JP1 Remotes

Hi - I use an Apple Remote device upgrade on my RS-2116 which talks to Remote Buddy on a Mac to open and control XMBC. I am happy with the setup, but a few more buttons for XBMC would be nice.

Remote Buddy can support multiple Apple Remotes via pairing to the Mac, to allow more buttons. Has anyone created a set up which would allow additional buttons by mapping multiple Apple Remotes with different IDs to the remote's keypad? If so, what would be the process of pairing these remotes with Remote Buddy and the Mac?

I see that this has been done (or at least attempted) for XBMC on the Apple TV, but I'd like to do this on the Mac. Not sure how to proceed.

Thanks....chico

Are things already done on the XMBC side?

We can certainly help you get the remote to send whatever signals you want. As you said we started doing that for tildajones on the AppleTV but if I recall correctly, tilda jumped ship before we ever got it working. In that old thread the XMBC was being tweaked by the AppleTV people, while we created signals that matched each permutation that they tried.

vickyg2003 wrote:Are things already done on the XMBC side?

Yes, I use a JP1 Apple Remote upgrade that maps both short and long key presses, resulting in some additional virtual buttons, and am able to successfully control my XBMC setup.

I was reading the docs for Remote Buddy (the application that runs in the background on the Mac and intercepts the IR commands and re-maps them to XBMC commands) and apparently Remote Buddy allows different Apple Remotes to be paired to the Mac:

REMOTE BUDDY DOCUMENTATION wrote:Remote Buddy's support for multiple Apple® Remotes
Each Apple® Remote has one of 256 different IDs. This ID is sent along with every button press by the Apple® Remote. When you enable Multiple Remote Support in Remote Buddy, it makes use of this information and enables you to pair more than one Apple® Remote with your Mac®, map different actions to the buttons of each Apple® Remote or groups of Apple® Remotes.

So I thought it might be possible to put more than one instance of an Apple Remote upgrade into my remote, each having a different ID. Then in Remote Buddy I could, for example, map the "Play" button of one remote to XBMC's "Play" function, and the "Play" button of the other to, say, XBMC's "Enable Subtitles" function.

vickyg2003 wrote:We can certainly help you get the remote to send whatever signals you want. As you said we started doing that for tildajones on the AppleTV but if I recall correctly, tilda jumped ship before we ever got it working.

Yes, I read that thread, and the project never reached conclusion. Also, it was for the Apple TV, not a Mac, so I don't know what differences there might be.

I played with an upgrade I found in the files section, "AppleTV_XMBC_Multi-Remote_Mode.rmdu", and it showed promise, as Remote Buddy identified commands with different IDs (i.e, 149, 151, 152, etc.), but I couldn't see in the upgrade how one would match the IDs with each button code. Just getting started here, so I asked if anyone had already done this, so I didn't have to bang my head retracing their steps.

Any help on this would certainly be appreciated!

I have vague memories of that upgrade. The Apple TV only had maybe 5 possible button codes and all the values could be expressed in a hex-nibble. So we used the other nibble of the Hex to store the apple id as specified in the XMBC literature. That thread was created before the Apple Protocol was well documented.

If necessary would could create a 2byte Apple protocol executor where byte 2 is the Apple ID.

vickyg2003 wrote:I have vague memories of that upgrade. The Apple TV only had maybe 5 possible button codes and all the values could be expressed in a hex-nibble. So we used the other nibble of the Hex to store the apple id as specified in the XMBC literature. That thread was created before the Apple Protocol was well documented.

If necessary would could create a 2byte Apple protocol executor where byte 2 is the Apple ID.

I'm still trying to get my head around how this might work. Remote Buddy is very remote-code savvy, but it's not yet clear to me what it would be looking for when using multiple remotes. Apparently every Apple Remote sends an ID code along with the command. Here's some of the Remote Buddy documentation regarding multiple remotes:

http://helpbooks.iospirit.net/remotebud ... re_ar.html

I'm not yet sure how to set up Remote Buddy to parse and allocate the incoming commands from "multiple remotes". I'm going to use the upgrade I referenced above to play around with how Remote Buddy handles the codes generated by it. Is it possible for you to look at that upgrade and tell me how and where the IDs are set?

I see that there is a description of the Apple Remote protocol on Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Remote


Thanks so far...

It does appear that the second nible of the hex was the function. The keys that say hold, were using a using a bit in the second byte to trigger a hold.


I'm having too much trouble with my eyes to day to try and figure out if the numbers need to be that second bit needs to be read backwards. thats why the palindromes 6 and 9 for right and left are the same in both series of hex.



this is the hex from the upgrade

65 up
63 down
69 left
66 right
6A ok
6C menu

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Remote
from the
Value Button Command
0x02/0x03 Menu Menu
0x04/0x05 Center Play/Pause
0x07/0x06 Right Next/Fast-Forward
0x08/0x09 Left Previous/Rewind
0x0b/0x0a Up Volume Up
0x0d/0x0c Down Volume Down

First nibble was the id.

Thanks, Vicky. I have enough information to play around with until I hit my next brick wall. You'll undoubtedly hear from me when I hit it, probably sooner than later.

I appreciate the support thus far.