For Harmony Remote owners - how customizable?

[CollinR]

I dunno, dunno if I really care they only have a 1 year warantee anyway, neither company is exactly setting the world on fire as far as support goes. I have 2 versions of software 1 that has an update button and one that doesn't, couldn't tell you why that is. I honestly wouldn't expect them to continue to release updates after a couple years anyway, the software is remote specific.

[Installman]

Originally Posted by cncb

Does anyone have any experience with the Harmony 670? It looks to have a decent layout and is pretty cheap right now.

Anything Harmony makes basically sucks. They don't last and they decide how your devices turn on and off. Most of the time they use toggle commands instead of discreets. I can program a URC in a quarter the time it takes a Harmony and do 10 times the stuff a Harmony is capable of. Harmony is designed for the Wallmart user. URC and RTI are designed for people that want things to work properly.

my .02

[reggie14]

Originally Posted by Installman

Anything Harmony makes basically sucks. They don't last and they decide how your devices turn on and off. Most of the time they use toggle commands instead of discreets. I can program a URC in a quarter the time it takes a Harmony and do 10 times the stuff a Harmony is capable of. Harmony is designed for the Wallmart user. URC and RTI are designed for people that want things to work properly.

I obviously don't know how durable/reliable my Harmony One will be, but I do know a bit about the setup and configuration of Harmony remotes and I don't agree with you at all. After using the Harmony setup wizard, all of my devices are set up to use discrete on/off commands. That's even true with my HD200, which I didn't even realize had discrete on/off commands. I'm not sure exactly what you mean by "they device how your devices turn on and off", but it seems to me like you have quite a bit of control over that. You can change the order in which things turn on, and change any delays on each device that you might want to. As far as I can tell, you can't micromanage the remote to the point of saying which order you want it to issue commands, but I'm not sure why you'd want to. The setup wizard seems to look at the power-on order, and any delays that individual devices might have, to figure out something close to an optimal ordering.

As for time to set up the remotes, I'm skeptical of your claim that you can do it in 1/4 the time of setting up a Harmony remote. As I said, I had mine up and running in 30 minutes. And a fair amount of that time was wasted. I basically let the Harmony wizard try to set it up by itself the first time. It probably would have done it decent job if I didn't have a Sage box, but it didn't work out so well. If I wouldn't have tried to use the fully automated setup I could have saved 5-10 minutes. I'm not sure, but if I needed to set up my remote again, I think I could probably put it back in its current state in about 15 minutes. That seems remarkably fast to me. I was incredibly surprised by how easy it was to set up the remote, and also by the number of configurable options in the Harmony software.

By the way, I'm curious if the URC remotes have anything similar to the "help" button on the Harmony One. Let's say the remote is blocked partway through issuing a series of commands, putting your AV equipment in a different state than the remote thinks it should be in. The help button first tries to correct the problem by reissuing any discrete commands that it can without screwing anything up. If that doesn't correct the problem, it starts a little wizard that asks the user questions like "Is the TV on?", etc. It works quite well, and I think I'd be really hesitant to get any universal remote that doesn't have that sort of feature. I can pretty much point my Harmony One in any direct and it works, but there have been a couple instances where a device as missed a command. I'd be able to fix it manually, but I'd hate for something like that to happen to my girlfriend or a guest without having the "help" wizard.

[cncb]

Originally Posted by Installman

They don't last and they decide how your devices turn on and off. Most of the time they use toggle commands instead of discreets. I can program a URC in a quarter the time it takes a Harmony and do 10 times the stuff a Harmony is capable of.

What bugs me about URC is that it looks like $400 minimum for a model that you can setup with your PC. For "normal" models like my URC-200 it is a pain to change things like simply shuffling button commands around not to mention how difficult it can be to get discreet commands into the remote.

[cncb]

Originally Posted by reggie14

As far as I can tell, you can't micromanage the remote to the point of saying which order you want it to issue commands, but I'm not sure why you'd want to. The setup wizard seems to look at the power-on order, and any delays that individual devices might have, to figure out something close to an optimal ordering.

By the way, I'm curious if the URC remotes have anything similar to the "help" button on the Harmony One.

Is that true, you can't change the order of issued commands? That seems like a pretty serious limitation.

There is no need for a "help" button if you are only using discreet commands. You just issue the whole macro again which will catch anything that was missed.

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by reggie14

By the way, I'm curious if the URC remotes have anything similar to the "help" button on the Harmony One.

Mine does. Also has both activity and device-specific pages.

Let's say the remote is blocked partway through issuing a series of commands, putting your AV equipment in a different state than the remote thinks it should be in.

Not a problem if you use RF

The help button first tries to correct the problem by reissuing any discrete commands that it can without screwing anything up. If that doesn't correct the problem, it starts a little wizard that asks the user questions like "Is the TV on?", etc. It works quite well, and I think I'd be really hesitant to get any universal remote that doesn't have that sort of feature.

My page is a bit simpler, just provides a list of equpment and you can select what's on and off, and once you do that the macros will work again.

[reggie14]

Originally Posted by stanger89

Mine does. Also has both activity and device-specific pages.

Out of curiosity, how do you activate the help screen? I don't see a help button on the MX880.

As first I was confused by what you meant by device and activity specific pages, but I assume this refers to having activity-specific pages that lists all the equipment used in that activity, and device-specific pages that just let you use all the functions for that device, including power on/off (like all these remotes presumably have).

Not a problem if you use RF

Yeah, I know. That's why I thought maybe the RF URC remotes might not have a sort of help wizard for when the equipment and remote get out of sync.

I considered getting an RF remote, but couldn't really justify the expense. I was only looking to spend about $100. All of my equipment is up front next to my TV, so there wasn't a really compelling need to get an RF remote. As I said in my mini review above, I've actually been really happy with how well the IR remote has worked. My old programmable remote, an Onkyo that came with my receiver, already had a noticeably more powerful transmitter than stock remotes, and the Harmony One is noticeably more powerful than that. It usually works fine when someone walks in the path of the remote. It mostly has problems if something is within about 1-2 feet of the front of the remote. I can happily deal with those problems in return for saving a few hundred bucks (or more).

My page is a bit simpler, just provides a list of equpment and you can select what's on and off, and once you do that the macros will work again.

Ahh, OK. I actually like the Harmony setup better then (except, of course, that you probably have to deal with this problem a lot more with IR remotes). What you describe would probably be much faster to use than Harmony's wizard, for a technical person at least. But, I think Harmony's method would work better for novice users. The biggest reason I had for getting this remote was to make it easier for guests to use my system. I didn't like having to write down directions on how to turn on the TV and/or DVD player. This remote makes it much easier. You no longer have to hit 6 buttons to just turn on the TV!

[reggie14]

Originally Posted by cncb

Is that true, you can't change the order of issued commands? That seems like a pretty serious limitation.

You can certainly control the order in which it issues commands to a single device, but it doesn't look like you can control the order of commands for multiple devices. For instance, lets say you have an activity that does TV-on, TV->Component2, Receiver-On, Receiver->Video2. I don't think there's any (easy) way to get it to switch the order to TV-on, Receiver-On, Receiver->Video2, TV->Component2. Instead, the remote just knows that it has to do two sets of commands {TV-on, TV->Component2}, {Receiver-On, Receiver->Video2}, and it will mix the order up however it wants to, while keeping the commands for each device in the proper order.

There actually might be a way to force this reordering by manually creating macros instead of activities on the Harmony, but I haven't tried that. I'm not sure, but I think the macros are for single devices only. If that's the case, then even the macros wouldn't let you force a specific order.

I pointed that out because it did seem like a limitation in the software. But, to be honest, I can't think of any reason why you'd want to change the order in which commands are issued. The only reason I can think of why you'd want to tweak the orders is to deal with necessary delays (e.g., it takes my TV 15 seconds to respond to IR commands after turning on), but the remote already handles those automatically better than I ever could (because it can make changes on-the-fly as appropriate). Can you think of some example of when you'd want/need to control the order of commands?

There is no need for a "help" button if you are only using discreet commands. You just issue the whole macro again which will catch anything that was missed.

I don't know how the URC remotes work, but that wouldn't work with the Harmony One remote. The remote doesn't naively execute macros. The Harmony remembers the state of the AV equipment, and knows what state the equipment has to get to when you change activities. So, it only sends the commands that it has to. If the TV is already set on component2, it won't tell it to switch to component2.

So, if something blocks one of the IR commands when you hit "Watch TV", hitting "Watch TV" again won't do anything. The remote will think that the everything is already properly configured for "Watch TV".

You might think that as long as you're using discrete commands it shouldn't matter and you can just issue all the commands all the time. But, IMHO, that seems like a bad way to deal with this. It would slow things down, perhaps considerably. As I said, I have to wait 15 seconds after I turn on my TV to send any commands to it. If the activity buttons always tried to turn on my TV, I would always have to wait 15 seconds for it to try to turn the TV to a different input (if necessary). Even if you have a setup that doesn't require any long power-on delays, issuing all the commands all the time could still noticeably slow things down.

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by reggie14

Out of curiosity, how do you activate the help screen? I don't see a help button on the MX880.

On the main "watch" screen, I made a soft button called Help, that takes you to a new "device" (in URC speak) that's nothing more than a set of soft buttons, one row for each device with an On and Off button.

So if something gets screwed up you just hit Watch, Help, then select on or off for the device(s) that aren't in the right state (pick the state they're in) and it resets sets the internal on/off variable for that device.

Once that's done you just go back to what you were doing, eg if watching TV you hit Watch, TV, and it will fire the appropriate macros again and turn everything on.

Of course I've never even needed the page except when I was screwing with things.

As first I was confused by what you meant by device and activity specific pages, but I assume this refers to having activity-specific pages that lists all the equipment used in that activity, and device-specific pages that just let you use all the functions for that device, including power on/off (like all these remotes presumably have).

Basically, my "Activity" pages are just a combination of buttons from various devices that I often use. Best example is my TV activity is 99% the HD200 buttons, but it's got my Projector's Aspect Ratio toggle button instead of the HD200 AR toggle (actually it has that but it's burried on one of the extra soft pages since I rarely need it)

Yeah, I know. That's why I thought maybe the RF URC remotes might not have a sort of help wizard for when the equipment and remote get out of sync.

URCs are a blank slate, well at least the "better" ones, like my 880, are. There's nothing built in, just a set of tools that let you do whatever you want. Any IR code can be set to any button on any page, whatever you want. It requires more though than a Harmony, for sure, but I find it easier since I just do what I want, I don't have to figure out how to make the wizard do what I want it to.

FWIW, the "cheaper" URC pros, like the 810, have a Wizard-based programming software. I've never used it though.

I considered getting an RF remote, but couldn't really justify the expense. I was only looking to spend about $100. All of my equipment is up front next to my TV, so there wasn't a really compelling need to get an RF remote.

Yeah, I understand. I sort of reluctantly decided to go with URC. Harmonies are a lot cheaper, and I'd have rather spent less. For me though RF was a must as I'm (still) planning to move my equipment into a cabinet behind the HT so IR won't work at all.

That said, I love my URC remote, I'd buy more for the hardware alone. I never liked the feel of the Harmony I tried. Hated the buttons, and that's probably the primary reason I sent it back long ago. The URC just feels better, the buttons are a nice sort of rubbery plastic, not as soft as like the rubber buttons on the HD200's remote, but not as hard as the full plastic ones on the harmonies. That and the 880's got a much better layout than any of the RF capable Harmonies (at least when I was looking).

Of couse, you pay for that.

Ahh, OK. I actually like the Harmony setup better then (except, of course, that you probably have to deal with this problem a lot more with IR remotes). What you describe would probably be much faster to use than Harmony's wizard, for a technical person at least. But, I think Harmony's method would work better for novice users. The biggest reason I had for getting this remote was to make it easier for guests to use my system. I didn't like having to write down directions on how to turn on the TV and/or DVD player. This remote makes it much easier. You no longer have to hit 6 buttons to just turn on the TV!

I'll just add this. The "Help" I described is just my solution to the problem. It was a simple and IMO rather elegant solution, but not quite as intuitive as what you describe. But also, it's only one possible solution, like I said a URC is a blank slate and I don't think I've really scratched the surface of what it can do. I bet you could build a very similar help system if you needed to.

But then again, that's really the key difference. Harmonies are targetted at end users who are looking for, well a universal remote to control their equipment, some of which may not be control friendly. URCs are targetted at custom installers who are building systems that are designed to be bulletproof from the ground up.

Oh, and the other thing is I'm talking about the URC Pro line (mine's the 880), not their consumer line, which I really don't know anything about and I think is a completely different animal.

[cncb]

Originally Posted by reggie14

Even if you have a setup that doesn't require any long power-on delays, issuing all the commands all the time could still noticeably slow things down.

No, not at all. It just sends all the discreet commands again like you said your Harmony does when you press the "help" button. I could see it being an issue if you have to wait a while for things to turn on like you described but then I think in that case I would just issue all the commands right away and require the macro button to be pressed again in 15 seconds. I think that is as easy as trying to make sure you keep the remote pointed at everything for 15 seconds or pressing a "help" button or going through a "wizard" later.

[reggie14]

Originally Posted by stanger89

But then again, that's really the key difference. Harmonies are targetted at end users who are looking for, well a universal remote to control their equipment, some of which may not be control friendly. URCs are targetted at custom installers who are building systems that are designed to be bulletproof from the ground up.

So, how programmable are the URC remotes? I mean, obviously you can create different activities and map buttons on the remote to single commands or series of commands. But, how far does the programming capabilities go? Is there a sort of computer language for programming it? Complete with with ability to create and assign variables, do branching, and possibly loops? Sometimes you say things that make it sound like that's possible. If so, that does sound very, very cool. I don't have any idea what I would do with it, but I can imagine it being very useful.

[reggie14]

Originally Posted by cncb

No, not at all. It just sends all the discreet commands again like you said your Harmony does when you press the "help" button. I could see it being an issue if you have to wait a while for things to turn on like you described but then I think in that case I would just issue all the commands right away and require the macro button to be pressed again in 15 seconds. I think that is as easy as trying to make sure you keep the remote pointed at everything for 15 seconds or pressing a "help" button or going through a "wizard" later.

I'm not sure what you're suggesting. There are few different issues at play here and I'm going to try to break them up in a way that makes sense. Are you suggesting that stateful remotes that try to change only what they have to are overrated, and that naive macros work fine? Naive macros don't seem like a good solution to me. Let's say you switch from one activity, watching something on your blu-ray player, to watching TV on your HD200. When you move away from the blu-ray activity, you'd like your player to shut off. But, you don't want everything to shut off, because you're going to keep using your TV and receiver. I don't see a good way to deal with this except for using a stateful remote. You could probably "cheat" it if you're able to program the remote so that moving to Activity A from initial state Activity B is different than moving to Activity A from Activity C. But, that's going to make setup more difficult (and I'm not convinced there's any advantage to doing that sort of thing manually verses automated).

I guess then that begs the question whether you can fix problems by reissuing all commands. In theory you could, but there's a couple problems. First, you'd need to somehow separate the regular, stateful macro from the naive macro. That's actually sort of what the "Help" button does on the Harmony. Assuming you can do stateful activity switching on the URC, it seems like it would be pretty trivial to come up with a naive macro that would just reissue discrete commands. But, I think that is an incomplete solution. You might not have discrete commands for everything. If you can assign variables and perform branching logic on the URC remotes you can probably create a complete solution, but it's probably going to look a lot like what Logitech already did on the Harmony out-of-the-box.

Then there's the issue of what's the easiest way to deal with long delays on devices. My whole reason for going with the Harmony remote is to try to make things easier. I don't want to have to tell people a series of buttons to press to turn on the TV, even if it is only two. I don't want to tell people they have to wait 15 seconds before hitting the next button. I think its much easier to just let the remote handle all that stuff. Even though I use IR, I can put down the remote during that 15 seconds if I'm a little careful about making sure there isn't anything directly in front of it.

I understand that there are some tradeoffs here. There's flexibility vs. complexity/time during setup, and also flexibility vs. complexity/time during actual use. Certainly Logitech and URC have chosen a different way to balance these things. But, at the same time, flexibility just for the sake of flexibility isn't very exciting unless it gives you the ability to do something useful. I'm not necessarily saying I think the URC remotes do that, I'm just saying that's something that's going through my mind when I'm comparing the more automatic Harmony way of doing things verses the URC way. Really, the compelling use-case for the URC remotes seems to be highly-customized and high-end systems, particularly when they might be relatively specialized for unique tasks.

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by reggie14

So, how programmable are the URC remotes? I mean, obviously you can create different activities and map buttons on the remote to single commands or series of commands. But, how far does the programming capabilities go? Is there a sort of computer language for programming it? Complete with with ability to create and assign variables, do branching, and possibly loops? Sometimes you say things that make it sound like that's possible. If so, that does sound very, very cool. I don't have any idea what I would do with it, but I can imagine it being very useful.

It supports setting variables, performing macros based off variables, page jumps, delays, different behavior for pressed buttons vs held buttons. You can have macros reference other macros. It's not a programming language in that you don't write code, it's GUI based and you bascially click/drag "widgets" together to make a macro.

I'm sure you could get really advanced between the combination of variables and nested macros, but I think when you get that complex it becomes less "simple".

The 980 is a bit more advanced it adds things like changeable button text (which would be very nice), custom graphics (which I think are sorta doable on the 880 but trickier), but it's more expensive and I don't think the button layout is as good for "DVR-ing".

[reggie14]

Originally Posted by stanger89

It supports setting variables, performing macros based off variables, page jumps, delays, different behavior for pressed buttons vs held buttons. You can have macros reference other macros. It's not a programming language in that you don't write code, it's GUI based and you bascially click/drag "widgets" together to make a macro.

OK. That's pretty cool. How much of that stuff have you played around with? I haven't thought about this much, but I can at least imagine some cool stuff that you could do with this. It would be pretty cool to be able to customize the buttons on the touchscreen based not only based on the activity that you're doing, but precisely the type of thing you're doing within that activity.

For instance, I set up my Harmony remote's touchscreen to display "DVD Menu" and "DVD Return" buttons while I'm in the "Watch TV" activity, since you need those buttons to navigate DVDs on the extenders. But, really those buttons are only useful when I'm watching DVDs. Ideally it would be great if the remote was smart enough to only display those buttons while I'm watching DVDs, though that would be really difficult to implement. It would be cool if there was some sort of two-way communication between the remote and the extender, but that's not really possible now. But, you might be able to do something close to that with some clever programming.

[cncb]

Originally Posted by reggie14

I'm not sure what you're suggesting. There are few different issues at play here and I'm going to try to break them up in a way that makes sense. Are you suggesting that stateful remotes that try to change only what they have to are overrated, and that naive macros work fine? Naive macros don't seem like a good solution to me. Let's say you switch from one activity, watching something on your blu-ray player, to watching TV on your HD200. When you move away from the blu-ray activity, you'd like your player to shut off. But, you don't want everything to shut off, because you're going to keep using your TV and receiver. I don't see a good way to deal with this except for using a stateful remote. You could probably "cheat" it if you're able to program the remote so that moving to Activity A from initial state Activity B is different than moving to Activity A from Activity C. But, that's going to make setup more difficult (and I'm not convinced there's any advantage to doing that sort of thing manually verses automated).

I was referring to your previous comment that suggested that issuing a complete "on macro" multiple times would slow things down. I'm saying there's no difference when you have all discreet commands. If I issue my macro to watch tv and my receiver input switch command gets "blocked" then I just issue the whole macro again and it takes all of one second to issue all the commands again to get everything in the correct "state". How is this any different than the Harmony where it keeps track of the "state"? It has no way of "knowing" whether my receiver actually switched to the correct input so it will have to issue all the commands again.

As to your example about switching activities - I don't want anything switched off when I switch activities. That's what the "off" button and macros with discreet commands are for. It seems to me that it is easy for the Harmony's "device state" and the actual state of things to get out-of-sync. I prefer discreet commands with complete "on" and "off" macros.

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by reggie14

OK. That's pretty cool. How much of that stuff have you played around with? I haven't thought about this much, but I can at least imagine some cool stuff that you could do with this. It would be pretty cool to be able to customize the buttons on the touchscreen based not only based on the activity that you're doing, but precisely the type of thing you're doing within that activity.

I've mainly done the variable based macros. I've got the skip fw/back buttons setup as press/hold macros, in theory to fire the Skip 2 commands only if I hold it, but it gets carried away and sends a bunch. Still need to figure that out.

For instance, I set up my Harmony remote's touchscreen to display "DVD Menu" and "DVD Return" buttons while I'm in the "Watch TV" activity, since you need those buttons to navigate DVDs on the extenders. But, really those buttons are only useful when I'm watching DVDs. Ideally it would be great if the remote was smart enough to only display those buttons while I'm watching DVDs, though that would be really difficult to implement. It would be cool if there was some sort of two-way communication between the remote and the extender, but that's not really possible now. But, you might be able to do something close to that with some clever programming.

Agreed. That's why my "dream" list has the MX5000 on it. It's got WiFi and supports 2-way control of some stuff. It would be theoretically possible for it to control an extender via IP and get feedback of what menu you're on. Of course it's "less than" $1500 so, well it will be a while.
http://www.universalremote.com/produ....php?model=173
Oh yeah, and haptic touch screen

FWIW, you can pair a URC remote with the MSC400 which supports bidirectional control of RS232 stuff, as well as sensed 12V triggers or video outputs (to see if things are on).

[reggie14]

Originally Posted by cncb

As to your example about switching activities - I don't want anything switched off when I switch activities. That's what the "off" button and macros with discreet commands are for. It seems to me that it is easy for the Harmony's "device state" and the actual state of things to get out-of-sync. I prefer discreet commands with complete "on" and "off" macros.

OK. I can see how that would work for you. I like the fact that the Harmony remote automatically turns devices on and off as necessary. I don't know what remote you have, but it would take a lot of button presses in my case to manually handle turning devices on and/or off, and that's exactly what I'm trying to get away from. There's really no good reason for me to keep the discrete power on/off buttons in the activity pages, particularly since I want to avoid having multiple pages for each activity as much as possible. I figure manually turning off the DVD player when switching to watching TV on my HD200 would add at least 3-4 button presses.

I know you could sort of get around the power-on issue if you're willing to manually reissue an activity macro after 15 seconds, but, at least to me, that also seems to defeat the purpose of having a remote like these.

Even in my case, with an IR remote, its pretty rare during standard operation to get the remote out of sync with the equipment. It does happen though, which is why there needs to be a good way to deal with it when it does. But I don't see it as a major problem. And, it would be even less of a problem if I had an RF remote.

[CollinR]

With my DVD changer I just built a macro like this;

DVD.Power On
DVD.List Veiw
Client.Power On
Client.Stop
Client.LiveTV
Client.1
Client.Select
Client.Skip F x2
Jumptopage> DVD 400


Also I ditched the whole activities thing and went with locations instead, so on my watch and listen pages I have the rooms listed, once you choose your room it's configured for the TV, amp, client and devices (lighing, fans whatnot) in that room.

Then I simply loaded the same program on multiple remotes.

I didn't take the time to built a help menu, but I really don't need one either.