Official Logitech Harmony 650/600 remote thread - Page 16

What happened when you:
- enter a number on the number pad?
or
- enter a number on the number pad and press "enter" button?

With the Player Stopped enter:
Display
Enter
Disk number
Enter
Display

BPlayers instructions worked - thanks! I tried that before and it wasn't quite working, I think that the DVD player just has a little bit of a delay! Thanks again!

For those who use BOTH a cable/satellite box for watching TV and have a "smart" TV with apps--do you have this set up as two different activities?

I've got my 650 humming nicely but the one issue I'm having is with "Watch TV"--that controls my cable box (and avr) and the television. All the up/down/sideways buttons are set to control content on the cable box, so when I go into an app on the TV (netflix, say) I cannot move around within the app.

I guess I could use the TV remote JUST for that activity and use the Harmony for all others. But I've read that using the device remotes can confuse the Harmony.

I could also set up two activities ("Watch Cable TV" and "Watch TV apps") but I'm curious--once the tv is one can you toggle btw these activities, or do you have to do an "all off" then hit the new activity?

I would make 2 activities. You can toggle between them fine. I think lots of specific activities are easier to use than fewer general ones. I had about 30 activities last time I checked. The family never has to ask me how to do anything. If you prefer one activity, just make a page of buttons with your tv arrow keys and other smart tv related stuff.

Ya, I think creating a separate activity is better and easier.

I did set up the buttons as items on the page but it's not quite as good as having the dedicated buttons, nor is it easy to exit out of the app or move back when a program is over.

I think you're right about a lot of specific activities vs a few where you try to stuff a lot into them.

Has anybody changed/tweaked the "power on" delays and the inter-device delays, to make activities turn on faster? Any success?

I had to do the opposite, increase the delay, to get my Pioneer AVR to consistently turn on.

New question.
Just got a new DVR (or PVR) - Cisco RNG200 (Comcast).
Remote is dark platinum.
I'm trying to enter the 30 sec skip with directions from Jan 2010, supposedly for the platinum remote: Select AUX, Hold Setup (2 flashes), type 01376 (2 flashes), etc.
It doesn't work for me - tried several times.
My question: Is there a way to get this code directly into my Harmony 650?
Thanks for any help, HNick

AFAIK that code only works on motorola boxes, not cisco. Sorry. If you get 2 blinks at the end and still can't get it to do anything on your cable remote, it won't do anything on your harmony either.

mdavej,
Thanks.
I'll give up trying and just do FF.
HNick

Hi all,

I have an old Denon AVR-3200, the remote of which was spoiled.
Wonder if the Logitech Harmony 600 can totally replace the proprietary remote, which has some special buttons for system setup of the AVR.
The Denon AVR model is listed as supported by Harmony. What I'm afraid is that Harmony only supports the basic control functions (volume, source selection etc.) but NOT the system setup functions.

Your advice appreciated.

The 650 (can't speak about the 600, but I bet they work the same) has two "sections" - one for standard buttons and one for custom buttons. The standard buttons are assigned to the "named" keys on the remote (although you can reassign functions to different keys) while the custom buttons show up on the display (there are several pages of the display pages). You can also add learned keys to the remote.

guys i have 700 and use Myharmony to get 8 devices.

looking to buy a 650 for my parents. i guess it gives 5 with harmony software 7. How many devices do we get with Myharmony on the 650 ?

I'm likely going to upgrade from Time Warner cable to FIOS. Will I need to completely reprogram the 650 or will the software/unit figure it all out when I simply delete the old device (the TM box) and add the new one (the new fios box)?

It will tell you what activity wizards you need to confirm settings on. So there is some reprogramming.

hi fellas,

I have a Harmony 700. I use a Projector, AVR and Bluray Player for "Watch Movie" activity. Is there a way to not have the Projector come ON and go OFF when i press "Watch Movie" and "All Off" buttons.

I want to keep the Projector independent of these 2 buttons but still have it in the list of devices in the Watch Movie activity. I'm using Myharmony.com website to program my 700.

Guidance on this will be appreciated.

Try going into the Devices page, choose the projector, select the Power Settings, then select "this device has no power button". That way it is still on the activity but no power commands will be sent. You can then turn ON/OFF the projector using the projector device LCD page.

Another way is to set it to always ON. But that probably will complicate things if the projector has discrete ON/OFF.

it works...!! Thank you so much.

So I got myself a 650 and I'm diggin it. I have a couple questions about how to set up a couple things with it though.

I'm controlling an Optoma HD20 projector, Onkyo HT-S5400, and an HTPC with Win7 and MediaPortal as my media center rather than Windows MCE.

I can't figure out how to close out of MediaPortal without putting my computer in Sleep Mode. I basically have the remote mapped to MCE's remote controls which works just fine in MediaPortal, but when I turn off all devices, or if I try to turn off just MediaPortal, the remote wants to put the system in sleep mode. I don't use MediaPortal as a pure front-end though. I want to keep the HTPC running, but just close out of MediaPortal when I click the off button. Is this possible? I used the Harmony website to set up the remote, and every time I tried to adjust commands it asked for my original remote. I don't have an original remote though, I control the HTPC using an HP IR sensor I got on eBay.

If you want to keep the HTPC running all the time then use the setting "this device has no power button" as suggested a couple posts above.

Usually, to close Media Portal while it's running, you can program a "Alt-F4" to the HTPC device before the power off command is sent. But you won't have the power Off sent if using the setting above! So I guess the easy way is having a soft button on the 1st page of the LCD to close Media Portal before pressing All Off.

This Windows Media Center SE device has the combo keys such as Alt-F4, Ctrl-Esc, Win-1,...
http://forums.logitech.com/t5/Harmon.../374844#M37810

Another idea is to program the power ON/OFF commands for the HTPC to be some dummy commands which do nothing, and then add the "Alt-F4" to the HTPC device Power OFF (choose " more than one command is needed to turn off this device")

Ah, here's the rub though. I want to be able to start MediaPortal with my other devices in a shared Activity. So for instance, if I click Watch TV, I want to be able to turn on the projector, the receiver, and MediaPortal all in one click (the HTPC will be on most of the time). If I choose the "this device has no power button" won't that prevent MediaPortal from starting?

I'd think I'd want to be able to exit MediaPortal using a power button option as well.


Yeah, that would probably work.


Hmm, interesting.


Okay, I'll look into that option as well.

Thanks for all your help. Its greatly appreciated.

I have a feeling I'm making all of this too hard on myself Had I stuck to MCE, and made it a normal front-end I could cut most of complication out of all of this, but I don't mind a challenge.

I never use Media Portal, but I understand it's a media player software like XMBC? the power button sends ON/OFF commands to hardware devices only. In order to start/exit an application without indirectly sending power OFF/ON to the HTPC, you'd have to program the start/exit of that app to a key (e.g. Win+1). And then add that key to the device power settings if you want it to be sent as part of the power commands sequence.

So yes, I think it is rather complicate (doable though) to do it the way you want to do.

And sounds like you want the HTPC to have power Toggle (ON/OFF), but in all your existing activities you want to leave ALL devices ON if they were already ON. And then have a separate Desktop activity to switch to HTPC (and also turn off other devices if that's the intend).

All these are just ideas. I'm not sure if they helped in your specific setup :-)

bump...

Most long time Harmony users don't use MyHarmony.com, we use the PC software. However, you can create a new Harmony account for 650 and find out on MyHarmony.com how many devices it supports (you can create as many accounts as you want, you don't have to own the remote).

I thought the 650 did 5 devices regardless of whether you use the software or web site. Unless of course you do the clone thing

Yeah, basically. I was actually interested in using just XBMC because I'm having issues with MCE, but in order to watch live tv via my tuner in XBMC, I needed an extra backend software solution for PVR. On XBMC's wiki they suggested using MediaPortal, and once I checked that out I realized that it was a self contained media center that did everything I wanted XBMC to do anyways.


Thank you for pointing this out. This helped me rethink my whole approach to this issue. I also swapped out the Windows MCE device for Windows Media Center SE.


What I've done is added a shortcut key to start Mediaportal (right clicking on the desktop icon and adding a key combination to the shortcut key section), and to close out of MediaPortal I'm using ALT+F4. Using these key combinations to start and close the program seem to be doing what I want. I've also mapped them to a couple of the other remote buttons for fast access.


Yeah, I still have tons of tweaking to do. I'm sure there's got to be an easier way to do everything than I'm doing it, but I'm slowly progressing I think. Thanks for all of your help.

Just some food for thoughts. These are my experiences in setting up XBMC activity on Harmony remotes. They might help you, and perhaps others too, avoiding some headaches along the way!

- I had a XBMC shortcut, and assigned Win+3 key to that (on Win 7, when you pin a shortcut to the task bar, its position determines the Win+n key, my XBMC shortcut is pinned to 3rd position).

- My HTPC Power is set to go to Sleep when the HTPC power button is pressed.

- I've tried adding this Win+3 command to the HTPC power ON and OFF in Harmony devices so that it's automatically executed when the power button is pressed. But the result was inconsistent. I think because a delay is needed between Win+3 and the power ON/OFF command.

- My solution was to add Win+3 to the end of the XBMC activity start, and to the beginning of XBMC activity stop. This way when the power All Off button is pressed, XBMC is minimized, and the HTPC go to sleep. When the XBMC activity button is pressed to start the whole system, Win+3 maximizes XBMC again.

- I also set up a HTPC Desktop activity. The only difference between this activity and XBMC activity is no Win+3 command. But I rarely used this, since I can always press Win+3 (soft button) to go to the desktop while inside XBMC, and then press Win+3 again to go back into XBMC.

I actually figured out this works when I tried mapping my shortcut key to Win 1 and found that it was opening one of my other applications on my taskbar in Win7. That's pretty cool, but after my last post I found an even simpler way of starting up MediaPortal. I found that I can actually start MediaPortal via Widow Media Center SE's "Media" selection. This appears to be working out better than the short cut key I added for starting MediaPortal up now.


Right, and that would make sense if I was using MediaPortal as my primary front end, but as I mentioned earlier I don't really want my PC to go to sleep when I power off MediaPortal. All I want the remote to do is close MediaPortal out but keep the PC on. That's why I mapped the Alt F4 button to "off".


I think I'm going to have to mess around with my activity start list a bit more, because one of the issues I'm currently having when I start everything up is that I'm finding that pressing say... "Watch TV" starts the projector, the receiver, and MediaPortal, but then it doesn't always automatically tune in to the correct input. So essentially what happens when Watch TV or Listen To Music is selected, everything starts as it should except that I'm dumped into the base Media selection screen rather than the actual TV input or the Music input. If I click the TV or Music input again on the remote, then it takes me there.


Hmm... Not a bad idea. Since my PC is always running, I don't know if I need an activity like that just yet, but I may choose to set something like that up in case I ever decide (in the future) to set up my computer to go to sleep after x amount of hours.

One of the issues I'm running into now has to do with how I set MediaPortal to close. Like I mentioned I mapped an alternative button (specifically the blue button) to also close with Alt F4, which is the normal command to close out most any program. This works, in that it does close out MediaPortal, which is exactly what I want it to do, but when I close the program in this way, and click on one of the activity buttons later, its not opening MediaPortal back up. I have a feeling that the remote thinks that MediaPortal is still on, so therefore its not attempting to turn it back on again (unless I go through the Help prompts). Basically it looks like its doing the same thing it would do if I were to click on, say, Watch TV and my projector was already on. It knows the projector is on, so doesn't attempt to turn it on, instead it goes through the devices it knows aren't on and turns them on.

Now this isn't that big of a problem, because I have a button (the red button) already mapped to "Media" which does turn MediaPortal back on. Still, it'd be nice to be able to click on "Watch TV" or "Listen to Music" while at my desktop, the remote recognizes MediaPortal is currently off, turning it on, and then selecting the correct input.

Its not a big issue, but thanks to your help I'm just now tweaking little things to get them as close to perfect as I can. I'm assuming the issue has to do with mapping my "off" button for MediaPortal to Alt F4. I'm thinking if I could figure out a good alternative way to map the exit out of the program to another key I probably wouldn't have any issues. I was able to add key board short cuts with a cool MediaPortal plugin I found tonight called ShortCut'er which allowed me to program in certain inputs in MediaPortal not apparently native to the Windows Media Center SE configuration.

Anyways, I'm getting there, and thanks again for all your help.

Hi

I've been using the Harmony 600 for months now with no problems at all. I have it controlling my TV, Set top box and AV amp. For the last week, every time i press the 'All Off' button, all three devices turn off, but the STB immediately gets turned back on again and I have to use the Help functionality to get it to turn back off. Any ideas why this has started happening and, more importantly, how I can fix it?

Thanks