Logitech Harmony Touch Questions

ChocolateStarfishRammer

ChocolateStarfishRammer

ChocolateStarfishRammer

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25 Sep 2011
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Morning All,

Picked one of these up at the weekend as a common computer world had it for £96 with the intention of making life easier.

So far experience has been good and all works very well. But I'm slightly disappointing in the software so far as it seems quite restrictive, or at least as I've found, I'm hoping you may be able to answer a few things I haven't figured out..

1) Setting hardware buttons for fixed commands.
I want my tv to turn off when I long press the Blue button. And I want my Xbox to turn off when I press the Green button. Simple enough. I've set this in the software and the commands work fine. But they only work when the remote is on that exact device. So for instance when I'm on the activity Play Xbox. The green button will work fine and turn the xbox off. But the blue button does nothing in turning the tv off. But if I'm on the Watch TV activity, then the blue button will turn the tv off but the green wont turn the xbox off!! Grr! I hope this is just something I've done wrong but it seems the buttons are only applied for the devices when your actually on them. If thats the case, thats rubbish!! - Any Ideas??​

2) The ability to not turn everything else off - sometimes
If I'm playing Fifa on the xbox, sometimes I like to switch the dvd\surround sound player to Radio. Now depending on the situation I may be done playing the xbox or maybe I want to continue. Either way when I switch to radio, it turns the tv off.
The only option I have is to say 'never turn the tv off when switching activities'. But actually sometimes I want it to switch the tv off when changing to this, or between other activities.
There needs to be another option which says 'Ask if you want to switch other devices off aswell'
Any ideas?​

These are just things that are completley software based but actually really restrict the experience I'm getting from it :(

I hope someones going to pop up and just say - do this..

I also hope thats not contact logitech :p
 
The harmony remotes work on a principle of 'activities', so any button command you assign will be against 1 activity. So in your example, if you ALWAYS want the green button to turn off/on the xbox - then you will need to make this button config in all of your activities.

What setup do you have in terms of devices that are on/off any any time? The way it wants you to work it so that you press 'off' and all devices will turn off, and when you select an activity it will turn on all relevant devices. You can adjust what turns on/off with activities, but I'm wondering if you've got a complicated setup where that is on at any time varies, or if you're not quite onboard with the way activities work?
 
Ok so based on what your saying I read This logitech link slightly differently..

I've been going to buttons and selecting a device, then assigning the button. But that reads, and your saying I actually need to go into each activity and then I'll have the option of setting these on each one of them?

I'm running a slight convoluted setup in terms of amp and surround sound. The amp is being used purely as a hdmi splitter and surround sound through a cheap blu ray player Samsung thing. (Simply because I cant win that argument with the mrs atm :p:rolleyes:)

So In some circumstances when I want to listen to radio through the bluray player, which is independent of the amp, I dont want it to turn it off. But it some circumstances, I do. It would just be nice to have the option, of setting an option if that makes sense.
 
What you'll probably be best off doing then is having the options in each activity to change controls like that. Don't forget, when you're in an activity like "Play Xbox" the buttons are defined within that activity.
If you have for instance gone into the TV device and defined blue as turn off TV, this will only apply if you've gone into the devices menu on the remote and selected the TV device as by default you're in an activity not a device - if that makes sense?


I don't think you're convoluted setup helps, but you just have to think of it slightly differently than having one mode per device, you don't you have a mode per activity which combines several devices.
 
Couple of things:

1) As ChocolateStarfishRammer says (amazing name by the way) you'll need to assign the buttons to the functions you want to do under each activity.

I.e. if you want the blue button to toggle your TV on/off then you need to set it up under each activity.

You can do this two ways a) add the TV to each activity even if you don't plan on using it other than this single button or b) learn/teach the TV on/off command as an additional command for a device that's already in the activity. The second option here is actually probably the easiest as if you add the TV on/off command as an additional command to your AVR then you'll only need to learn it once and then assign the button in each activity.

2) When you press the "off" button on the remote none of the other buttons (apart from the activity ones) will work. So remember that if you manually turn your TV off THEN press the off button it will likely toggle the TV on and you'll be unable to use the buttons on your remote to turn it off as they're not being used as it doesn't know what activity your on - as it's "off".

3) The way you'll likely get most mileage is by creating multiple activities for basically the same "activity" but with different settings.

I.e. "Play Radio", "Play XBOX" and "Play XBOX with Radio".

Keep in my the limitation in terms of maximum number of activities though - which I think is 16 with the Harmony Touch.

4) Sort you setup out :)
 
RoyMi6 said:
3) The way you'll likely get most mileage is by creating multiple activities for basically the same "activity" but with different settings.
Click to expand...

Yep, exactly this. For example, I have a 'Watch TV' activity and a 'Watch TV (a)' activity. The first switches my TV and PVR on, the second switches on my TV, PVR and also my Amp, ad mutes the TV sound so I get audio through the amp.
 
Ok, thanks for the suggestions.

I'll setup multiple activities for things like play xbox and play xbox with radio etc.

However just looking a the buttons more now for powering things off separately. The only way I have the option to add the xbox power off command into the 'watch tv' activity is if I add the xbox to the activity. Which means it will power on the xbox every time I want to watch the tv! :confused: ahh!

Second option of making it learn the power off command (for the xbox) doesn't seem an option without the media center remote control :( .
 
Yeah, you're right. Without the 360 controller you're between a rock and a hard place!

Options would appear to be picking up a cheap 360 remote off eBay or doing the "many activities" route.
 
ChocolateStarfishRammer said:
Ok, thanks for the suggestions.

I'll setup multiple activities for things like play xbox and play xbox with radio etc.

However just looking a the buttons more now for powering things off separately. The only way I have the option to add the xbox power off command into the 'watch tv' activity is if I add the xbox to the activity. Which means it will power on the xbox every time I want to watch the tv! :confused: ahh!

Second option of making it learn the power off command (for the xbox) doesn't seem an option without the media center remote control :( .
Click to expand...

You first suggestion sounded perfect, just add more activities, and use that to automatically power things on/off which is the biggest strength of the Harmony range.

It might feel weird at first, but rather than add more power buttons/devices to an activity, embrace the fact it's a new activity you actually want..

This will allow the auto-powering logic of the activity based remote to work it all out seamlessly..

However, top tip, you can 'learn' any command you want and assign it as an extra device command.. so in theory you could learn the Xbox power on/off command bound to the TV.. Or if it's very occasional use, you can back out to the main activity selection page, and I think the '...' option brings up all devices to select and control..

I had to do this for my Amp, when it's off, it still needs the input command to switch HDMI through to the TV, and because it's not part of the main activity, I had to add them by learning them as new TV commands... Then tell it to use these as as custom macro on startup, and I've also assigned them as soft buttons in case it gets out of sync..
 
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Demon said:
However, top tip, you can 'learn' any command you want and assign it as an extra device command.. so in theory you could learn the Xbox power on/off command bound to the TV.
Click to expand...

You've literally quoted the reason this won't work for him easily as he doesn't have the 360 remote.

Biggest limitation of the harmony is that you can't program IR codes so we can't even TELL him what to add. It's a bit of a PITA but he'd need to get his hands on a 360 remote.
 
In the old Harmony software you used to be able to add devices to activities without turning them off/on at any point. In fact my profile has that set now for my IR light switches, let me grab a screenshot of how it's configured...
 
RoyMi6 said:
You've literally quoted the reason this won't work for him easily as he doesn't have the 360 remote.

Biggest limitation of the harmony is that you can't program IR codes so we can't even TELL him what to add. It's a bit of a PITA but he'd need to get his hands on a 360 remote.
Click to expand...

Indeed. Annoying but it seems im going to have to find a 360 remote control for this to work.

-------------

Separate note.. Anyone use any IR power sockets? If so what ones?
 
Might also be worth posting on the Logitech forums, there are some Logitech support people there that can tweak your profile remotely to fix issues.
 
RoyMi6 said:
You've literally quoted the reason this won't work for him easily as he doesn't have the 360 remote.

Biggest limitation of the harmony is that you can't program IR codes so we can't even TELL him what to add. It's a bit of a PITA but he'd need to get his hands on a 360 remote.
Click to expand...

LOL, I overlooked that!

Still, the multiple activities approach would cure it all instantly would it not, and wouldn't need anything 'special'? Or am I missing something?

I have a TV and Projector, with Xbox/Media Box/HTPC/AMP/SKY HD/CHromecast.. The sources all go into the Amp, and the HDMI out the amp goes through a Splitter to both TV and Projector.. I have 9 activities, some of which are similar, e.g. "Xbox on TV" and "Xbox on PJ" and even "Xbox with music"..
Seems overkill, but with all the kit, it's seamless and easy.. I rarely ever have to use the 'help' to sort out something that hasn't switched correctly.
 
Demon said:
Still, the multiple activities approach would cure it all instantly would it not, and wouldn't need anything 'special'? Or am I missing something?
Click to expand...

Yup, this will absolutely solve the problem for him.

However, understandably for people like us, having seemingly less control can be a tough step to take. Hopefully he'll come to his senses eventually :)
 
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