Still having troubles controlling all my devices via IR (3 out of 8) however this morning I discovered that the fault seems to be with the IR Blasters. I discovered by accident that the Dock 3 itself can control the previously unresponsive units if placed appropriately within a meter or so of each device. However when placed in its preferred spot the 3 unresponsive units remain unresponsive. Moving the IR Blasters towards these devices solves nothing with them remaining unresponsive. I confirmed no output from the IR Blasters by using them to teach my existing Harmony Elite and the Elite not receiving any IR output, however when placing the Harmony adjacent to the dock the IR was registered.
I understand that the 3.5mm jacks are auto configured by the dock but wonder if this is the issue or whether there is a fault on the Dock/Blasters.
Extender or blaster must be add while the dock is disconnected from power. Did you do that? Do you see the extender or blaster is you open web configurator, integration and docks and then click on the dock. You should see here what is connected.
Hi Ralf, Thanks for the advice and suggestion it is greatly appreciated!
I’m a little red faced here no I did not do that at all times during my learning period. I did do that when first setting up the dock and remote as per the instructions, but at one point I swapped the blasters over between port 1 and port 2 as a fault finding exercise forgetting about the power off requirement - doh!. Following your guidance I checked for the dock on the configurator and can confirm that the dock now only sees the little IR blaster now, not the main one. Swapping ports over did however confirm that it does however recognise which port I connect it to (Power off during the swap overs of course!) so it would appear that the self induced fault lies with the blaster and not the dock (hopefully). Do you know if any 3.5mm IR Blaster is a suitable replacement or is it specific to Unfolded Circle in which case I’ll need to reach out to them to purchase a replacement from them direct, however long that might take?
Just to confirm. Is the issue with the IR extenders (the little „eyes“) or the IR blaster (the bigger puck)? As mention by @HarmonyFan, the extenders and the blaster must be connected while the dock is powered off. In the web configurator you can see what is connected to which port of the dock:
Thanks it did help verify my understanding. It appears to be the puck (the larger of the two wired blasters) which is now not working as it’s not recognised by the dock as being connected. I expect it was my error in unplugging and reconnecting while the dock still had power connected. Lesson learned!
I have an R3 and have two docks and one of the docks is inside a cabinet. Would I be able to use that dock that is inside the cabinet to send IR signals to devices in the same cabinet and if so, how would the setup work, i.e., would I need to use the blaster, the extender or both?
Sure, that is possible. I also have two docks and use one exclusively for charging and the other one is close to the devices (with two blasters attached) that I want to reach via IR.
Depending on where the devices are in the cabinet and how many you have, you will have to play around with the extenders and blasters. The extenders are designed to be really close to the IR receiver of a device while the blaster (as the name suggests) blasts the IR signal in various directions and longer distances. Maybe one blaster is enough for the entire cabinet or try a combination of extenders and blasters. And the dock itself can send IR signals as well, of course. Just make sure, you define the IR outputs (dock, extenders, blaster or a cominbation of them or all) in the settings of the IR devices.
EDIT: My set-up below. The dock is behind the screen on the TV stand and the two blasters are next to the amplifier and CD player. All devices (including the Sky receiver) on the lower left hand side work perfectly with IR. The main reason for this set-up is my over 30 year old CD player which is very fidgety when it comes to IR reception. The other devices would easily be reachable from the second dock (and a blaster) which is on the other side of the room.
Thanks for all this detail - it’s great! Just to be clear, am I right that the R3 will communicate with the dock over the internet and I don’t need any “receiver” for the dock to receive signals from the R3?
