Remote to restore Sage from system tray?

[Syberia]

I have Sage installed and running on my living room PC, which I also use to play games and browse the internet on my TV from time to time. Obviously, I cannot leave Sage running in full screen or screensaver mode all the time, and I have configured it so a button on my remote "sleeps" it to the system tray.

The issue I am having is that I cannot seem to get the same button (or any button, actually) to restore Sage back to the foreground once it is in the tray. From the bit of googling I have done, I understand this to be due to the fact that once it is minimized, Sage doesn't know I'm pressing any buttons so it cannot respond to them and bring itself back up.

Is there any way to make it come back up when I press a certain remote button (which, in my case, translates to a certain keystroke combination)?

[Skirge01]

I wanted similar control, so I installed and configured EventGhost to do all this. It puts SageTV to sleep when you hit the off button on the remote, so that it stops any live TV someone may have been watching. Then, when you turn everything back on, it restores SageTV to full screen. If you decided to switch to EG, I'd be happy to provide you with my config file to give you a starting point.

[Oats]

LM Remote KeyMap
EventGhost

There are probably others that can do it as well.

[Syberia]

I am already using LM Remote KeyMap to program the buttons on my remote, you are saying I can use the same program to restore Sage when I push one of them?

Or must I use this in conjunction with EventGhost?

[btrcp2000]

I have done this for years with just eventghost and a medion remote that came with a computer I bought at an Aldi in the hood. I just used EG to map the remote's keys to the keyboard commands that are built into sage (ie, CTRL-G is the stop button). The only trick I can remember to it was needing to do something so that the power button wouldn't shut down the entire computer (really stupid feature, since you couldn't turn it back on with the remote). Whatever that was also disabled the power button on the unrelated keyboard too, so the pc must see them as the same command.

Happy to share my eventghost config, which I think I got from someone either here or at the EG forums. The only thing it doesn't do is always start sage in full screen. Most of the time it will start up underneath the other windows, requiring mouse clicks to get it to go fullscreen. There is probably something you can do with EG to fix this, but I never spent much time on it. It ALWAYS minimizes to tray properly though.

[Syberia]

I'll probably give EventGhost a try later tonight. The remote + LM KeyMap properly sleeps/wakes the PC and performs all Sage functions, so I just need something to intercept a "keyboard command" and restore Sage from the tray.

[Oats]

Originally Posted by Syberia

I am already using LM Remote KeyMap to program the buttons on my remote, you are saying I can use the same program to restore Sage when I push one of them?

Or must I use this in conjunction with EventGhost?

I did it with just LM Remote KeyMap. I haven't set it back up again (just started using Sage again) so I don't remember all the details but you can program a key to open an application.

[Brent94Z]

I use my HTPC for similar items. I have a button on the remote setup to go between full screen and windowed. When I want to browse the internet, I just go "windowed" and do what I want to do on my computer. When I want to go back to watching TV I hit but button again on the remote which takes it to full screen. Not as fancy as the other guys with EG but gets the job done and is easy to setup

[Syberia]

Well, I am now having the opposite problem. I configured LM Remote KeyMap to execute "C:\Program Files\SageTV\SageTV.exe -event 19" every time I press the green Media Center button on my remote, which sends a "power" command to Sage. This allows me to either sleep or restore Sage with a click of the button, depending on which state it was already in.

However, without apparently doing anything else, I am experiencing a new problem. I have Sage configured to start with Windows, but minimized in the system tray. However, during the last couple restarts, it seems to be ignoring that setting altogether, and starting in full screen no matter which option I have selected in the setup page. I cannot figure out what caused this, and as far as I know I did not change anything.

Is there just something preventing "Load in system tray" and "Use full screen exclusive mode" from working together?

Because if I do not use fullscreen exclusive mode, when I use the Media Center button to restore Sage from the tray, it is not in focus and in fact appears behind the taskbar, and my remote does not work until I click the mouse.

I need a way to do one of two things: Either force Sage to properly load into the system tray when fullscreen exclusive is turned on, or to force Sage to the foreground when I restore it with fullscreen exclusive off. Right now, if I have FSE on, Sage restores from the tray properly but always starts in fullscreen mode when Windows starts, no matter what options I have selected. If FSE is turned off, Sage starts properly in the tray, but when I restore it, it is out of focus. The "bring to foreground" command in LM Remote Keymap don't actually do anything.

I'm starting to get annoyed at all the little problems and glitches I am experiencing, but I chose Sage over WMC because it was the only thing with DirecTV serial tuning built in.

Would upgrading to version 7 solve my problems?

[Oats]

In LM RKM you can add a command to find the Sage window and bring it to the front.

[Syberia]

I've tried that in all forms I can think of, and it doesn't do anything. What settings do you use for it?

Please note that what I am trying to accomplish is to get the same button to both sleep and wake SageTV.

[Fuzzy]

The trick is that you can't use keyboard commands to wakt a sleeping sage, you have to use system messages (or I believe the 'SageTV.exe -event' command line will work also).

[Syberia]

Yeah, I did a pretty "ghetto" work-around for now, where I have it send Sage the event 19 command, wait 2 seconds to ensure that the program has loaded, then move the mouse to somewhere that's guaranteed to be on the Sage window and generate a click. It's crude, and I'd rather this not be my permanent solution, but it works for now.

Next up: getting my 360 controller to work with the PC version of Bad Company 2 so I can play from the couch. Why, oh why, did they remove this functionality from the PC version when they sell the game for 360?

[Fuzzy]

In theory, if set up correctly, Sage should never HAVE to be in the foreground top be controlled. Every command in sage has an even id, and can be used with windows messages (SendMessage). This is the ideal method, as it will always work with sage, whether sleeping, full screen, windowed/focuses, windowed/not focused.

[Oats]

Originally Posted by Syberia

Yeah, I did a pretty "ghetto" work-around for now, where I have it send Sage the event 19 command, wait 2 seconds to ensure that the program has loaded, then move the mouse to somewhere that's guaranteed to be on the Sage window and generate a click. It's crude, and I'd rather this not be my permanent solution, but it works for now.

You know I think that is exactly how I did it when I had it set up. It took me a lot of playing around to find something that worked.

I decided to try eventghost this time and I prefer it, I just told it to find Sage and give it focus and it works. I'm not sure how it would work for sending Sage to the tray with the same button, I have Exit on my menu to do that.