Activities and Macros Question

[netlevi]

I am working on the OARUSB04G Extender 1.04, and I'm trying to grasp the concept of an activity in relation to a macro.

What I would like to do is set up a macro to fire when I push a shifted button on a given device; e.g. push shift-menu under the DVD device would execute a series of buttons to take me to the DVD's setup menus.

I read in a different thread that activities are worth considering:

Activities are the best way to create macros for "watch TV", "watch movie", etc.

I am having a hard time understanding what exactly an activity is. I have created macros (using RMIR) that fire when I push the WatchMovie button, but it appears that macros will hijack their assigned button for all devices. I'm hoping to avoid doing that.

Can someone point me in the right direction to accomplish this?

[mdavej]

On that remote, a macro is a series of commands that runs when the assigned button is pressed. It's global, so that button will perform the macro in all device modes, as you have discovered. A DSM (device specific macro), on the other hand, will only run in one device mode. I'm not sure if the extender has this feature or not.

An activity is a special macro that only sends selected power toggle commands and assigns certain groups of buttons to certain devices, as you can see in the activity group assignments table. Assigning a macro to an activity button will run the macro, then run the activity.

An activity is appropriate for a task like Watch Movie because you would normally want to turn on your TV, player and AVR plus assign the vol keys to the AVR or TV and the other keys to the player.

To do what you're asking (send a series of DVD commands), a macro would be the appropriate solution.

[mathdon]

A DSM (device specific macro), on the other hand, will only run in one device mode. I'm not sure if the extender has this feature or not.

It does.

[netlevi]

Thank you for the explanation! I'll dig into DSM's and see what I can accomplish.