A universal remote volume. button should always no matter what menu, screen or mode you are in. Only control. your receiver or whatever you were using. for audio
This was possible with Logitech Harmony, but it was very tricky. You had to call them, and they had to hard code the buttons.
This is often an overlooked feature which. boggles my mind how everyone doesn’t immediately notice this and requested as a feature
Scenario.: You’re watching a movie. Everything’s great. The movie gets a little loud. You reach for your remote and turn the volume down a few clicks. You go on with the movie…
You’re halfway through the movie, you decide you need to turn the lights on in the. kitchen. So your wife can make more popcorn. You reach for your remote. You trim the lights on. You’re on the light. Turn on screen. And suddenly the movie gets really loud again. So you mash the volume down button and it doesn’t work because you’re on the light. Turn on screen. And for some reason, that volume button only works when you’re on. the screen for your receiver.
So if anyone has got their unit yet, can you let me know if. there’s a setting for the volume button and the mute button to always no matter where you are, no matter what sub menu, no matter what mode control one device whichever you specify is controlling your audio?
This is so unbelievably important. Let me know if anyone else has experienced frustrating scenarios where they couldn’t turn down their volume with their universal remotes.
It’s very configurable, so as long as you include the entity that you are using to control the volume in the activity that you are running you can assign its controls to the hardware volume and mute button, or even create separate soft buttons for those controls if that activity is using some other entity for the main volume controls of that activity. So in short the answer is yes, you can achieve what you are after.
While we’re on the subject of volume control: How do I manage to control the volume on my Denon receiver via IR when I’m in the Sonos menu? I haven’t found a way to configure any key. Does the integration need to be expanded in this regard?
If you mean in the Sonos activity then add the Denon Receiver as an entity used in that activity. Once done you should be able to assign Denon commands to buttons used in the Sonos activity. Is that what you are trying to achieve? Note you would also have to add the Denon Receiver power commands to the on sequence and off sequence of the Sonos activity
This is precisely what I’m talking about once. you have set your denin receiver. as volume no matter what menu you are in Sonos or anything else, it should always control the receiver.
This shouldn’t have to be done. You shouldn’t have to add it to every single thing and every single sub menu. There should be one. setting where you set what controls volume in your system and you can apply that retroactively to every activity, every scene, every menu, everywhere you’ll ever be on the remote. Your volume buttons should always work.
My fear is, what happens when you’re not in any activity What happens in the remote thinks that everything’s off, but everything’s on. because sometimes they get out of phase. Do the volume button still work? what if I’m not in an activity screen? What if I’m in my Philips hue settings, changing a light bulb color on the remote screen? Can I reach down? And does my volume button still control the receiver? And does the mute button still work?
I have now created a Sonos activity where the amplifier and Sonos are switched on, the corresponding input on the amplifier is selected and I was also able to assign the buttons accordingly. This works so far. Unfortunately there is no cover or title display here.
Can this be added somehow?
After I added the activity to the user interface, only a crossed out character is displayed there. It only worked after I restarted the remote. But it’s definitely not intended that way, is it?
Just as comparison to the Harmony: When you open a device menu via the devices button on a 950 or Ultimate you are also not able to control the volume of your receiver anymore because a different button mapping just for the selected device is active. You always have to be in the activity to use your custom button mapping just like on the Remote Two. I am not sure how this was handled when the Logitech support hard coded buttons for you but I don’t think this would make sense inside a device menu.
And on the Remote Two you can activate the activity user interfacer of all currently running activities on all pages via the bottom bar that you may have to slide up first. Maybe this bar should also be available when an integration or IR remote UI is currently open.
What else occurred to me regarding the permanent assignment of the volume buttons:
What if you want to use the remote control for different rooms? Then the volume buttons must be assigned differently depending on the situation.
Using the same remote in two rooms is an extremely niche case. 1 I wouldn’t even recommend in the first place. Just get a damn second remote. Do not further complicate things. There are so many reasons why you wouldn’t want the same remote for two rooms. first of which that both rooms couldn’t be used at the same time. If my wife wants to go watch in the bedroom and I want to watch in the living room, we’ll be fighting over the damn remote.
Yes. And in this situation that you’re explaining, I would be extremely frustrated that my volume button suddenly don’t work. What do I need them for in this menu? Nothing. They need to always control volume. So when I called Harmony customer support and told them about this, they went into the back end and permanently made my volume buttons always control the receiver. Same with mute. And that was wonderful. But it was annoying at the same time, because that should be basic functionality of the setup, not something that they have to do on the back end.
It’s making me feel a little crazy here, like, am I the only human being who uses universal remotes who has been in a scenario where they couldn’t turn the volume down? And they. needed to turn the volume down. so many times the mailman knocks on the door and I answer and I’m trying to turn the volume down on my TV so we can have a conversation. But the volume buttons don’t work. because my cat stepped on the remote and now it’s on a different interface.
This may perhaps be the exception that someone wants to operate several rooms with just one remote control, but it should at least not be ruled out by only being able to assign the volume buttons globally. I would be in favor of making this optional.
Well, absolutely everything should be optional. That’s my point. There should be the option to have a volume button globally assigned to one device or have it be assigned to a different device in each activity.
For your use case. activity assigning should work just fine in both. rooms, The problem is when you’re outside of an activity
These remotes that operate on IR are not reliable, pointed at your stomach and turn everything off, and they won’t turn off. But the remote will think that everything turned off. And then suddenly the volume button stopped working coz the remote thinks everything’s off. because it said, turn off. It just doesn’t know that the tv wasn’t listening because you were pointing it at your stomach, not the tv.
This was the best part of the Logic Harmony system, was because it used radio frequency to a base and that base you could have permanently mounted with an IR reach of everything, or have IR extenders going directly into your devices. So there is no accidental. state. Every state was either on or off as intented.
Many times my sofa baton thinks everything’s off, but everything’s on. Playing real aloud, and I need to turn it down or turn it off, and I can’t.
So there should always be an option to have volume buttons, no matter what state, no matter what activity still be active and useful. Whether you’re in the settings, or any other page, not just in an activity page.
Probably best if you tone down the emotion a bit, it is a community after all.
In the same vane that you don’t see value in the use case for using the remote in multiple rooms, some may not see value in the device restricting it’s application by hard coding one device as a “master volume controller”. You can still do this, it will just take you a few seconds to configure.
Perhaps consider that the device, while called “Remote” 2, is actually a powerful home automation controller with one use case being the use as a traditional “universal AV remote”.
If you truely believe it is not usable for you under the current construct then, once you have verified this by actually using the device, the suggestion would be to raise a Feature Request, noting it is a small team and every feature has an opportunity cost.
The emotion and passion is coming from a good place to try and drive the community forward and see if other people can get on board. for the same features that we want. and figure out how to verbalize them together. I don’t even know what to call this feature that I’m looking for, or if it’s in the remote at all. But I posted here initially to see if anyone else feels my struggle.
Of course, I see value in using the Remote in a second room. And I 100% believe that that should be an option. And if that is a feature request that is needed, you can count on me to submit that feature request along with you.
What I was hoping to achieve here? was other people read my post and go ohh yeah, that’s annoying. It happens to me too. Didn’t know how to verbalize it until now. I guess we’re calling it universal hard-coded volume buttons or something like that. Maybe I should put a feature request as well. Or maybe we can all put one in together. Or maybe it already has it and someone here can say yeah, it works for me no matter what screen I’m on, it controls the volume. No issue here.
So you want to control the volume hardcoded with the buttons to one specific device, doesn’t matter if you’re running an activity or not.
I don’t have this demand on my side, but maybe you could achive it with creating an Activity, which is running in parallel with every other activity.
Currently you can’t start an activity inside the On-Sequence of an activity, but maybe this could be achived with a Macro Call.
So create a new Macro, which is Powering On this “OverAll-Activity” and then call this kind of Macro in the On-Sequence inside all of your other activities.
Inside the OverAll-Activity you can map the volume for your specific device to the hardware buttons.
Hope this is working and my explanation makes sense
One non-perfect approach might be to edit the remote entity with the volume controls that you want and assign the volume controls, and the mute control, to the hardware volume and mute buttons within that remote configuration Then add that remote entity to the User Interface section alongside your activities Then you could access that remote entity to change the volume and it will always use the remote that you want to control the volume with. I’ve no idea if this would work, as I haven’t tried it myself, however it might be one approach to consider.
I don’t see this as an issue. Doing punch-through is simple enough (after you figure it out). The total effort to add 3-6 inputs is low (but it could be made lower). It’s certainly a bigger problem if you’re changing remotes in an established system and not doing it incrementally.
What is missing (or I don’t know how to to do it yet) is the ability to punch-through on every page.
An example from my house: I need volume controls for both my receiver and my television and the same issues apply to both of them.
