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Creative control of HS and AV Equipment via IR

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    Creative control of HS and AV Equipment via IR

    I have a rather different approach for using my Harmony remote to control Homeseer. I have an older 880 remote that used to have all the regular Harmony Activities programmed in. Watch TV, fire IR to turn on TV, Pioneer Receiver, Cable Box etc. Watch Apply TV, Watch Windows Media Center, Watch Kodi etc., Had issues with IR commands being missed and wife and kids not keeping the remote pointed towards the IR receiver for the repeater system I have. Made a mess of things when the Cable box did not turn off and the next time it was turned on it turned off instead. Hate those damn Scientific Atlanta boxes without discrete On/Off IR commands. Toggle only commands for On/Off for an AV device is a bad design.

    I finally realized I had plugins support for the Pioneer receiver. I purchased a plugin and hardware for a Global Cache IR device. That controls Apply TV3 (now 4), MCE, Cable Box. I use Ultra excellent UltraPioneerAVR3 for my receiver and built everything around that.

    For TV control I wired up my Samsung UN55B6000 using the RS-232 port and control it from a Homeseer scripts and event to turn turn it On/Off and ensure input is setup to HDMI1 for receiver input. That is the only functions I use on the TV.

    Now Harmony control is simple along with a few HS events. First each "activity" is just turn on the Pioneer Receiver and turn to the appropriate input for that Activity (CATV, MCE, Kodi, ApplyTV, Sonos). Now Harmony IR sends are short and sweet and less likely to get missed and get equipment out of sync.

    HS/UltraPioneerAVR3 detect when the Pioneer receiver gets turned on and input switch and it runs an event to turn on everything else. For example when the Pio SC-1223 get turned on and switched to CATV input, HS fires an event that uses the Global Cache IP2Ir and another of Ultra's plugins UltraGCIR3 to fire off IR via emitter to turn on the Cable box. Found a neat work around for Scientific Atlanta Explores 8400 HD box to give it a quasi discrete On and Off IR sequence that is rock solid so far. AVSForums and Remote Central are two good sources for things like. HS runs a script that send a Samsung TV on command via serial and input HDMI1. Again very solid and reliable.

    I have similar setup for other actives fired off from the old Harmony remote. Pressing Off on the Harmony turns the Pioneer receiver to an unused input and then shuts down. That is detected by HS ans it fires off a shutdown HS event that turns everything off correctly and leaves all the equipment in a known state. So I use IR to kick it off and control the volume of the receiver. RS-232 for TV control and IR emitter for more reliable CATV, MCE, Kodi, AppleTV control. Pioneer control is via network and plugin and Sonos is also via network plugin. Now that HS can run the show HSTouch screens can come into play for a few other control ideas.

    Finally got around to integrating all this and am very happy with the setup so far. Much more reliable and instant WAF increase when working the remote in the living room.

    #2
    Thanks for posting. I have a similar setup using UltraPioneer and UltraGCIR, (but with LG TVs and no Harmony) but still need to put the finishing touches on it. I measured the current draw on our Motorola cable boxes and found just a marginal difference between on and off so just leave them on all the time since they also don't support discrete on and off. For our remotes we use One-for-All remotes with the "JP1 hack". Still need to hook up the IR receivers on the GC units so that HS can react to the commands from them. I've had some of the Radio Shack branded All-for-One remotes for over 15 years and they are still going strong. Best $40 (each) I ever invested.

    Cheers
    Al
    HS 4.2.8.0: 2134 Devices 1252 Events
    Z-Wave 3.0.10.0: 133 Nodes on one Z-Net

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