Ok - please bear with me as I'm sure this must be posted elsewhere, but I'm not totally sure even of the terminology I should be using, or if I am even thinking about using this in the right way.
I have my HTPC setup and purchased a Rosewill RRC-226 Remote.
This remote's transceiver claims to support RC6 and MCIR codes. Honestly, other than knowing those are two different IR protocols, I'm not really sure of their usage. So, question #1 is can someone give me a good explanation of what the difference between these two are?
This remote works fine on its own to control WMC on my Windows 7 x64 install. However I am looking to automate things further using my Onkyo Universal Learning Remote and possibly a Harmony if I can convince myself to spend the money on it.
When I look in Device Manager, the transceiver is listed as ""Microsoft eHome Infrared Transceiver". If I open EventGhost and add the MCE plugin I can see the codes popping up on the left side of the window as I press them.
The problem however is that I wanted my Onkyo remote to learn the Rosewill commands. So, I taught the codes from the Rosewill to the Onkyo, but the Onkyo remote doesn't seem to send the codes properly. I get very strange behavior: For instance, when I press a directional arrow I can only press it once - it won't respond again until I press another direction (e.g. right-right will only move right once, but up-right-up-right will properly move those 4 times). This is without even bringing EventGhost into the picture, but just using the Onkyo remote and transceiver. I think that something must be wrong with how the Onkyo communicates. Question #2 is if anyone is aware of why this might happen? Does it use some sort of different signaling bandwidth that may be the cause?.
So, thinking that the Onkyo Remote might not properly work with sending the Rosewill codes to the Rosewill receiver I thought that I could use just standard (non MCE) codes. For instance, the same codes that the Onkyo would use to control the receiver itself, or a TV or VCR. (I don't know what these codes are called?). So Question #3 is how do I configure EventGhost (and possibly my transceiver) to accept just any standard IR remote codes? and Question #4 is once I set this up, what specific steps/plugins do I need to take to control WMC using these codes?
Again, thanks for your patience - I realize that some of this is probably basic stuff, so basic perhaps that my attempts at searching bring up way to generic information - not enough to even tell me if what I am trying to do is possible (i.e. the right way to do this).
Please feel free to just link me to some pages which describe these procedures - I don't need anyone to reinvent the wheel for me.
thanks so much!
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Please help me with some basics
Re: Please help me with some basics
Ok - so I figured out the problem with getting my Onkyo remote working properly with MCE (Question #2).
It turns out that MCE codes follow a rather strange protocol of sending multiple codes (and differing sets of codes). There is a registry tweak that basically turns off these duplicate codes to allow for greater compatibility with Universal Remotes.
That info is here for anyone interested.
I'm still looking for answers to my other questions - especially the method used simply to capture standard IR codes (like from a TV remote) into Event Ghost using my MCE transceiver.
thanks
It turns out that MCE codes follow a rather strange protocol of sending multiple codes (and differing sets of codes). There is a registry tweak that basically turns off these duplicate codes to allow for greater compatibility with Universal Remotes.
That info is here for anyone interested.
I'm still looking for answers to my other questions - especially the method used simply to capture standard IR codes (like from a TV remote) into Event Ghost using my MCE transceiver.
thanks
Re: Please help me with some basics
Just a follow up to anyone else who might be struggling and come across this thread. Unfortunately, this forum seems to be more active with developers then users who want to help out...
So, if you are like me you probably found yourself in a situation where you have a Media Center remote/transceiver and you want to use event ghost.
Well, basically the only plugin you need is the Windows MCE Remote Plugin (Win7/Vista if you are on those OSes). This is the only plugin that will read in your keypresses on your remote.
If you point your MCE remote at your EventGhost PC once you have this plugin installed (and your transceiver plugged in of course) and press some buttons, you should see these MCE events show up on the left side of EventGhost. These are all the standard MCE commands that you can then use to map to whatever commands you like. For one, you will probably want to map them back to the various WMC shortcuts so that you can continue to have all the same keys working in WMC that you did before.
Of course, you are limited as there are only about 30 keys on a MCE remote...so you are probably looking to use your universal remote, or perhaps a remote from another appliance. Well if you point this at the PC and press a button you should also see certain events of type MCE.Unknown.xxxxx. These are how the eHome transceiver recognizes this IR device's codes. It doesn't know what they are...but you can still use them. It's like if you tell me that in your language "pongillo" mean hungry...I have no idea about your language or how the work "pongillo" makes any sense...but I can still use it every time I want to eat!
So you can use any of these other IR commands to create macros with. Now many remotes will, for various reasons, not transmit the same code each time you press the same key..sometimes it will differ...sometimes it will give multiple key presses. This could be low transmit power, bad line of sight, or other things. You may have to play around assigning multiple codes to a single macro. Personally, I had this issue with my Onkyo remote's codes. So, in the end I chose to use only standard MCE codes and create menus of macros that allow me to toggle back and forth between several "profiles" of commands.
There is a lot more to explore...but I wanted to let anyone in my position know that all you really need to setup is the one Plugin mentioned above under the "Remote Receiver" plugins. You can look through the other plugins to see if there are any for the software you want to control, or any other devices that you may have (like an Onkyo receiver)...but they aren't mandatory. Simply create macros (optionally organized in folders) assign one or more Actions to each macro and one or more Events (which are your IR codes from the left).
Hope this helps someone else!
So, if you are like me you probably found yourself in a situation where you have a Media Center remote/transceiver and you want to use event ghost.
Well, basically the only plugin you need is the Windows MCE Remote Plugin (Win7/Vista if you are on those OSes). This is the only plugin that will read in your keypresses on your remote.
If you point your MCE remote at your EventGhost PC once you have this plugin installed (and your transceiver plugged in of course) and press some buttons, you should see these MCE events show up on the left side of EventGhost. These are all the standard MCE commands that you can then use to map to whatever commands you like. For one, you will probably want to map them back to the various WMC shortcuts so that you can continue to have all the same keys working in WMC that you did before.
Of course, you are limited as there are only about 30 keys on a MCE remote...so you are probably looking to use your universal remote, or perhaps a remote from another appliance. Well if you point this at the PC and press a button you should also see certain events of type MCE.Unknown.xxxxx. These are how the eHome transceiver recognizes this IR device's codes. It doesn't know what they are...but you can still use them. It's like if you tell me that in your language "pongillo" mean hungry...I have no idea about your language or how the work "pongillo" makes any sense...but I can still use it every time I want to eat!
So you can use any of these other IR commands to create macros with. Now many remotes will, for various reasons, not transmit the same code each time you press the same key..sometimes it will differ...sometimes it will give multiple key presses. This could be low transmit power, bad line of sight, or other things. You may have to play around assigning multiple codes to a single macro. Personally, I had this issue with my Onkyo remote's codes. So, in the end I chose to use only standard MCE codes and create menus of macros that allow me to toggle back and forth between several "profiles" of commands.
There is a lot more to explore...but I wanted to let anyone in my position know that all you really need to setup is the one Plugin mentioned above under the "Remote Receiver" plugins. You can look through the other plugins to see if there are any for the software you want to control, or any other devices that you may have (like an Onkyo receiver)...but they aren't mandatory. Simply create macros (optionally organized in folders) assign one or more Actions to each macro and one or more Events (which are your IR codes from the left).
Hope this helps someone else!