2 PC's on same IR blaster, want IR sent to one at a time

[seth.feinberg]

Man, I had a tough time framing that Subject:), I'll try to make this quick (but will probably fail):

I have 2 PC's in my home theater set up, one dedicated HTPC and one Beast of a PC to do all other tasks, including HTPC tasks in the event that the HTPC is down. I primarily use (or will once its set up) the HTPC, but want to be able to control both with my Logitech Harmony 900 (which I realize may just be OCD foolhardiness). I currently have both set up and working with Eventghost but unfortunately both PC's IR receiver are controlled by the same blaster, such that any commands sent in either activity (HTPC or Beast mode) are received by both PC's (i.e. pressing "up" on the remote, sends an "up" command to both pc's).

I would like to stop this.

Currently my best idea/plan is to map pure MCE commands to the Beast (which has a USB IR receiver with the eHome driver) and a complicated series of Alt+_ commands to the HTPC (which frustratingly has a crappy built in IR receiver using the RC 260 protocol, i.e. no true MCE commands) and map both to the desired actions/macros in Eventghost. So far, this KIND of works (I'm not completely done), but is FAR from perfect (there's only one set of navigation keys/mouse movements, plus I hate hijacking all the Alt key combos).

I'm open to anything,

• Maybe a way to have a particular PC ignore most of the IR commands it receives when not the selected activity. I use the word most because I'd still need the IR Receiver to receive a command that turns it back on when that PC's activity is selected (so this would be a command sent when I exit the activity and another when I enter).
  
  Maybe having the keyboard/devices listed in the harmony setup be exclusive to a particular PC, i.e. keyboard1 device controls the Beast, keyboard2 device controls the HTPC (I realize this one might be outside the scope of eventghost, but I'm pretty confident asking Harmony would yield nothing).
  
  Literally anything else? I'm getting fed up with the roadblocks I'm hitting with Logitech and would be willing to move to another standard (maybe USB-UIRT?) that can offer be better control, so feel free to make your suggestions as drastic as you want

So clearly, ANY suggestions would be VERY appreciated.

[kkl]

I think this is simpler than you think. The keys are to setup your universal remote for devices that you don't actually have and just have don't have EG respond to signals that aren't meant for it. For example, setup your Logitech Harmony remote for an Aiwa receiver (assuming you don't have one). The hardest part is using the ridiculous Harmony software. Now, when you press the "Aiwa's" Play key, you'll get an event in EG on both PCs, something like, MceRemote.Unknown.17A8C8 (MCE receiver). You'll use that Event on PC1 for the action you want, but not PC2. It's a pain and takes a long time to set-up, but you can customize things exactly as you want them.

[seth.feinberg]

@kkl, thanks! That's kind of what I was going for with the alt+ combinations but obviously an aiwa receiver (or anything) would be better since I'm not sure what actually useful things I'm stealing with the alt combos. But how do I get eventghost to recognize the non-existent devices ir codes? Ie which plugin do I install to get them to show up in the log?

[kkl]

Assuming you have an MCE compatible IR receiver, you can use the Microsoft MCE Remote - Vista/Win7 plug-in. Anything received other than an actual MCE Remote command will come through as MceRemote.Unknown.#####, with a unique sequence of characters for each different remote signal received.

[seth.feinberg]

Ahhh this would appear to be the problem (though some computer components are coming that may allow me to chase your elegant and seemly optimal solution). The built-in IR receiver of my Wesena HTPC is crappy and built on the RC 260 protocol. There is NO eHome driver in my device manager and what is specifically stated as MCE commands in the literature and remapping software I obtained from the reseller is ACTUALLY the keyboard shortcuts WMC (and WMC alone) recognizes as commands. For example, sending what is designated as a MCE play command actually sends the keyboard presses Alt+Shift+P (or something along those lines). Nothing ever reads in the Eventghost log that starts mce.xxxxx.

Furthering the annoyance is that no command not explicitly mapped into the remote is read by the computer. For example, if I map in logitech a MCE.Play command to the play button on my Harmony and press it, nothing at all will be printed by the Eventghost log.

But I should be able to do your suggestion on my Beast PC and if that works I will continue with some of the other avenues I started to chase before I found the remapping software. Specifically I bought an Inteset CIR internal IR receiver for Asrock (http://shop.inteset.com/inteset-cir-rec ... therboards) before I realized that my Asrock H77M's internal IR header is what I believe to be IrDA and not CIR (5 pins). I also bought a FLIRC, since I had heard such good things about them and I may try to figure out how to mount it inside my case but thats a bit more involved then I'm currently comfortable with but that's looking like my best bet. Why are internal IR receivers so hard to come by?

Thanks again for your suggestion and help.

[seth.feinberg]

Just reporting back: @kkl 's suggestion turned out to be exactly what was needed and as soon as I got my new inteset IR receiver plugged it i started to set it up. The hardest part was trying to find "dummy" devices that had enough keys that were read by the eHome receiver (after much trial and error I settled on a Pioneer VSX-1020 and a Sony STR-DA5800ES, the latter of which was the best "dummy" device as it had tons of buttons and many that were appropriately labeled). So thank you again for the excellent suggestion.

But now I have one final problem: Because EventGhost is asleep when the PC is asleep I can't WAKE up the devices. Well I can, but only with a universal key, i.e. one that wakes up both devices. Obviously this isn't the hugest of problems, but I've come so far I'd like to finish this the right way. Any suggestions for a discrete command that would only wake one PC at a time?

I tried to modify the registry according to the instructions here: http://goo.gl/RqR0d and here: http://goo.gl/Tg6Oq but I think i screwed it up. On one PC each MCE press was sending double commands, for instance hitting the Power button would send MCE.Power AND Keyboard.S (which is the customization that second website intended for the power button). I ended up loading a default registry I found on the internet to restore everything back to OEM, but not the PowerOn button that awoke one PC does nothing, and the MCE.Power seems to do nothing on either PC most of the time. I'm going to try editing the registry one more time, because I think the example it listed was wrong. I'm trying to make "Teletext" on one PC and "Rec TV" on the other as discrete Wake commands and the example of the PowerOn command on that XBMC wiki is <button>,00,00,00,03,83,00 but in the PDF of the second site it says that 6th bit is the modifier (for including ctrl or shift into the command). So I'm gonna try <button>,00,00,00,03,00,83 for each button and see if that works.

Anyways just reporting back (and will again) and curious if anybody has any suggestions for this last stage...