X10 Remote

[Bitmonster]

This is the support thread for X10 remotes, where you can post your questions specific to this plugin.

Some X10 remotes are:

• ATI Remote Wonder
• ATI Remote Wonder PLUS
• SnapStream Firefly
• NVIDIA Personal Cinema Remote
• Marmitek PC Control
• Pearl Q-Sonic Master Remote 6in1
• Niveus PC Remote Control
• Medion RF Remote Control
• Packard Bell RF MCE Remote Control OR32E

and a lot more.

[Bitmonster]

One problem with the X10 remotes are the huge amount of different drivers that are available. There are mostly three kind of driver packages:

1. A bare hardware driver for the receiver
   This is what you get, if you plug the receiver into the USB port and let Windows Update install the driver for it. But even though the device-manager is now happy, that he has a driver for the hardware, this driver alone will give you no events inside EventGhost. The driver normally shows up in the device-manager as "X10 USB Wireless Transceiver (ACPI-compliant)".
   
   
2. Packages with X10nets.exe service
   These drivers are so far the best option for EventGhost. They install the hardware driver for the USB receiver and an 'X10nets.exe' service that you can see inside the task-manager. EventGhost can now contact this service to get notified of remote button presses and the service will do nothing else additionally.
   
   
3. The HID drivers
   Many manufacturers deliver a driver that installs the remote as a HID device. This way the remote actually becomes a kind of keyboard and emulates keypresses without any additional program. What sounds nice so far, has a huge drawback. Third-party programs like EventGhost aren't able to stop these remotes from sending keypresses, so the keypress will arrive additionally to any action EventGhost does in reaction of a remote button press. To get rid of this behaviour I have written something in the documentation: http://www.eventghost.org/docs/x10
   These packages normally also install the X10nets.exe service.
   
   But also see the next post of a possible new way to handle these.

[Bitmonster]

So I experimented a little with these HID drivers and noticed that they install an additional service called "X10Hid.sys". But this service doesn't show up in the services control panel and also has not entry in the task-manager. These kind of services are "device driver services" and cannot be stopped in a running system. Instead you have to disable them (for example through the registry) and restart the computer.

What I want to do now is to find out, if these HID driver packages are a good option for EventGhost users. The advantage of these HID driver packages is, that they are mostly newer and better supported by the manufacturers. One packages that looks especially fine is the driver for the ATi-Remote-Wonder(-Plus) as it includes drivers for both 32bit-Windows and 64bit-Windows.

You can get this driver here: http://support.amd.com/us/gpudownload/P ... sta64.aspx
Don't get anxious, because it say "Vista (64 bit)". This driver should work on XP and 32bit versions also.

After you have installed this driver package, you should find an “X10 Hid Device” in the device-manager, as it's explained here: http://www.eventghost.org/docs/x10

So try to remove it, but don't install another driver afterwards. Then test briefly, if everything works as it should.

There is an easier way to disable this “X10 Hid Device” through the registry editor. Just open up:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\X10Hid
and set the value of the "Start" key to 4 and reboot. If this works so far, we can later automate this registry manipulation inside the plugin.

[jsmain]

No mention of the x10 MouseRemote...
Of course this is a legacy serial device, but a great remote, with one of the best ranges I've seen. 100-150'.

I've used this with a serial to USB converter using an FTDI chip, successfully.
http://www.usbgear.com/XC-232-C.html

[User]

How are the IDs generated? Randomly on plugging in the USB connector? They seem to change from time to time (and I sometimes reorganize the wires behind my PC). Currently I have to enable one ID for the keys in the lower part of my remote control and another ID for controlling the mouse, whereas until recently I could use one ID for the whole remote control. I use a Q-Sonic Master Remote from Pearl.

[eyal0]

I had a bug with X10 that I was able to fix with a small change in the plugin.

viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1889&p=10947#p10947

[revelati]

Hi. I have a problem with a Medion OR24V remote controller (Win 7 32). I need to press every button twice to work (event ghoust detects button press after second time).

[kgschlosser]

Are you using the x10 remote drivers for EventGhost?

For 32 bit they are located here
http://eventghost.net/downloads/x10drivers_x86.exe