Harmony Remotes - Programming

[sporklet]

Having found that I can program buttons on my Harmony One remote that go directly to any one of my SoundBridge M1001's eighteen preset stations (A1 through C6), I'm looking to add Favourites (and channel icons) to my "Internet Radio" activity based on my presets. Only problem is, the "Set up Favorite Channels and add icons" option doesn't appear for this activity, and I can't configure another activity that includes this option and sends the necessary commands to my SoundBridge.

Is there any way I can do this using channel icons, or have I encountered a limitation in the Remote Software?

Message Edited by sporklet on 01-04-2009 12:59 PM

Message Edited by sporklet on 01-04-2009 01:15 PM

[hhatkin]

Hi and welcome.

How have you programmed them - as Sequences, or something else?

Only WatchTV Activities can have the Harmony Favourite Channels with "icons" but there are ways of getting around that.

One is to set up a non-existent TV with power and input commands set to "none" and use that in a WatchTV activity that uses the Device to change channels.

H H

Message Edited by hhatkin on 01-04-2009 01:13 PM

[sporklet]

I was unaware that these unique preset commands existed, until the database revealed them to me when I added the SoundBridge to my devices. They appear in the additional buttons section for the device as "PresetA1", "PresetB4", etc, so I doubt they could translate into "channel" numbers if I was to fudge a dummy Watch TV activity... will go try and hack something together.

[hhatkin]

No, that's something else again - specific to the Device, not to the Harmony.

The dummy TV works fine for plenty of users.

Message Edited by hhatkin on 01-04-2009 01:30 PM

[sporklet]

I now have a test "Watch TV" activity set up with the buttons reassigned to presets on the SoundBridge (eg physical button "2" sends "PresetA2" to the SoundBridge), but I'm still unable to set up the Favorites for this activity so a button that accesses "channel 2" sends a "PresetA2" to the SoundBridge and not my dummy TV. Is there something I'm missing, or is this something I can't do?

[hhatkin]

As I said, those "preset" commands are specific to the Device, not to the Harmony.

To set up Harmony Favourites with the "icons", you need to enter the actual numbers for the Device into the column headed Channel, after which you get the option to assign "icons" that you design or upload and save to your computer.

Message Edited by hhatkin on 01-04-2009 03:30 PM

[sporklet]

I don't think the presets on the Device equate to any 0-9 channel numbers, so I might be out of luck in this case. There aren't any 0-9 or A1-C6 buttons on the Device's remote that I can transmit to my Harmony's Dummy TV. The only way I can see it working is if I was to:

• Set up a second Harmony with the Device
• "Learn IR" for the Dummy TV on the first Harmony, program buttons 0-9
• Use Harmony2 to transmit the first ten Device-specific Preset IR commands (A1-B4) to Harmony1

For the moment, I think I'll have to settle for the Additional Buttons, sans Favorites. Many thanks for your time.

[hhatkin]

So you can't set channels directly by number commands from the original remote?

That makes all the difference!

Without number commands you can't do Harmony Favourites.

By the way the dummy TV is only there to enable the Activity to have Favourite channels, not for anything actually to be programmed to it, or to do anything itself.

That's OK about the time, and sorry not to have come up with anything you hadn't worked out already.

Message Edited by hhatkin on 01-04-2009 04:56 PM

[sporklet]

Yeah, the only way to access presets on the device is to scroll through a list using the "previous/next" buttons on the remote or view the list on the device's web page and click the "Play" button next to the preset in the list.

That said, one-touch access to each preset is a definite benefit of programming the Harmony!

[hhatkin]

Indeed it is - one up to some Harmony user for providing all those separate commands!

I haven't come across a device before that uses only pre-sets as you usually get  the manual number option as well.

Message Edited by hhatkin on 01-04-2009 05:07 PM