The Harmony 1100 Owner's Thread... - Page 58

Thank you, oman! I had checked out your link before, just didn't know if that pertained to what I was trying to do, or not. I'll give it a shot!

Cool,

I edited the post after the fact to give you a little background on how I control my lighting and what I found works best for me.

One tip with the Maestro's is that they have one preset scene that you can go to including off. So you if you set the preset to lets say 50 percent, this could be what the lights come on to when pressing pause or stop. You could have them turn completely off when pressing play. On the other hand you could have the lights come on fully when entering the room and have the lights dim to a comfortable level when pressing play, then have them go back to full on when pressing stop.

When you have multiple Maestro's, that preset button comes in really handy because the Maestro's all respond to the commands being sent. So one preset can be halfway while another could be full off. Works nice if you have overhead lights that you want off but sconces that you would like half way.

That is a great point. I never thought about that. I think I'll leave the entering and exiting activities alone. I'll just set the lights to be controlled via the play, pause, and stop buttons for each activity. I am having success getting the new commands programmed. Now, it's just a matter of time until I get to try them out and see if they work.

Great idea! I think I will program the pause buttons to operate the lighting at the "preset" level, the play buttons to turn the lights completely off, and the stop button to have the lights come on fully.

As of right now, we only have one Maestro switch. Almost all of our lighting is overhead, save for a couple of table lamps. I wish we had some wall sconces, but the basement was already finished.

Thanks for the tips!

But when you put a BD into the player with all the lights on int he room...the Disc automatically starts playing (trailers, etc...), and eventually you get to the menu, where you select (vie Enter button) Play Movie. You are not necessarily pressing the 'play' button. So you would still have to shut the lights off with the remote manually.

I think the above scenario is only good during the movie when you need to pause/play the movie.

Good point mekkerl, you can program play to be the OK command. Or teach the combined command to be OK and lights off. This should work so long as when you pause you are able to press ok to resume your media. Worse comes to worse program an ok-play-lights off command instead.

One word of caution, having the lights come fully on from a darkened room after a long movie stings the eyes a bit. I initially set up my Maestro's the way you suggested and quickly realized that I wanted pause and stop to go the same lighting level.

Funny, I thought I replied to this and asked this question - but I don't see it...

oman - how many commands can you "shove in" when trying to combine? If I wanted my Maestro switches to come up to a certain level that is NOT programmed into the switches - lets say 4 presses "bright" when I hit pause - can I squeeze in all of that to map to one command?

I'm thinking Hit play - go to "Favorite", hit pause - go to slightly bright for bathroom/popcorn/beer runs, hit stop - go to full on preset with increased length of time to full brightness programmed into the switches.

Another good point, oman. Sounds like the lighting preset for the pause and stop buttons may be a wiser choice. I think I'll test out the fully on setting tonight and see how that works out.

I have successfully done 5 commands to one button press. This method was used prior to the 880 coming around which was when sequences ended up being introduced, if I recall correctly. I remember folks being able to get as many 7-14 commands in there, sometimes with the assistance of a simple $10.00 universal from Rat Shack or Wal-Mart. They would use the basic universal remote to learn some of the combined commands and then use this to reteach the Harmony.

4 Bright presses should be no problem I have 4 aspect button presses to go from Full screen to Scope mode on my video scaler.

The 880 can still do sequences can't it? ...or did they lose that feature in an update?

I just remembered (I'm slow lately) that I could program the sequence to my 880 and use that to teach it to the 1100 if that still works... or I suppose I could use my universal from my HK 635 that does macros.

You may have better luck with the HK. My success was dismal with learning from the 880.

Okay. I got to try out my remote tonight with the new Maestro dimmer switch installed. So far, I've had mixed results with the match. I am able to control the dimmer switch through the "devices" menu on the remote. But, only one of the "learned commands" through each activity has worked. The one I had success on involves the pause button for my HD DVD player and the lights raising to the "preset" level.

I assume I am on the right track with how to set up these commands. For example, I click on "Customize Buttons" on the "Watch Blu Ray" under the "Activities" tab. From there I click on the play/pause tab and then click on the "Learn Command" button. At that point, I click on the blu ray player for what I want to learn the command. Then, I scroll all the way down to the bottom of the page and type in Play Lights Off in the "Learn A New Command" box. Then I press the appropriate buttons on the Lutron remote and the blu ray player remote at the same time. Then, it asks me to do it again....and I do. Next step is clicking done and going back to the play/pause tab and use the drop down menu for the "Play" button and fine the new command.

I'm hoping you guys can tell me whether I am on the right track, or not. Like I said earlier. I did get the lights to raise to the preset level when I pressed pause on the remote, but I forgot to try and see if the pause button worked still with the hd dvd player.

Thank you!!

You're getting there. You should press the buttons one after the other, not quite at the same time. The commands, are still there own commands which need to be seen by each device.

Also when typing the name of the new command you are learning don't use any special characters or spaces. i.e. playlghtsoff vs. play lights off.

I had bad results if I tried to use characters other than alpha, doesn't matter anyhow for hard buttons or if your doing a soft button you can name it what you want later in the activity, with special characters if need be.

Oman -- can this still be done if one device is controlled via RF and one device is controlled via IR?

Ie. my lights are controlled via RF and my BDP is controlled via IR.

Not without an IR repeater of some sort. Problem is when you assign one device to send RF the 1100 will not send out the IR signal the extender will. So one device or the other will not see the signal, since you have to learn the commands to one device or the other. The devices you want to affect have to both be IR or RF without added accessories.

I have the opposite, a PS3/adapter which is being controlled via the extender and my lighting which is controlled via IR. Luckily I also have an IR network in place with a Xantech unit. All I needed to do was to re-teach the commands to the lighting device so the combined commands would be sent via IR.

Since my Xantech IR receiver is directly in the path of lighting IR receiver, the xantech also picks up the signal and it is routed to my PS3/adapter via an emitter attached to the xantech controller.

I should note the only commands the PS3/adapter is seeing via IR are the programmed play, pause and stop commands programmed into the lighting device. All other commands sent to the PS3 are sent via the RF extender for reliability of the power off sequence needed with the PS3 and IR2BT adapter.

Also don't forget the extender itself is a blaster so if your able to get line of site to the BDP you may be able to control via RF. Other than that you would need to extend an emitter from the extender to the BDP with cat5 or a 3.5mm run.

^^
Yeah, that's what I figured. Guess I can't link my lights with the play button of the BDP.

Added post just before yours just in case you missed it.

^^
Thanks Oman -- I'll debate if I want to change my set-up...but thanks for the info!

Thanks for the tips, oman. I'm going to try and reprogram the commands by doing what you have indicated above. Is there a way to delete previous commands that have been learned in the "Customize Buttons" tab, or should I just leave them there?

One more question. I don't have the RF extender yet. So, can I test how the programming went by pressing the same button pointed at each device? For example press "play", and that should play the blu ray disc. Then walk over to the light switch and press "play" again and that will dim the lights?

I'm loving the RF extender... I may have to try to find a way to sneak an emitter to a position where it can hit the TV so I can have everything RF controlled!
Right now the TV and Lutron lights are the only things getting IR commands from the 1100.

How far away have you guys been able to get one of the emitters to work from? (not the RF base blaster, but one of the small emitters)
I'm thinking I could attach one to the wall across from the TV - maybe 6-7 feet - and try sending the signal that way...

^^
I could only get the small emitters to work with my Lutron from about 3-4 away...so I had to go get one of the newer emitters from Ebay which allows me to set it about 8' away.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Logitech-Har...item27c27e0767

But I was caught off guard when I got it. It is not the usual 3.5m connection. I had to get an adapter as it is smaller than the 3.5m the RF Extender uses. (at least the one I have. I think the newer ones come with the mini blasters and small sized connection.)

You can't delete, only support can I believe.

First time I did a learn it was called "mynewcommand" lol, because I thought I would change it on the next screen.

As far as testing, yes that should work.

Okay thanks.
I have a set of emitters from my Harman Kardon IR extender that probably have better output - I'll give it a try tonight Irritating thing is my computer is on the 2nd floor and the theater room is in the basement so there will be a lot of stair work going on tonight while I test it! LOL!

I'm stuck with a command called "poo" for that same reason

Never really used an emitter as a flasher like that, but you might have better luck with the 900's mini blaster like mekkerl suggests.. Yes the 900's mini blaster connectors are 2.5mm vs. 3.5mm, adapters easily available at Radio Shack or on line.

The good news is if you are able to route some cat5 over to the tv somehow you can attach an emitter to it. I have a run of 35 feet plus emmitter and extender connections to my projector with no signal issues.

That's probably the thing that drives me crazy about the 1100 is that you have to update both the remote and extender every time, even if you don't affect something with the extender. Oh well, once it's setup properly you wont need to update much if at all, but that's when a laptop is handy. Good luck.

That could be an option... I have an HDMI cable that comes out of the wall right behind the TV - a piece of cat5 could be routed through there pretty easily.

On my Mitsubishi 73" I think the IR receiver is actually behind the screen, so maybe mounting the emitter to the back of my center channel speaker that sits in front of the TV stand would work...

In this image from when I was relocating my equipment you can kind of see what I am looking to do. The emitter/mini-blaster would go on the the wall either where that curtain is hanging down on the right, or up at the top of the shelves on the right where the curtains that will cover the rack will be mounted.

Distance doesn't seem to far, I'd give it a shot.

Here is what someone else did recently though the distance is a little closer.

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=1368531