Harmony + boxee Beta issues

[mattressfish]

For the love of God, can someone please tell me how to get my Harmony remote to work with the beta??? If it matters, I'm using it on a mac mini, but I've tried Win7 as well.

I've tried using the Boxee "device" in the Logitech software. I've tried MCE (not sure why I did that). But nothing works, which means its useless to me. Any suggestions???

[judgeschambers]

There is a rather large thread on this topic that may help you...

http://forum.boxee.tv/showthread.php?t=128

[dickie]

For the love of God, can someone please tell me how to get my Harmony remote to work with the beta??? If it matters, I'm using it on a mac mini, but I've tried Win7 as well.

I've tried using the Boxee "device" in the Logitech software. I've tried MCE (not sure why I did that). But nothing works, which means its useless to me. Any suggestions???

First question: are you getting responses on the Mini using the Harmony outside of Boxee?

Second question: what IR receiver are you using?

[mattressfish]

There is a rather large thread on this topic that may help you...

http://forum.boxee.tv/showthread.php?t=128

That thread references AutoHotKey as a solution. I believe that's a Windows only app, so I'm not sure that thread is exactly pertinent to my issues. (And fwiw, this worked without issue with the alpha.)


First question: are you getting responses on the Mini using the Harmony outside of Boxee?

Second question: what IR receiver are you using?

1. I'm currently using Plex, which works perfectly with my Harmony remote, so I know it's working. Like boxee, Plex has worked with Harmony to add a profile into the Harmony software. It works perfectly. Last time I used boxee (alpha), its Harmony profile also worked perfectly, but I think it needs to be updated due to the beta release.

2. The Mac Mini has an onboard IR port.

I think the real solution is here is that the Boxee team to reach out to Harmony again and update the IR profile. Maybe its on their/your to-do list, if so - awesome.

In the meantime, I'm open to any suggestions to get boxee working with my remote. Thanks for your time.

[darcilicious]

In the meantime, I'm open to any suggestions to get boxee working with my remote. Thanks for your time.

From the referenced thread was this last post:


If you really need the Harmony remote to work go into the harmony software and add a new device. Select Media Center as the type, then put the manufacturer as Microsoft and the model # as "MCE keyboard". Then you can map any button on the remote to a keystroke. No need for 3rd party software.

Is there not a Logitech configuration program for Mac OSX? And pick a Mac/Apple remote device instead?

[mattressfish]

From the referenced thread was this last post:



Is there not a Logitech configuration program for Mac OSX? And pick a Mac/Apple remote device instead?

MCE Keyboard did not work, I'm assuming because I'm not running Boxee in Windows.

Hmmm, you raise a good point though. Maybe I could just set it up as a simple AppleTV remote. That really neuters it, but would get me by until the full boxee profile could be updated with Harmony.

I'll report back with that, in case anyone else is having this issue.

[mattressfish]

Still no luck just setting up the AppleTV remote. And yes, I made sure to change the remote under Settings (if anyone was going to ask).

Maybe I'm just an idiot here, can anyone confirm the boxee beta working with their Mac Mini and either an AppleTV or Harmony remote?

edit: With Leopard, if that matters.

[mattressfish]

Ok, I see that I'm not alone. Yay

http://forum.boxee.tv/showthread.php?t=13810

[lestes22]

From the referenced thread was this last post:



Is there not a Logitech configuration program for Mac OSX? And pick a Mac/Apple remote device instead?

This is what I did on my Harmony 700 - setup my device as an Apple Computer HTPC, Mac Mini and the harmony remote works as the apple remote would

In the device settings, I did change the key mapping so that the back button on the Harmony remote maps to the apple remote 'menu' button. I like this because the harmony 'menu' button is too far away from the directional/arrow and ok buttons that are the other main ones I use

One issue I'm having is that when I activate my "Watch TV" activity it adds in 2 presses of the 'ok' button automatically after switching TV input - so I never know where exactly I might land in the Boxee application :)

[mattressfish]

ok, so the problem appears to be a boxee + Leopard (+ maybe Candelair?) issue. I upgraded to Snow Leopard and tried the "AppleTV" profile on my Harmony. Works perfectly. Adding Snow Leopard was the only thing I changed.

Tonight, I'm going to try the Boxee profile again on the remote and see what happens.

[mattressfish]

Problems ahoy still.

So I selected the AppleTV profile and said it worked. That was half true. The arrow buttons work. Those are the only buttons that work.

Also, the Boxee profile doesn't work at all. It doesn't matter if I select Harmony, Standard, or Universal in the remote section.

I'm next going to try and remove Candelair. Maybe that will help. In the meantime, I'll continue to spew textual diarrhea to myself in this thread. :D

[mattressfish]

Some have mentioned enabling 'Legacy leopard mode' in Candelair for it to work. I don't even see that option. Can anyone point me in the right direction?

[mattressfish]

Ok, so I got all my updates done to Snow Leopard, now I have the legacy option. Sadly, I've been completely unable to get the AppleTV remote to work with Boxee now after all these updates.

:(

I give up. I'm going back to Plex. I'll check back in a few weeks, maybe someone will have a fix.

[smbruce]

I was having similar problems with Boxee on my mac mini. I also had Plex installed.

Try going into Plex and changing the remote settings to "Off" or "None" (I can't remember the exact name). After doing this, my remote seemed to work in Boxee. I need to tweak the button mappings, but it's a start. What led me to this was the fact that whenever I would hit the "Play" button, Plex would load. Plex must always have a process running in the background that looks for remote key presses.

Hope this helps.

[mattressfish]

I was having similar problems with Boxee on my mac mini. I also had Plex installed.

Try going into Plex and changing the remote settings to "Off" or "None" (I can't remember the exact name). After doing this, my remote seemed to work in Boxee. I need to tweak the button mappings, but it's a start. What led me to this was the fact that whenever I would hit the "Play" button, Plex would load. Plex must always have a process running in the background that looks for remote key presses.

Hope this helps.

OMG you're right. I never thought of that!

[mattressfish]

Okay, disabling the remote in Plex does allow me to use my Harmony as an Apple TV remote. It didn't take long to realize how limiting the AppleTV remote is, after getting used to using the full remote in Plex. I tried to call Harmony and see if they would help me get the remote working, but they want to charge me a fee for support.

Has the Boxee team reached out to Harmony in the past? I'm assuming that they have.

@smbruce: Please post back if you make any headway!

[mattressfish]

I don't know if any devs could be reading this, but it appears that Harmony has disabled the Boxee "profile". I can still add it as a device, but it sends no commands at all. I thought it was just my RF extender, but even when I just use my remote - no commands are sent.

Has anyone on the dev team reached out to Harmony like Plex did?

I absolutely LOVE the new UI, but just can't switch without fleshed out Harmony support. Is there a request for this somewhere that I can vote up???

[brady21]

I was a bit perplexed when I added the Boxee profile to my harmony 515 remote and found there were absolutely no commands in there....

After a bit of fiddling with it I ended up adding the profile for the MCE Keyboard and mapped the buttons to the keyboard shortcuts for boxee....works a treat! - The only thing it doesn't do yet is wake the pc from sleep which my old remote used to (one of those RF trackball jobs).... but I'll figure that out later...

I even used a hotkey script on pc to map the ` key to open boxee in case the pc starts up to the desktop, then mapped that key to the remote - result!

I now have a trackball style remote that i'm sticking on ebay and a harmony remote controlling all of my av stuff.....

[mattressfish]

Sadly that won't work for those of us on a Mac... :(

[kelly42]

Is *anything* happening on this? Harmony users running Boxee on MacOS have been crying out for full Harmony support like the (awesome) Plex device. I, too, really like the Boxee beta, but I won't switch from Plex until I can put my Harmony remote to real use in the beta or release version.

Please, please, someone from Boxee, comment and let us know where you are going with this.

Thanks for your time.

[mattressfish]

Is *anything* happening on this? Harmony users running Boxee on MacOS have been crying out for full Harmony support like the (awesome) Plex device. I, too, really like the Boxee beta, but I won't switch from Plex until I can put my Harmony remote to real use in the beta or release version.

Please, please, someone from Boxee, comment and let us know where you are going with this.

Thanks for your time.

I think the *lack* of replies tells you everything. Its very perplexing to me why this hasn't been addressed.