After my Harmony, which was working perfectly in the end, finally gave up the ghost, my search ended with Unfolded Circle. I then bought the Remote 2 to see if this solution was right for me. After spending days reading through the forum, Google, and AI help resources, I’ve at least gotten to the point where the remote basically does what it’s supposed to.
My setup for now is:
Samsung TV Infrared Blu-ray player
Nvidia Shield Pro
Harman Kardon AVR Infrared remote
Hue
So, not too much and not too complicated. I’m torn between maximum excitement and utter helplessness. I’ve got the basics working, but I don’t understand a lot about the Remote 2 and I’m hoping some things can be clarified here.
One question: I can add remotes. What’s the purpose of this function and how do I use it? When I add a device, isn’t a “remote” included?
Secondly: how can I add the following simple command to a routine? If I want to watch something through the amplifier and only want the sound to come through the amplifier, the TV’s audio output needs to be turned down (at least in my case). With my Harmony remote, I simply inserted the “Volume down” signal for 3 seconds. Is that possible here as well?
First of all, I’d like to wish you all a happy Easter and would appreciate any feedback.
If not, make sure you enable beta firmware and install it (you might need to install 2.6.13 first). It works great on R2!
Everything you mentioned is possible through Activities
First create an Activity for ‘Watch TV’ or something similar.
Include all devices you need for this activity.
Then look at on and off sequencing. This is the part where you let each device switch on and off, and when needed, set additional things like the input channel of the amplifier and TV, and so forth.. this is actually much like how the Harmony works. (If you have IR controlled devices, make sure you have both power on and power off commands, written in capitals (POWER_ON and POWER_OFF) otherwise the remote will not register the power state. If there are no separate power controls available for you device, create double commands for power toggle and rename them to POWER_ON and POWER_OFF to cheat)
Next would be button mapping. All button mapping has to be set manually unfortunately. Feel free to remap system used buttons, everything is controllable with touchscreen if necessary.
Then you can play with the screen, or user interface where you can put mediaplayers and icon/text buttons and sensors (if you have any).
The next part is quite different compared to Harmony: Activity Groups
When you’re done with the first activity and you want to make a second, you should create an Activity Group and place the activities in this group. The activity group will take care of the correct power switching of the devices when switching between activities: if you switch from one activity to another, the devices which are in both activities will stay powered on and the rest will switch off. You’ll need the activity group for this!
These are the basics. Once you get the hang of it there’s a lot more to configure
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