XBMC xml for Amulet

[shango]

Decided to give XBMC another shot, Since there are a few Amulet users on here was wondering if anyone has created a keyboard xml for theirs they would be willing to share, most of it works out the box but can't bring up info or context menu or go home and several of the buttons launch WMC

Cheers

[jitterjames]

I think your best bet is to use event ghost. You can disable the default keys and then remap all the MCE keys to do what you want.

[shango]

I'll give it a go, have had a look at event ghost before for using a remote on MP but found the whole thing bewildering, will put a bit more effort in this time though.

cheers

[jitterjames]

If you have any questions, I can help. Event ghost is quite easy, once you understand the basic concept. There is a short manual on the eg site which is worth reading.

I can send a sample configuration file for amulet in a couple days.

[shango]

Making a start on this now, figured it out but i thought id be able to just remap the few buttons i wanted but adding the xbmc plugin to event ghost has totally fucked up the remote completely, every single button either does nothing at all or does something completely different to what it is supposed to meaning i have to remap every single button on the remote.

Surely thats not right is it?

Most buttons did what you'd expect before, even the play pause stop skip buttons are popping up weird menus and screens instead of controlling the media.

Edit

think I'm doing something wrong, each time i press a button it says 'emulating keystroke x' which i don't think is right is it?

[jitterjames]

If you install the MCE remote plugin for Vista/Win7 correctly and then reboot it will install a new driver that removes all functionality of the buttons.  The default mode of the MCE remote uses a lot of keyboard emulation (which is hard-wired into the driver).  You don't want this because it would prevent you from remapping buttons.  After you enable the MCE plugin in EG, go into the plugin settings, and click the button to install the driver.  You then need to reboot for the old functionality to be disabled.

Installing the XBMC plugin should have absolutely no effect, until you start mapping events from button presses onto the XBMC macros.

By default there is no association between any event (like an MCE remote keypress) and macros but it is extremely easy to set it up how you want.  When you press a key on your remote, it should up in the log panel (on the left of the EG window) and all you need to do is drag it from the log onto the macro you want to execute.  So for example you can press "play" on your remote and then drag this onto the XBMC macro for "play", on the tree.

I recommend that you map generic keys to keyboard emulation to maximize compatibility with most programs.  So, for example I map the arrows to the keyboard arrows and the centre button to the "enter" keypress.

It is also possible to make different configurations that are automatically enabled depending on which program has focus (the same ideas and enable/disble groups in VC) but let's not get ahead of ourselves yet!

I'm sorry I have not send you a config yet.  I will need to lobotomize what I have or it will be too confusing, and I've just been too busy.

[shango]

Don't worry about your config file, don't mind doing it myself, just not sure if i was doing it right,

I am pressing the button then dragging it to the xbmc macros for what i want the button to do and then it is doing that in xbmc.

the arrow keys are emulating arrow keyboard presses

what about the media control, when i push rewind button for example, it says emulating keyboard (shift and tab) is it ok to just drag that to the xbmc macro for rewind? shift and tab on a keyboard isn't rewind.

[jitterjames]

"it says" ?  Can you be more specific?

You can send me your config at any point and I'll take a look and let you know if I spot any no-nos. 

[shango]

Sorry, in the event ghost log on the left hand side, it tells me what keystroke it is emulating when i press a button on the remote, e.g. when i press play, it informs me that it is emulating keystroke 'space' do I not want the play button to emulate keystroke P instead? as P is play in xbmc.

[jitterjames]

it should not be doing anything by default.  Are you starting from a config provided by someone else?

please send me your eventGhost xml file.

[shango]

I'm not starting with config, just a fresh EG install

Heres what Ive done

Installed EG
Added plugin ' MCE Remote - vista/win7' then was prompted to install a required service, clicked install. then closed EG, it asked me to save something, called it test and saved it in the default folder (don't actually know what i was saving)
Rebooted PC
Loaded EG
added XBMC2 plugin

started to press a desired button then drag the result from the log on the left to the desired action in the XBMC command tree on the right.

this seems to work for some buttons but most buttons, when i press them on the remote, the log says, example below

pressing the fast forward button shows the following in the log

MCEremote.mce.forward
  forward ---> tabular
     emulate.keystroke (tab)

I tried dragging this to the fast forward command on xbmc plugin but it issues both commands in xbmc, it fast forwards the song but also emulates tab and switches to the visualisation window.

Same for the play button, it emulates space, so when i push play, it plays for a fraction of a second then immediately pauses it with the space emulation.

Maybe my problem is I'm following the guide on the xbmc wiki which is most probably well out of date as most of it seems to be.


Event ghost keeps crashing as well which isn't helping matters

[shango]

Think i might just give up, event ghost wiki is well out of date as well, all info is mostly xp based and doesn't really mention win7, mentions something about double commands caused by HID drivers as well as MCE drivers, only get the option to turn off hid drivers when you select the MCE plugin not for vista/7 then it doesn't recognise  any remote button pushes at all.

[jitterjames]

eventghost wiki is not out of date.  The core program has simply not changed.  The info there is still all perfectly valid AFAIK.

I've used eventghost on many computers and almost never have it crash unless something is messed up with my config or hardware.

if you don't give up, I'm still happy to help, but you need to send me your xml, otherwise it's just guesswork, and I don't have time for that.  If you are going to give up though, better to do it now.

[shango]

Uninstalled and started again, still crashing all the time though but i was able to quickly map the media control buttons.

stop
pause
skip forward
skip back

play
fast forward
rewind

last 3 are the ones that have keyboard emulation and don't work properly, top 4 are fine.

xml can be seen here

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/71004472/test.xml

from the  event ghost wiki there is this

"By default, both drivers are installed and active, which can cause some confusion - the most common problem is that buttons like <Enter> trigger two responses - once from the HID simulated keyboard, and once from something like EventGhost accessing the MCE Driver."

Which seems to be what I'm getting.

and then this

"At it's simplest, you can use a MCE Remote by simply:

Installing the drivers as the manufacturer intended.
Adding the MCE Plugin in EventGhost, and tick the Disable HID... box. Reboot for it to take effect.
Using this technique, the HID simulated keystrokes are disabled, which typically makes things a lot easier as it stops double-ups etc"

However there is no option to disable HID when using the win7 MCE plugin.

Thanks for looking.

Edit

think the xml is going to look perfectly normal to you, if i execute the commands from within event ghost it works as it should, pretty sure its the double up of drivers, just need to try and disable the hid for the remote, unfortunately device manager has about 20 or more hid devices listed with no specifics as to what is what.

[jitterjames]

Well actually, your problems all seem to be in the xml configuration file.  I think you left all the example macros in place, and then started adding new stuff.  Some of the example macros were activating keypresses that you did not want and they just needed to be deleted.

You are right that the wiki is out of date as far as the MCE plugin is concerned.  Well, actually it is not so much out of date as talking about the wrong plugin.  There is a forum topic on the EG website dedicated to the new Vista/Win7 version of the plugin.

Anyway I stripped out all the extra kak so hopefully this will be a good starting point for you.

I don't know about the crashes.  If that continues, then maybe you should call it quits.

Anyway, hope the attached helps.