Harmony possible w/o firefly mini?

[Rvr North Chris]

There have been a few older threads on the subject but most are older or have solutions require too much tweaking for people with too much time on their hands.

I currently have Firefly rf running Btv and would like to migrate to a Harmony for a whole bunch of reasons including migrating music to J River from Beyond Media. I have a 1/2 dozen USB IR receivers floating around from various sources.

Is there a clean way to program a stable Harmony system besides having to buy the mini and pitch the remote? If I go that route, am I still going to have to control J River, and any DVD program through Firefly software?

I have no desire to spend an entire night hand programming codes for a semi-crappy interface. It took me this long to get the entire media pc stable and user-friendly enough for anyone to use.

Thanks!

[queonda]

Check out eventghost or HIP or Girder

[StephaneM]

Originally Posted by Rvr North Chris

I currently have Firefly rf running Btv and would like to migrate to a Harmony for a whole bunch of reasons.../...Is there a clean way to program a stable Harmony system besides having to buy the mini and pitch the remote? If I go that route, am I still going to have to control J River, and any DVD program through Firefly software?

You can use only IR device with the Harmony (even with the Harmony that does have RF support). So a Firefly Mini is Ok, but any other IR receiver you have will do.

However, the Firefly Mini doesn't work with Beyond Media Basic. So you cannot "migrate" from what you have directly to the FF Mini.

Moreover, the FF Mini cannot be customized with the default software (in fact there is absolutely no software except a way to choose what the Firefly button is supposed to do).

The only software I know of for customizing the FF Mini is my software (see my signature). So you'll be able anyway to control J River and DVD program with it (as the FF Mini is partly a keyboard, partly a HID device, you may very well have little work to do for creating profiles for your software as some buttons will certainly work as is).

Regards,
Stéphane.

[Rvr North Chris]

Originally Posted by queonda

Check out eventghost or HIP or Girder

Girder is a kluged solution at best, and the reviews for HIP don't seem much better. And I've got better things to do than sit down and configure it, then make sure it's bullet proof so the system doesn't blow up while I'm out of town and get a nasty phone call that 'my' system is screwed up again and we should just go back to TiVo.

I wouldn't have a lot of heartburn about tossing the rf firefly and flushing even more money toward Snapstream for the mini, but I've got to migrate to J River becase Beyond Media is way too sluggish for any music library of decent size.

As it is, there seems like way too many things that can go wrong trying to program the Harmony for J River, BtV, and DVD software through a generic receiver to HIP. Plus unless there's a preconfigured keymap for BTv/Beyond Media, it'd be a pain to program from scratch. Would I lose special functions like commercial skip and info?

My ASUS MB does have a built-in HID Ir receiver, I'd be willing to give HIP a shot with that or any of the other receivers I have laying around. I'd even be willing to run both the firefly mini USB receiver and another HID Ir receiver if that'd be a clean solution.

[Rvr North Chris]

Originally Posted by StephaneM

However, the Firefly Mini doesn't work with Beyond Media Basic. So you cannot "migrate" from what you have directly to the FF Mini.
...
(as the FF Mini is partly a keyboard, partly a HID device, you may very well have little work to do for creating profiles for your software as some buttons will certainly work as is).

Regards,
Stéphane.

I've got the full BM and ideally would like to use it for some of the other features besides the music library, but could live without that.

If I went ahead and got the mini and did a complete teaching of the Harmony, I'm assuming that solves the BM/Btv control. But you're right, I'd have to go outside of the Firefly capabilities for the rest.

So if getting the Firefly IR rcvr won't solve all the needs, I'd be more willing to go with eventghost or HIP, but if I can't map ALL the Firefly features then I'm going to have to try and run some sort of dual iR rcvr setup

[StephaneM]

Originally Posted by Rvr North Chris

I've got better things to do than sit down and configure it, then make sure it's bullet proof

Any solution you will choose will requires you to sit down and configure it. I even recommend you to do this on a relatively quiet saturday just for programming the Harmony as it can be a very long process (it depends on how many devices you have).

there seems like way too many things that can go wrong trying to program the Harmony for J River, BtV, and DVD software .../... Plus unless there's a preconfigured keymap for BTv/Beyond Media, it'd be a pain to program from scratch. Would I lose special functions like commercial skip and info?

Everytying can go wrong. What's great with a Harmony is that you can create sort of "Panic button" for your family. I can assure you that with my setup : Harmony + Streamzap + My software, all is fine. Things that goes wrong are (for my setup, it will not necessarily happens to you):

* The Streamzap goes to deep sleep : solution unplug an plug again. a "TV" button on the activity will restart the PVR software.

* The stereo receiver missed the infrared from the Harmony. a "Turn On Receiver" button on the activity will power on the receiver (though the "Help" button on the Harmony is supposed to take care of this, but I hate it as it will force a on/off on everything else).

Other than this, you'll not miss anything (except fewer buttons) by going with a FF Mini and my software.

Regards,
Stéphane.

[StephaneM]

Originally Posted by Rvr North Chris

I've got the full BM and ideally would like to use it for some of the other features besides the music library, but could live without that.

Beyond Media Basic is still running: this is what operates your Firefly RF currently, so I was mening once you replace your FF RF by a FF Mini, the FF Mini will not behave in the exact same way as your FF RF because it doesn't use Beyond Media Basic.

So if getting the Firefly IR rcvr won't solve all the needs

Firefly Mini IR will solve all your needs, if you use my software to customize it (you do not need another IR receiver).

Regards,
Stéphane.