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User

05.04.2015 18:03:43

When activating an activity on my Harmony, start an app on a Mac

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This posting is older than 6 months and can contain outdated information.

Hello,

i'm using my Harmony Smart Control for a few months with ease. I've set it up, that when i press the Red button, Plex starts and the green button starts Kodi.

I would love to simplify this even more, so i thought i can edit my activity in the harmony app, and send a buttonpress of the "red" button after the TV has switched to the Mac's HDMI port to start Plex. That activity is mapped to the mid placed button on my Harmony remote.
It looks like this: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/160004/harmony.png

Somehow that virtual button press won't be received by remote buddy, even not when i create a delay of 2sec in the Harmony app.

Any idea how that could work?

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

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.

Hardware - Harmony® Smart Control

If I haven't used the Harmony Smart Remote for a few minutes, Remote Buddy does not react to the first button press. (FAQ015E0263)
Please verify that no power saving options are enabled at "Remote Buddy > Preferences > Hardware > Bluetooth Receiver".
How do I set up the Harmony Smart Control and connect it to Remote Buddy on my Mac? (FAQ015E0264)
Please see the detailed HowTo on this topic in our blog.
Nothing happens when I press a button on the Smart Control. (FAQ015E0261)
This can be due to a number of many, very different reasons:
1. Wrong/No Activity: the Smart Control will only send your button presses to Remote Buddy if you've selected the "Remote Buddy" activity. Activities on the Harmony Smart Remote are chosen by pressing one of the buttons from the "Music, TV, Movie" row at the top of the remote. Please note: short and long presses of these buttons can select different activities.
2. Bluetooth turned off: please make sure that Bluetooth on your Mac is turned on.
3. Harmony Hub not paired: the Harmony Hub sometimes looses the Bluetooth pairing when making changes to its configuration. To initially establish - or re-establish - a Bluetooth pairing between the Harmony Hub and your Mac, follow this guide:
  
  Pairing instructionsShow
4. Soft keyboard pairing: make sure you only have paired your Harmony Hub to your Mac as a "Sony Playstation 3". If you also pair your Harmony Hub as a soft keyboard, Remote Buddy will no longer be able to capture input events coming from it. Why is this? In "Sony Playstation 3" mode, the Harmony Hub identifies as "Consumer Control" device to your Mac. For this class of devices, any app is allowed to exclusively capture all input. For keyboards, however, OS X only allows access to apps running with root/administrator priviledges, locking out Remote Buddy. To properly remove the pairing as a keyboard, first use the Harmony in that mode, then remove "Harmony Keyboard" from System Preferences > Bluetooth - and finally remove the respective device from your Harmony's configuration. Since OS X caches the identity of Bluetooth devices, it may take some time, several attempts and maybe even a system restart before OS X sees your Harmony Hub as a "Consumer Control" device again and again allows Remote Buddy access to it.
5. Empty batteries: if you can't control any devices with your Harmony Smart Remote at all, while using the "Harmony Control" app on your iOS device still works, chances are the battery of your remote needs to be replaced. Logitech provides instructions for this.

Which Harmony commands need to be assigned to the respective buttons on the Smart Control so that I can use all buttons with Remote Buddy? (FAQ015E0265)

When the Harmony Hub connects to my Mac, I'm asked for a PIN. (FAQ015E0262)
Please enter 0000.

User

07.04.2015 16:10:01

Re: When activating an activity on my Harmony, start an app on a Mac

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

Thanks for asking.

Have you made those changes in Remote Buddy's Global mapping table - or elsewhere?

If you've made it in the Global mapping table:

There's a tiny timeframe between the Harmony Hub establishing a connection to the Mac and Mac apps (like Remote Buddy) being able to register to receive incoming button presses.

If the Harmony Hub sends a button press immediately after the connection has been established, that button press _may_ get lost for that reason.

If this is the problem here, one way around it would be to make sure the connection has been established, f.ex. by changing the actions in the Harmony app to look more like:

…
SAMSUNG TV - HDMI 3
MAC MINI - RED (to establish connection)
DELAY 2s (to bridge that time frame at the beginning of the connection - 0.5s should work, too)
MAC MINI - RED (now RB should definitely receive it. And if it receives it twice, it shouldn't make a difference.)
…

Hope that helps.

Cheers,
Felix

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