Harmony 650 controlling XBMC

[Reddwarfposse5]

Hi All, hope someone can help me here. I've just taken delivery of a Harmony 650 and have set up 2 basic uses - Watch TV and Watch PC which seems to be working fine. My main question is, can i set this up to control XBMC without buying a Media remote i.e. just by buying the receiver? Also, if XBMC isn't maximised on the screen, can the remote make it full screen? I hope that makes sense.
Thanks.

 

[Reddwarfposse5]

I've bought a cheap RC6 remote from Ebay and although MyHarmony doesn't pick up the model number, i can learn the remote so i can get XBMC working in general. I was wanting to add more functionality but mapping buttons, etc and i've read through several of the guides about using MCE Keyboard and Media Centre SE but none of them seem to work on my remote. Is it possible that not all RC6 receivers are compatible with MCE Keyboard and Media Centre SE commands? Also, i assumed that as long as i had an RC6 reciever, i could enter any model of Media Remote and this would work. Any advice please?

 

[logiciel]

I'm guessing that this is about a computer, and if it is you might find people in the computer area of the forum who know about the specific problem so feel free to post there as well.

 

[Reddwarfposse5]

Thanks. Most of the info i find seems to indicate that it's a receiver issue. Hopefully i can borrow one that i know works and take it from there.

 

[illusion]

Hi All, hope someone can help me here. I've just taken delivery of a Harmony 650 and have set up 2 basic uses - Watch TV and Watch PC which seems to be working fine. My main question is, can i set this up to control XBMC without buying a Media remote i.e. just by buying the receiver? Also, if XBMC isn't maximised on the screen, can the remote make it full screen? I hope that makes sense.
Thanks.

Yes you can I use a Phillips OVU-4120 profile which is in the database. It works just fine I bought only the receiver a couple of years back and also works with a generic MCE remote and receiver pack I bought a few months ago. The only thing to make sure is that it's a MCE receiver and not some cheap Chinese clone that is actually a keyboard, they work and I have one but I found it inferior to a real MCE (which some buttons replicate keyboard presses anyway).

I don't know if you're using windows or linux based xbmc.

It should be possible on both platforms but I've never really done a lot with the remote on windows beyond using it but there's a package called eventghost which probably will let you do this you'd need to get in the more computer related forums for help on this.

On Linux you can do pretty much anything you can even respond to different remote control codes if you want. I have mine set up using irexec with buttons to kill xbmc and restart it if it crashed for the GF (Only ever 'crashes' when she uses it)

 

[Reddwarfposse5]

I borrowed a receiver from a friend last night and it works fine when i set up the MCE keyboard (this allows me to map a button on the remote to start XBMC via a shortcut button (F7)). It looks like it's probably my receiver that isn't compatible so i'll need to hunt a decent one down. What i will then probably do is just map another button to the S command to open up the shutdown menu.
Thanks.