plex using Remote Buddy's Virtual Remote? Or, in other words, what does your mapping table at Prefs > Mapping > Plex look like?

3) Have you installed and do you use the Apple Remote driver supplied by Remote Buddy (Candelair)?

4) Please run Remote Control Diagnostics (free download from the Labs section of this website) when the problem occurs and copy and paste the full version of the output here.

This information should help a great deal to get a better idea on what is going wrong on your system - and hopefully provide a solution.

Thanks in advance.

Best regards, 
Felix Schwarz 

1. I used the plex screen saver out of commodity, as it was simpler to set up than system prefs (with never any mouse or keyboard attached to my mac, that is). Plus, I was unaware of the un-public API they use :-) 
Turns out, however, that the screen setting on or off doesn't change anything regarding my problem mentioned above.

2. Yes, I pretty much use defaults everywhere, ans and I use the default behavior of PHT. I know that this is still beta software, but I have the same issues with the latest release version. So: all mappings are default.

3. Candleair is installed.

4. this is what the Candleair diagnostic check brings up. I assume it's the same as the one you mentioned. If not I am happy to download and run the other one as well.

PlexHTHelper (PID 1221) is using the Apple® Remote in exclusive mode 
While PlexHTHelper accesses your Apple® IR Receiver exclusively, no other application or OS X will receive Apple® Remote button press events. This can give you the impression that your Apple® Remote doesn't work. In that case, quit PlexHTHelper (located at /Users/macmini/Library/Application Support/Plex Home Theater/PlexHTHelper). 
Testing exclusive access 
Can't get exclusive access 
RCD's attempt to get temporary, exclusive access failed (error: The operation couldn’t be completed. (Mach error -536870203 - (iokit/common) exclusive access and device already open) (3)). This usually means that another application is already having exclusive access to the Apple® Remote. Neither OS X nor other applications will be able to respond to your Apple® Remote at the same time. This can give you the impression that your Apple® Remote doesn't work. Quit the application that exclusively accesses the Apple® Remote to make it available to OS X and other applications again.

Thanks, Oliver.

Last edited: 19.11.2013 00:08:00 

This looks ok so far, but please select „All“ in Remote Control Diagnostics and copy and paste the full output so I get a complete picture.

Regarding Plex itself, there is a possibility that it is put to sleep by App Nap. Since another user reported similar issues with XBMC, from which Plex was forked, this is well possible.

Please see my remarks on how to use Activity Monitor in my reply there and do essentially the same, just with Plex instead of XBMC ;-)

http://www.iospirit.com/support/forums/remotebuddy/singlethread/16565/

Thanks in advance.

Best regards, 
Felix Schwarz 

Regarding App Nap: the activity monitor shows NO all the time, so I am not sure, that App Nap is the problem.

Now here goes the ALL-log: 
–––––––––

AllIssues & Potential Issues (4)Issues (2)Potential Issues (2)Informal (7) 
Information 
Diagnostics are performed by Remote Control Diagnostics V1.3 on a Macmini6,2 running OS X 1090. 
Searching for Hardware 
Apple® IR Receiver found on USB bus. 
Checking Drivers 
Known ISAIRDriver driver is loaded 
The IR Receiver USB device is used by Plex (PID 476) 
An application is accessing the IR Receiver USB device via an IOUSBDeviceUserClient. Depending on what it is doing, this may keep OS X and applications from receiving Apple® Remote button presses. The application is located at /Applications/Plex Home Theater.app/Contents/MacOS/Plex Home Theater. 
Candelair/Remote Buddy driver version 1.24 found 
Driver supports exclusive access 
Checking Preferences 
IR Receiver is paired to Apple® Remote ID 233 
Your Mac® will ignore button presses from all Apple® Remotes that don't have this ID. Please note that the ID of an Apple® Remote can be changed accidentally by pressing a certain button combination for a few seconds. If your Mac® doesn't react to the button presses of your remote, please unpair your remote at System Preferences > Security to exclude this as a possible error source. 
IR Receiver is enabled 
Checking running applications 
PlexHTHelper (PID 483) is using the Apple® Remote in exclusive mode 
While PlexHTHelper accesses your Apple® IR Receiver exclusively, no other application or OS X will receive Apple® Remote button press events. This can give you the impression that your Apple® Remote doesn't work. In that case, quit PlexHTHelper (located at /Users/macmini/Library/Application Support/Plex Home Theater/PlexHTHelper). 
OS X Apple® Remote support process found 
Testing exclusive access 
Can't get exclusive access 
RCD's attempt to get temporary, exclusive access failed (error: The operation couldn’t be completed. (Mach error -536870203 - (iokit/common) exclusive access and device already open) (3)). This usually means that another application is already having exclusive access to the Apple® Remote. Neither OS X nor other applications will be able to respond to your Apple® Remote at the same time. This can give you the impression that your Apple® Remote doesn't work. Quit the application that exclusively accesses the Apple® Remote to make it available to OS X and other applications again. 

On a quick search in Plex’ public code repository, I also can’t seem to find any code in Plex that would do this.

I also couldn’t reproduce this in my own testing.

Are you using any special/beta build of Plex - or any settings for/from a previous Intel Apple TV installation?

If this doesn’t help, please go through all of the steps in the post linked below and see if it has an effect.

http://www.iospirit.com/support/forums/remotebuddy/singlethread/16572/

Best regards, 
Felix Schwarz 

I have a clean install of the final Plex Home Theater - I did use some beta builds before though, but i always download the app and overwrite the old one.

I don't know, if this helps at all, but I checked my Launch Agents, where I found this entry:;

com.plexapp.ht.helper

with these parameters: "/Users/username/Library/Application Support/Plex Home Theater/PlexHTHelper" -x

The deamon is running on my system. Could this daemon possibly interfere with Remote Buddy?

I found out, that there is a setting in PHT to "Allow start of PHT using remote". As soon as this is enabled, the Launch daemon is activated. Disabling it, removes the daemon entry again. I am not able to test this right now, but I will get back to you.

When I have Apple Remote support enabled in PHT settings, PHTHelper is running, taking exklusive ownership of the remote.

As soon as I set the remote setting in PHT to DISABLED, PHTHelper is gone and Remote Buddy diagnostics are no longer showing red alerts.

Just FYI.

Last edited: 02.12.2013 16:24:11