Harmony 880 Official Thread. For all info and FAQs - Page 20

It could ask you which device you want to end up using/controlling ... One step, no hassle. If multiple devices, a main one and then go to programming your keys.
Im not asking for the moon you know, it would not be very complicated to implement for Logitech.

Patrick S.

But the whole point of a Harmony is that you don't control a single DEVICE, you control an ACTIVITY. And a custom activity is designed so that it can be customized exactly how you want it.

Why then it always default to my main device with I do not use a generic activity if it s not designed to do so ?
I get the point, but still having the default 'main' device keys already set when using a generic activity would simplify a whole lot the programming. You would only need to add the missing stuff instead of doing it from scratch.
I do programming all day at work and I don't expect to have to do it after work also ...

Patrick S.

i love my 880. i got it all setup, the one thing i have an issue is this:

the button above 'media' the arrow pointing right, doesnt work like it should;

for example, if im looking at tv settings, and lets say theres 11 pages of settings, i cant use the button to go to the next page (2/11, 3/11, 4/11 and so forth)

however, the left arrow button (above 'device'), does function for viewing previous pages (11/11, 10/11, 9/11, 8/11)

how can i fix this? thanks!

This is a common misconception. It doesn't default to any device when you select an activity. It defaults to controlling the activity you select, not a particular device. For example, the "Watch DVD" activity is entirely independant to the "DVD Player" device. You can customize either of them completely independantly to the other. It's just that a "Watch DVD" activity implies that most of the remote buttons are going to control the DVD player, so this is how the software sets it up by default. However, it's also likely that the volume buttons will control your receiver volume.

For these type of "canned" activities the setup can make a pretty good guess as to what most buttons should be doing(depending on how you answer the activity setup questions).

But some people didn't like the setup guessing what buttons should do what and wanted more control over what an activity does, so they added the "Custom activity" option for these people...so they could set up an activity entirely from scratch. I guess no matter what they do, you can't please everyone.

It sounds like it might be faulty. Return it for a replacement.

I've got a Denon 2807 receiver, and I'm trying to figure out how to get the Harmony 880 to control multiple zones. It seems like I want a new activity that is "Listen to CD in Zone 2" that would set receiver to be in Zone 2 mode with CD selected as input, and set the volume controls to control the receivers zone 2 volume.

I can't seem to find an obvious way to do this. I tried learning a new command, but the Denon remote doesn't send a signal when you press "Zone 2", and it seems to send the same "CD" signal after I've pressed zone 2, or at least the Harmony learned the same one.

Has anyone done the same? How did they make it work?

Hi there,

For those of you using the Harmony series (I'm using the 890, but I'm pretty sure the 880 is identical in this regard), I urge you to call customer support and seriously request that they allow the user to set the order of the custom buttons in the LCD screen. It's ridiculous that they have created their program so that it chooses the order that the buttons will be in.

Their number is 1-866-291-1505 (M-F 9am to 10pm EST, S-S 10am to 5:30pm). I called them yesterday and spoke to both first level and second level support. They acknowledged that this is a deficiency in their program and that they have had calls on it before. They were nice, but they would not let me talk to engineering and they would not let me have the source code so that I could fix it myself.

So, give 'em a call. This is just poor design, and if enough of us call, they'll eventually fix it.

While your on the phone with them, ask them to change the programming for the Media button with Mega changers (CD & DVD).... The first breakdown (Alphabetical listing) only uses 4 of the 8 buttons.

Just wanted to drop a line letting Charter DVR (Motorola MOXI) customers know that this remote is working successfully with that box.

I also use the 880 with a Moxi. It works fairly well. Some timing tweaks are helpful to get it right.

Can you tell me exactly what you mean by custom buttons? I have a 880 and I know you can change the order of the buttons under the activities screen, you can do that from the activities listing on your home page. And I know you can maunally change the order, add or delete the listings under device mode, and also change the order of the listings in Favorite Channels under the Media button. What other area are you referring to in your post? thanks

OttoSpiral is referring to the inability for users to re-order Devices. I called tech support and asked for this to be added several weeks ago.

I am having some second thoughts about my 880. I have been reading on the forum that the 880 is buggy compared to other Harmony remotes and that the charging cradle is defective. Should I open the box and keep it, or switch to another Harmony remote?

I can't say whether you should keep it or switch, but I got mine a few weeks ago and have absolutely no problem with the charging cradle or the LCD screen being washed out. Those were the two issues I read about and was concerned about - so far, no problem at all. I ordered mine from Dell. I was able to set it up pretty quick to operate my plasma, dvd player, a/v receiver, vcr, cd filer, and satellite box. So far, I have not encountered any bugs and the on-line database has been easy to access and use.

Of course, this is just one person's recent experience...

I agree. The only thing I have noticed about the cradle is that when I place the remote on it, it doesn't always start charging. If I move it a bit, it seems to make a better contact.

As far as setting it up, it just took me a while to figure out how to customize things but I certainly*haven't found any*bugs.

How can I add an MCE remote as a device to my 890?
I have a 890 and a usbuirt, Im going to use HIP I was hoping to add the MCE remote but I cant find it anywhere in the 890 "devices". The MCE already has a setup file configured for HIP, so If I can teach my 890 how to be a MCE remote, thats all I need to do, it will then work as a MCE remote system and the PC will respond accordingly... Im all for simplicity, although I spent 2 hrs last night trying to figure out how to achieve this....

Charging Issue:
The charging issue is real if you receive one of the faulty cradles -- mine is this way and it takes fiddling to get it to charge. According to other posts here, Harmony is replacing these free of charge and presumably the remotes going out of the factory no longer have the potential for this issue (I will be calling mine in for replacement this weekend).

Button Order Issue:
I think that the button ordering OttoSpiral is referring to is within a particular activity, the order of buttons is defined by Harmony and not the user -- so the soft button layout in the "Watch TV" or "Watch DVD" activity isn't controlled by the user -- the buttons that apear there are, but not the order of the buttons.

You can reorder the LCD commands in device mode and activity mode however you like. The only catch is that in activity mode the commands are still grouped by device, but you can re-order the commands within that device.

Anybody have any thoughts on this?

Thanks!

I agree with you. I can't figure what the other posters are saying. I have gone in to the LCD screen display on on the main activities, when in activity mode, and when in device mode and been able to add, delete and change the order of the items in all three of these. The harmony will start out with some default settings, but I have always been able to change them any what I wanted to.

And to answer smsprauge's question, I have had no issues with mine. It took me a few weeks and one call to CS to figure it all out, but now I love to log on and tweak it. I got all kinds of logos, pics, and special commands on there and it works like a champ, all for less than $150.

Has anyone had any experience programming this remote with the Sony Sattelite receiver with built in PVR functions? I ordered this remote and I expect it to be shipped tomorrow but I'm trying to find out as much about the set up in advance. Also, does my computer need to be in the same place as my audio visual system? My network connection isn't wireless and all my broadband connections are upstairs and I want to use the remote for to entertainment stations, one upstairs and the other downstairs. Any feedback would be greatly appreciated. For the purposes of the reply I anticipate setting up the following:

Replay TV PVR (early model before Panasonic took them over)
Sony Sattelite PVR Receiver - Dirctv
Sony Wega TV
Panasonic DVD RAM Recorder
Toshiba VCR
Sharp Receiver

and Upstairs it's another DVD RAM Recorder by Panasonic
Samsung Sattelite Receiver with built in PVR

Because 80% of the TVs out there dont have Discrete Input codes.
Samsung is the worst!

Not only does it toggle from one input to the next but skips an input if no source is present!! Talk about a headache!

Hi there,

Sorry for the delayed response to your original inquiry of my post. Everything I'm talking about is under an "activity" mode. So, I pick "Listen to Sirius" as an example, and I want to have two "pages" of custom buttons.

I want them to look like this:

Page 1:

Chan 1 | R2 Vol Up
Chan 2 | R2 Vol Down
Chan 3 | Chan 4
Chan 5 | Chan 6

Page 2:

Chan 7 | R2 Vol Up
Chan 8 | R2 Vol Down
Chan 9 | Chan 10
Chan 11 | Chan 12

I believe there are two problems with this layout, as the 880/890 currently sits. First, they don't allow repeats. I specifically set up R2 Vol Up/Down in the same location in all my "pages" so that I don't have to flip back to "page 1" to control the volume. Say all my favorite channels are on page 1 and my wife's are on page 2, so each of us likes to keep it on "our page" as we are using it. And, yeah, I could see making two "activities" for "Otto's Sirius Faves" and "Wife's Sirius Faves," but why? So they don't allow repeats, which I think is lame.

Second problem is that they grouped those according to the device they are controlling (in this case the "R2 Vol Up/Down" stuff is an Outlaw 990, and the "Chan XX" stuff is the Sirius receiver). After grouping by device, they group alphabetically. Because of the goofy way that the user must enter the things in the Java web app, in order to get my "page 1" example above I entered them like this:

Chan 1
R2 Vol Up
Chan 2
R2 Vol Down
Chan 3
Chan 4
Chan 5
Chan 6

Then, Harmony went ahead in grouping them by device, and then alphabetically to get this:

R2 Vol Down
R2 Vol Up
Chan 1
Chan 2
Chan 3
Chan 4
Chan 5
Chan 6

And that ain't what I want. Also, those "Chan XX" names aren't really in a nice alphabetical order like that because I'm using the Sirius names like "Chill" and "The Vault", so they are also reordered by alpha as well.

So, I admit that I have not tried to reorder them after they have been reordered by device by Harmony. It was painful enough to get them all "right" the first time (I created a spreadsheet where I could lay them out in the graphical order, and then it would reorder them for me to enter them in the list -- not complicated, but helped me "see" what I was getting, especially across all activities). I guess that gets me a little bit closer to what I want, but it doesn't solve the problem of me wanting to "double up" the same command in various pages, and it doesn't allow me to intelligently organize the buttons. It would be nice to always have R2 Vol Up and Room 2 Vol Down adjacent to each other (or however you like), but when I throw, say, "R2 Power" in the mix, they are further separated.

I guess I just don't understand (as a firmware engineer) how difficult this can be for them to fix. Actually, I don't even think this is a firmware limitation, as much as it is a self-imposed Java/web app limitation. It should be pretty easy to fix, and is a poor design from the start. IMHO, they have spent too many engineering resources on fluff (animated "screen saver", downloading your own pictures, etc.) that should have been implemented after the basics were 100% (GUI, web site, goofy crap like what I'm describing here, etc.).

No problem.
Just bring the Harmony into the computer room with a list of your devices and model numbers.

As far as the second room goes the Harmony will not let you do more than one activity at a time.

Hi all, i've a question on adding custom labels in Activities

Currently, i've 3 activities

1) Watch DVD
2) Watch HD-DVD
3) Play Xbox

I've added a custom label 'Projector HDMI' to the activity 'Watch DVD'which basically sets the projector to HDMI input (in case the input does not set correctly when starting the activity)

However, this custom label is also added automatically to activities 2) and 3), which is not i want

Similarly, when i add a custom label 'Projector Component' to the activity 'Play Xbox', the label is added to activities 1) and 2)

How do i rectify this?

- Unfortunately, this is one the major flaws of the Harmony programming. If you add a custom command for a device in an Activity, it adds that custom command to every activity that uses that device.

The only way to get around this would be to program a dummy device (Ex: duplicate projector) and only use that device in an Activity that you want the custom command. A lousy workaround.

If the real issue you want to correct is the missed input command, you should use the Help key to correct things or adjust your delays/repeats to make things more consistent.

thanks bro. at least i know it is a flaw and not a broken remote!

I assume these "Projector Input" commands are discretes?

If so, pressing the "Help" button(as tokerblue suggested) will re-send all discretes for the current activity, thus fixing the input problem.

If you really must have these commands on the activity pages, you can avoid them propogating by learning them to the other device in the activity. ie learn "Projector HDMI" to the DVD device, and "Projector component" to the X-Box device.

Czzer, thanks very much for the tip! It worked!