Please help an Imon Pad user with his Harmony 555 (1 Viewer)

[henk99]

Hi,

I am at the end of things to try, so I'm turning to the Mediaportal community for help

I have MP 1.0 running on a htpc which has an Imon pad remote control delivered with it. I have set-up the imon software and MP as described on this forum, so MP is controlled absolutely fine with the original Imon Pad remote.

However, I find this remote very annoying. I think the directional pad is a disaster to operate, but that's personal of course. Others might like it okay.

I bought a harmony 555 to get rid of all my other remotes as well. And all other things are working fine, right out of the box so to speak. For TV, Amp, DVD, htpc I simply selected it from the device list and all worked great, except the htpc. I selected the soundgraph 'brand'.

It is not that the remote is not working at all. It is working, but it is very sluggish, or commands get done twice, etc, etc. Because the original remote is working absolutely fine, I immediately turned to Logitech support and over the last 2 weeks they were helping me sort this out. The support, I must say, is very good. They are responsive and every time they make an update to the code or something and all I have to do is update the remote through the software and their changes get downloaded to my remote. They have come quite close to the original remote, but it remains very un-natural. basically, after all the changes they made it is either responding sluggish or very responsive so that commands are often done twice. Both are equally annoying.
Logitech has now informed me that they can't do anything else to help me. They will be working on it in the background, but that's it.

Now I'm asking here. I hope it is not off topic. But I can't understand why the harmony can't mimic the imon pad. Also, I hope that I'm not the only person that is trying to work this combo.

As I have said, the htpc is working perfectly with the original imon pad, so i realize it is not an actual MP problem. Hopefully someone can help.

 

[magao]

I found it impossible to get my Harmony 525 to work reliably with my iMON receiver. After struggling with it for days I gave up and bought a Hauppage MCE-compatible receiver. Haven't had a problem since. The only thing I use the iMON for now is to wake up the HTPC.

 

[solstars]

Is it all commands, or just some, like enter and escape?

 

[PHansen]

I would start by looking at the Harmony repeat settings. Follow the instructions below to have a play.

Click on the Device's "More Options"
- Select "Adjust the delays (speed settings)"
Inter-key Delay: 300ms
Inter-Device Delay: 300ms

Start by adjusting the Inter-key and Inter-Device delays to 300ms or less. Then test the remote. If it works at 300ms, keep lowering the speed in 100ms increments and see if the device still responds. If it doesn't, increase it back up 100ms. In my experience, I've found that most devices will respond to 100ms and devices like Tivos will take an Inter-key of 0ms.

Click on the Device's "Troubleshoot"
- Select "Show me more problems"
- Select "Device doesn't appear to receive every command correctly."
- Select "The device responds too much to some commands (for example, volume up increases the volume too quickly)."

The default number of repeats is 3. Lower the repeat speed and see if the remote still responds. If it doesn't, increase the number of repeats until the device still responds. In my experience, most devices will respond with 2 or more repeats and devices like Tivos will respond with 1 repeat.

My 785 Harmony works great and will very rarely have any trouble. You should also check the same settings in the iMon software. I'm not at my machine right now so can't give you the settings i have right now. If you still can't get it to work after having a good fiddle with the settings let me know and i'll see if i can dig out mine.

Oh and lastly, sometimes Harmony set the button press to a 'hold' state. But what you want is a 'click' state. I believe that if you 'learn' the commands from the iMon PAD rather than just getting them auto-mapped then it switches to a 'click' state so that could be worth a shot to start with.

 

[solstars]

Yes... the sluggishness is definately caused by the key repeat delay. My 880, although not identical is very similar. I too had major issues with the Harmony replicating the commands from my PAD remote and had to fiddle for about a week. I was not able to get Harmony support to assist, but if your issue is just certain functions, check my post below to see if it will help you.

https://forum.team-mediaportal.com/...and-repeat-issue-54079/index4.html#post408784

You may also wish to try the solution a couple of posts above mine, but I was never able to get that keyboard plugin to work with my current SVN.

 

[magao]

I played around with all the settings available - delays, command repeats, etc. No combination allowed me to get reliable results for all keys.

I valued my time too much to waste when just buying an MCE-compatible remote for AU$50 allowed me to get everything working in less than an hour.

 

[solstars]

I played around with all the settings available - delays, command repeats, etc. No combination allowed me to get reliable results for all keys.

I valued my time too much to waste when just buying an MCE-compatible remote for AU$50 allowed me to get everything working in less than an hour.

Absoultely. In my case I already owned the Harmony and used it to control all of my other gear. If I had purchased it just for this, I would have gone the same route as you! To say the Harmony has issues with imon is an understatement. For the record, it is by far the BEST universal remote out there, though... at least for less than a grand!

 

[magao]

I also already had my Harmony, and use it for controlling all my AV gear. I'm using the Harmony 525 (BTW, bought for AU$55 ...) as an MCE remote, FOXTEL remote, TV, receiver/amplifier ...

I just say, don't bother wasting the time to try and get a Harmony working with an iMON receiver. Just pay the AU$50 for an MCE-compatible remote, and only use the iMON "power on" code to wake the computer from standby/off.

 

[solstars]

Well, I wouldn't throw in the towel completely as my 880 works great with imon. You can do it, it just takes a lot of effort... more than it should IMHO!

 

[henk99]

I also already had my Harmony, and use it for controlling all my AV gear. I'm using the Harmony 525 (BTW, bought for AU$55 ...) as an MCE remote, FOXTEL remote, TV, receiver/amplifier ...

I just say, don't bother wasting the time to try and get a Harmony working with an iMON receiver. Just pay the AU$50 for an MCE-compatible remote, and only use the iMON "power on" code to wake the computer from standby/off.

Thanks for all the inputs guys, greatly appreciated. However, the stuff with the delays did not improve anything here. I am now considering the MCE solution, but to be honest, I wouldn't know where to start...
Can anyone here show a step plan about how to set this up? Should Imon be removed? Do I only need to change the Mp configuration setting to MCE remote?