USBUIRT plugin - using MCE Remote buttons to control TV/XBMC/Amp functions?

[HomieTheClown]

Afternoon!

I checked out the two IR programming videos for the USBUIRT.  I understood all of it amazingly enough. I understand how you made your tv turn on\off as well as the volume go up and down. What I was wondering was can you make your Microsoft remote that you had in the video do those things without telling voxcommando? Basically using your MCE remote and the USBUIRT, can you make the volume on your tv go up\down or turn it on & off without the tv remote and without using voice commands?  If so can you clue me in how you can do that.

I'm looking in the action tree under the "plugin actions" section and I found the UsbUIRT part. There are LearnPronto, CancelLearn, SetBlink, LearnUU, and Send. I was hoping that I could set up a command that would enable me to send a IR signal from my remote to Vox that it recognized from the map editor and have it send out an IR blast to my stereo to turn the volume up.

I've been searching the forums. Do I need the install eventghost to get this to work? I learned that the amulet remote can be programmed to learn a few buttons of your remotes, but it was just 4 buttons??? I programmed the volume up button to work on for my stereo, but it was painfully slow. It was like the amulet remote only sends out the IR code once and doesn't repeat it causing you to have to mash the button over and over....

[nime5ter]

Yes, check out Eventghost. http://www.eventghost.org/

[jitterjames]

I checked out the two IR programming videos for the USBUIRT.  I understood all of it amazingly enough. I understand how you made your tv turn on\off as well as the volume go up and down. What I was wondering was can you make your Microsoft remote that you had in the video do those things without telling voxcommando? Basically using your MCE remote and the USBUIRT, can you make the volume on your tv go up\down or turn it on & off without the tv remote and without using voice commands?  If so can you clue me in how you can do that.

I'm looking in the action tree under the "plugin actions" section and I found the UsbUIRT part. There are LearnPronto, CancelLearn, SetBlink, LearnUU, and Send. I was hoping that I could set up a command that would enable me to send a IR signal from my remote to Vox that it recognized from the map editor and have it send out an IR blast to my stereo to turn the volume up.

I've been searching the forums. Do I need the install eventghost to get this to work? I learned that the amulet remote can be programmed to learn a few buttons of your remotes, but it was just 4 buttons??? I programmed the volume up button to work on for my stereo, but it was painfully slow. It was like the amulet remote only sends out the IR code once and doesn't repeat it causing you to have to mash the button over and over....

You could do it with eventGhost, or only in VC, but I don't recommend trying to use the UUIRT with both EventGhost and VC at the same time because you may have a conflict.

Either way you are going to face the following problem: If you try to blast IR while your remote is already sending IR then the signals will get mixed and your volume up message will not be correctly interpreted by your amp.  You can get around this either by making sure that your amp's input is hidden from the IR that is coming from your remote (i.e. in a cabinet) but you may not want to do that, because then you won't have the option of using the normal remote for the amp.

Another thing you can do is to delay after receiving the MCE IR code before blasting the IR code for your amp.  Obviously if you want to use this method you will not be able to hold down the volume button.

Your Amulet is also supposed to be able to learn IR codes, although this does not always work so well.  You are supposed to be able to program more than 4 buttons, but I have not found it to be worth the effort.  Sometimes it won't learn a code, or you will need to hold the button down for a long time for it to work, and sometimes it will forget the codes you programmed.  No Fun!


In my case I will either send the volume commands using my voice commands : "Onkyo set volume X", or "Onkyo volume UP/Down X".

If I want to use my Amulet to control the volume I use EventGhost with the short delay method and press the volume button multiple times instead of holding it down.  The same could be accomplished in VC, but I like using eventGhost to handle my remote related stuff.

[HomieTheClown]

 

Either way you are going to face the following problem: If you try to blast IR while your remote is already sending IR then the signals will get mixed and your volume up message will not be correctly interpreted by your amp.  You can get around this either by making sure that your amp's input is hidden from the IR that is coming from your remote (i.e. in a cabinet) but you may not want to do that, because then you won't have the option of using the normal remote for the amp.

Little confused with that statement. If I try to hide the amp's input from the remote IR, how will the USBUIRT control it?

Also are you saying you can't run VC and Eventghost at the same time?

[jitterjames]

Little confused with that statement. If I try to hide the amp's input from the remote IR, how will the USBUIRT control it?

Yes.  You would need to hide the amp's receiver from the handheld remote but not hide it from the USBUIRT emitter.  USBUIRT can have external emitters plugged into the back. Then your amp could be in a cabinet with the external emitter.  Or you just need to position things very carefully.  I don't know if that could work because IR tends to bounce.

Also are you saying you can't run VC and Eventghost at the same time?

No.  But I don't suggest that you try to control the UUIRT from both programs.  If you are going to use EventGhost to control the UUIRT, then don't try to learn codes on the UUIRT using VC.  If the UUIRT starts to act weird, then you might even want to turn off the UUIRT plugin in VC when using the UUIRT plugin in Eventghost, but mostly I think the problems occur when trying to learn codes.

[HomieTheClown]

James,

Instead of trying to get my remote to change the volume on my stereo, can I use VC & USBUIRT to change the volume in XBMC.

[nime5ter]

With a voice command, you mean?

Are the existing "set volume" and "volume up/down" commands that come with the default XBMC configurations not working for you?

[HomieTheClown]

The voice commands work fine. I just want to get a remote, preferably the amulet, to be able to do a few things without having to use voice commands.

1) Turn the volume up\down in xbmc.  I was going to see if I can directly control my stereo, but it seemed like a hassle.
2) Use the 4-way keypad (up,down,left, right) and "ok" button to navigate in xbmc.

It can be faster at times to use the remote over the voice commands. There are a couple more things I would probably want to do. With those two things can it be done without event ghost? I'm messing around with the USBUIRT commands in VC. I can see it will send IR commands, but using the LCB, is there an action that listen for a certain IR signal and execute a command.

Example. I press the volume up button on my amulet remote. It sends a signal to the my USBUIRT which VC interprets and tells XBMC to turn the volume up. Does this make sense? I feel like we are going in circles!

[jitterjames]

I don't think we are going in circles.

OK.  For this type of thing, I would normally use EventGhost.  But that is a whole can of worms that I don't want to get involved in, and it won't hurt for me to show you how to use VC for this.

When you press a button on any IR remote that is aimed at your UUIRT, you should see an event appear in the VC history window.  If not you don't have the UUIRT plugin enabled or there is some other problem.

Now you can easily drag this event onto any command in your VC command tree.  Once you have saved and closed the editor that command will now be automatically be triggered by this event whenever it is generated.
Please see: http://voxcommando.com/mediawiki/index.php?title=Events to understand events.

So if you are already using a configuration that has volume commands for XBMC defined, you could just press the volume buttons on your remote to make the event appear and then drag the event from the history window onto your existing XBMC volume commands.

I put together some other sample commands for basic keyboard emulation, and one for adjusting the volume on my Onkyo.  You should be able to replace the code to make it work with your amp.
http://voxcommando.com/mediawiki/index.php?title=XML_on_the_forum#Importing_XML_files

[HomieTheClown]

Thanks bud.  That was exactly what I was looking for. I got the volume buttons to work like I wanted. The cursor pad in the remote to move up,left right,down was a little complicated at first. Since VC has a command to move in 4 different directions according to the payload. I had to separate them into 4 different commands. Anyway, I'd still like to get the amulet to be able to turn off the tv and stereo receiver (onkyo).

I guess I will have to get those little IR transmitters that plug into the back of the USBUIRT unit. They can't be that expensive. Before I buy it, I wanted to make sure it was necessary. My computer, receiver, tv all sit in (or on) a entertainment center. The USBUIRT unit sits right next to the tv stand at the bottom of the screen. The tv and all of these components are 8-10 feet away from the viewing area couch. 

I'm gonna search the forum again, but from what I remember reading, the USBUIRT should be able able to transmit to the receiver even though it's not facing it at all. Right lol? Check out the picture to get a good idea of what I mean. The USBUIRT is in red and the receiver is in yellow.

[Kalle]

If you mean a IR emitter like this http://voxcommando.com/forum/index.php?topic=1566.msg13937#msg13937 you are absolute right, this will do the job.

[jitterjames]

Why don't you just try it with your current setup? This would be a great way to find out if it works!

Maybe you should also check out the command XML that I created just for you.

[HomieTheClown]

Ok. I'll check it out later on. Very busy today.  As usual, you guys are the best!  

[HomieTheClown]

Morning,

I've been able to map remote buttons to make things happen in vox for the most part. Currently I can't seem to get the amulet to be able to turn the tv on an off through vox.  For the record, I know the amulet remote can be programmed to do that directly to the tv without the use of vox. I was just trying to test it out to see if it would work using vox. So I can see if the placement of my USBUIRT is ok.

Here's the scoop. In the picture you see can see my history window. You said I could just drag the button event from the history window into the command tree area on top of the command itself. For example, in the picture I could drag "MCE.VolumeDown" onto the volume down in XBMC command. It worked great. Here's my problem. In the blue box there are two different IR codes showing up in the history window when I press my power button for the amulet remote. The power button for the TV itself is already added to the map tables under uu_TV and it has the code learned. I already have a command for this that works when I press the save and execute button. It will turn the tv off. I can't turn it on since I can't see anything.  So I am trying to test it out with the amulet.  I've tried dragging each of the codes and both of the codes.

One more thing. Since the power button for the amulet is stored in a map table under uu_amulet, I figured it show up in the history as something that is recognizable since it has been mapped.

Is there a way to get it to properly show up in the history window like the volume down button did. Example* Can I get it to show up as MCE.Power(or whatever) in the history window instead of the two numbers *40F1 * *50F1?

I checked out the events wiki and couldn't quite find what I was looking for. I'm gonna check out the map editor video again. Until then, I thought I could just come here@!

[jitterjames]

I already have a command for this that works when I press the save and execute button. It will turn the tv off. I can't turn it on since I can't see anything.  So I am trying to test it out with the amulet.  I've tried dragging each of the codes and both of the codes.

What do you mean "I can't turn it on since I can't see anything"?

If you drag both of the events that are generated in the history window to your command, then your command should execute whenever either of those event codes is generated.  That means that when you press the button that generates these codes, the command will execute.  If that is the command to blast the IR code for TV power it will do just that.  But if you don't put a delay in the command, then it will probably blast the IR codes while your remote is still sending IR and the TV won't be able to make sense of the mixed signal.