This is a short guide to hopefully help others setup a Twinhan and/or Logitech remote using the Twinhan IR receiver.
If you have a Twinhan TV card, such as the Tinytwin or Azurewave (sold in Australia by DigitalNow as a Tinytwin as well), then Mediaportal v1.1 does not support it by default.
The reason being is the Twinhan remote functions actually as a keyboard, which would be fine except that most of the buttons also send CTRL and ALT codes which Mediaportal does not support (as of 21th Nov 09) .
You know whether you have one of these remotes by the driver called Winmanager - it should either be in your system tray (next to your clock, red and green icon) or do ctrl-alt-del to bring up your task manager and look for winmanager.exe in the process list.
Now, for Mediaportal 1.0 there was a keyboard plugin that supported shifted keys, however it crashes in 1.1 and has not been updated for years. Regardless, there is a better solution whether you wish to use a Twinhan or Logitech remote.
1. Firstly Install Message Plugin
- put dll in folder plugins\process (typically under Program Files\Team Mediaportal\Mediaportal)
- put xml in folder InputDeviceMappings\default (also typically under Program Files\Team Mediaportal\Mediaportal)
- open Mediaportal config, and the message plugin should be in the plugin section. This is just to confirm it's installed in the correct place.
2. Install EventGhost
- once installed open eventghost
- on the configuration (right) side, right click autostart
- select/click add plugin
- scroll down the list to the Progam Control section and select/click Mediaportal
- save now, but don't exit eventghost
- now get out your twinhan remote and press one of the arrow keys, you should see the left pane scroll as it gets the event and it will show you the actual 'keypress'
- you can now drag and drop this 'keypress' from the left side onto the right configuration side in the appropriate Mediaportal command (you'll need to expand the section) - use the LCTL+'key' or LALT+'key' events, not the 'unshifted' key events (the Twinhan seems to send multiple keyboard events per press)
- now when you press that button on the remote, eventghost passes it on to Mediaportal as whatever command you assigned it to. You can see this on the left side as a test.
- save again, don't exit.
- File -> Options and set eventghost to start on windows start
3. If you have a Logitech learning remote such as the 525 (these are great), you can have it learn the Twinhan remote's commands
(these steps may not be in perfect order)
- start the Harmony remote software
- add a device (Media Centre PC)
- Learn IR
- scroll down, select a command or Learn New Command
- press learn, line up the remotes as shown, and press the twinhan button to learn
- repeat for all wanted keys
- update your remote
- try it out in eventghost
Note: be really careful what buttons you use, I found by default the red button on the Twinhan is ctrl-X which is taken as a DEL by some programs.
One further thing I did was also set my volume buttons in the Logitech's 'Media Centre' mode to learn the volume controls for my AV surround sound receiver so that there was only one way of controlling audio volume in my system regardless of what mode my logitech remote was in.
I highly recommend both the Twinhan USB tuner and the Logitech all in one remotes for a HTPC system.
If you have a Twinhan TV card, such as the Tinytwin or Azurewave (sold in Australia by DigitalNow as a Tinytwin as well), then Mediaportal v1.1 does not support it by default.
The reason being is the Twinhan remote functions actually as a keyboard, which would be fine except that most of the buttons also send CTRL and ALT codes which Mediaportal does not support (as of 21th Nov 09) .
You know whether you have one of these remotes by the driver called Winmanager - it should either be in your system tray (next to your clock, red and green icon) or do ctrl-alt-del to bring up your task manager and look for winmanager.exe in the process list.
Now, for Mediaportal 1.0 there was a keyboard plugin that supported shifted keys, however it crashes in 1.1 and has not been updated for years. Regardless, there is a better solution whether you wish to use a Twinhan or Logitech remote.
1. Firstly Install Message Plugin
- put dll in folder plugins\process (typically under Program Files\Team Mediaportal\Mediaportal)
- put xml in folder InputDeviceMappings\default (also typically under Program Files\Team Mediaportal\Mediaportal)
- open Mediaportal config, and the message plugin should be in the plugin section. This is just to confirm it's installed in the correct place.
2. Install EventGhost
- once installed open eventghost
- on the configuration (right) side, right click autostart
- select/click add plugin
- scroll down the list to the Progam Control section and select/click Mediaportal
- save now, but don't exit eventghost
- now get out your twinhan remote and press one of the arrow keys, you should see the left pane scroll as it gets the event and it will show you the actual 'keypress'
- you can now drag and drop this 'keypress' from the left side onto the right configuration side in the appropriate Mediaportal command (you'll need to expand the section) - use the LCTL+'key' or LALT+'key' events, not the 'unshifted' key events (the Twinhan seems to send multiple keyboard events per press)
- now when you press that button on the remote, eventghost passes it on to Mediaportal as whatever command you assigned it to. You can see this on the left side as a test.
- save again, don't exit.
- File -> Options and set eventghost to start on windows start
3. If you have a Logitech learning remote such as the 525 (these are great), you can have it learn the Twinhan remote's commands
(these steps may not be in perfect order)
- start the Harmony remote software
- add a device (Media Centre PC)
- Learn IR
- scroll down, select a command or Learn New Command
- press learn, line up the remotes as shown, and press the twinhan button to learn
- repeat for all wanted keys
- update your remote
- try it out in eventghost
Note: be really careful what buttons you use, I found by default the red button on the Twinhan is ctrl-X which is taken as a DEL by some programs.
One further thing I did was also set my volume buttons in the Logitech's 'Media Centre' mode to learn the volume controls for my AV surround sound receiver so that there was only one way of controlling audio volume in my system regardless of what mode my logitech remote was in.
I highly recommend both the Twinhan USB tuner and the Logitech all in one remotes for a HTPC system.