How to automate this...

A couple of years ago I used a program called "Automate" a lot. See if that one might do it!

Just hitting that URL with wget might be enough to trigger it? I'd also look into AutoIt

You need some kind of "wrapper" to handle the network communications to port 80 on 192.168.1.9 using HTTP or whatever's in the URL. If it's as simple as navigating to that URL on a Windows platform you should be able to do it with VBScipt which will create and use an Internet Explorer" object. This code:

should launch an invisible copy of IE and tell it to "go to" that URL. You can save that code into a text editor like notepad, then save that as .vbs. From there set up EventGhost to "execute" .vbs when it receives an IR input or whatever you expect to trigger it. Since it's vbs, Windows should know what to do with it if you just execute it as if it were a program. You may have to tweak how you actually send the URL using IE though. It worked for me on a site like www.microsoft.com but I can't test your URL. When you are testing, you may want to set .Visible = 1 to see what it actually does in the browser. Also .Sleep(5000) will wait 5 seconds before it closes IE after sending the URL before it closes IE. You may need to tweak that too.

Here's documentation on the IE object methods and properties:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/libr...(v=vs.85).aspx

Your script probably works, but creating an IE object it's overkill. Just use XmlHttp instead.

XmlHttp is much lighter, plus you don't have to worry about any sleeps or delays.

That's my fault. Sorry. I figured EventGhost would be able to execute a file that had a registered application extension like .vbs. It won't, so you need to be explicit about how to run it.
Configure an EventGhost macro to trigger on receiving your desired IR event. Add a System->Start Application action to that macro. In the "Executable" box of that action enter:
c:\\windows\\system32\\wscript.exe
In the "command line options" box enter:
".vbs"
The quotes above are required if your path has spaces.

That should run the script. A few other thoughts.

- Make sure this works before trying to set it all up in EventGhost. Open IE on your HTPC and enter the URL and hit enter. That should trigger the action you expect. If it doesn't this isn't going to work. You need to be able to do it the browser URL first. You should also test that the script triggers what you want outside of EventGhost. Just double-click it from explorer.
- Is all of this being done on the same PC? You're sending the event to EG and then EG triggers the script to send the URL right to that same PC? If so, you may need to use the loopback interface instead of using the machine's local IP address. Try http://127.0.0.1/... or http://localhost/... instead of http://192.168.1.9/...
- As was suggested, the IE object is resource heavy but I'd get it working/test using it, then if it all works as expected you can switch to the XMLHTTP object. You can make the IE object visible to see what it's doing which may be helpful when you are testing this.

You substituted the actual path to your VBS file for ".vbs", correct?

^What he said. I meant for you to substitute the path/filename of the vbs file you have saved on your computer for the part in the brackets. The "command line options" box should be:
"C:\\execute.vbs"

It occurred to me that you can probably do all this in a python script that EventGhost will execute directly. No need for external VBS files. All you need is an EventGhost->Python Script Action in your macro and this code as the script:

Can't get simpler or more lightweight than that

You can launch from eventghost by using cscript.exe and then your vbs file as the argument. From the command line it would look like this,

cscript.exe somescript.vbs

Uh...

If you are running a bat file just have the bat file execute the vbs script. You don't need EventGhost at all. One line of code in the bat at the appropriate place:

c:\\windows\\system32\\cscript.exe "c:\\execute.vbs"

since you already know that script works to trigger your avr, use the lightweight xmlhttp object for the vbs code.

I'm rusty on my EventGhost setup, but I'm pretty sure you can set up a trigger for when an application starts. If you can get the Logger running in EventGhost (the thing that logs everything happening on the system) look for an event called "Task.NewWindow.Control" or "Task.NewWindow.Control.Cmd". That's the event of your batch file starting up and you can run your script every time it sees that happen.

I think there are probably easier ways to do this that do not rely on EventGhost at all. You really should look upstream to what actually triggers the exe (or bat, sorry, I'm still unclear what you're describing) and then find a way to insert a new step in that process. I'd bet it's possible and a far better and more reliable approach, but I'll just go ahead and answer the EventGhost part.

You need to add a plug-in to your configuration. EG isn't tied in to all Windows events for external Windows proceses yet. You need to add the "Process Watcher" plug-in to get those. Choose "Add Plugin" then find that one from the installed plugins (Other->Process Wtacher) and add it to the Autostart section. Now you'll see the windows event stream appear in the EG status window when you start/start apps.

You'll need to start your program (and probably some others too) and see what gets generated as events for it. With luck something unique that signals that your app is started will show up. Watch the status window as you open & close programs to learn how these work. It will be named something like the 3 you listed above but probably start with Process.Created.[something] instead. The problem here is that *if* the exe is really running in an MS-DOS command window you may only see the command window process instead and *that* won't necessarily be a unique event. That's why I suspect you'd be better off solving this from another angle, but I didn't test running a proces from an MS-DOS command myself to see what EG also sees so you'll have to test it and figure out how that works. If you can find one (and with luck, unique) event, you'll then set up an EG macro that triggers only on that event. A macro "triggers" when any of the events inside it are "observed" to occur and it performs all the actions that are inside the scope of that macro and below that trigger event.

So first, create a new folder at the top of the tree and name it "Global Actions". Make sure it's enabled. Now add a new macro in the "GA" folder just created and give it a useful name and make sure it's enabled. Next add the unqiue event that you found when your app starts. You can drag the event from EG's explorer status pane onto (or just below) your macro or just add a new event to the macro and type the full name of the event exactly as it appeared in the status window. Finally add a EG->Python Script action to that same macro below the newly added event and paste in the python script code I gave you before to handle the HTTP communications that you need to switch inputs on the avr.

It should look kind of like this:
Please note that this is *conceptual*. Those aren't going to be the actual names. You need to figure them out and I can't do it from the info I have.

The new macro you add should have "global" scope (i.e., one that will run at all times since EG allows you to also activate and deactivate macros or groups of macros depending on conditions). Since you don't need EG for anything else at this point you can just have the one macro and nothing else in your configuration. That would be "global" as long as the Global Actions folder is always enabled and you don't set up anything to disable it from other events. Now whenever EG "sees" that event occur it will trigger all the Actions in the macro it's assigned to which in this case will be to run the one script which is below it in the macro and which sends the URL. Of course EG always has to be running on your system for any of that to work.

The standard EG install comes with a bunch of example xml files that you can load and learn from. You should take a look at how they set up some of the basics to get an idea how the app works. All of those examples will be far more than what you need here but the structures can be helpful to learn how to set it up to perform functions.