[mythtv-users] Logitech Harmony remote replacement - SofaBaton U1 ?

[Stephen Worthington]

On Tue, 22 Jun 2021 19:17:30 +0100, you wrote:

>On 22/06/2021 19:01, Mike Perkins wrote:
>> On 22/06/2021 17:05, Paul Gardiner wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>> On 22/06/2021 12:24, Mike Perkins wrote:
>>>> On 22/06/2021 10:08, Paul Gardiner wrote:
>>>>> On 21/06/2021 23:07, Phill Edwards wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>      >>> The Sofabaton is my expected fallback when/if my Harmony's 
>>>>>> quit
>>>>>>      >>> working.  Sadly, I don't know of any other affordable, 
>>>>>> universal,
>>>>>>      >>> bluetooth remotes.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>     The sofa baton is an interesting device, and it is on sale in
>>>>>>     amazon's prime day for less than US $40.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> I just watched a review of the Sofabaton. Looks ok but doesn't seem 
>>>>>> to have the equivalent of Harmony's activities, which means it 
>>>>>> can't automatically select HDMI inputs when you turn things on. 
>>>>>> That was such a good WAF feature.
>>>>>
>>>>> Yes, but I think you could make it emulate that feature, providing 
>>>>> you reserve one button for the activity-change-over actions so, 
>>>>> unlike with the harmony where you just change activity, you'd need 
>>>>> to change activity and then press your setup button.
>>>>>
>>>> I think that it is a balance of where you want to have the 'business 
>>>> logic', if you like. In the Harmony, the existing state of everything 
>>>> is held in the remote itself, so it knows what to change when you 
>>>> press an activity button.
>>>>
>>>> It would be possible to move that all to your host end. That way, 
>>>> you'd simply have a spare button on the remote which, when pressed, 
>>>> runs (for example) a script which reads the existing state info 
>>>> previously stored in, I dunno, /var/something, and does whatever is 
>>>> required to effect the switching.
>>>>
>>>> Of course, that implies that that host retains all the state info so 
>>>> would have to be on all the time. Suitable project for a RPi, anyone?
>>>
>>>
>>> I was thinking of restricting to idempotent actions, so no state 
>>> memory is needed: turn every device needed on, turn every device not 
>>> needed off, don't use toggles, don't use next or prev actrions.
>>>
>> Unfortunately most power buttons on remotes /are/ just toggles. If you 
>> need to change the input source for the TV, also, different TVs use 
>> differing approaches.
>
>Oh, I must be lucky. Every one of my devices has separate power off and 
>power on, some in addition to a toggle. Likewise for input selection. 
>Hmmm, come to think of it, they do have exceptionally big remotes. :-)

Even devices that only have toggle buttons for things sometimes do
have discrete remote codes to do the on and off (or channel select)
separately.  The problem is finding the documentation that tells you
what the codes are, and then being able to program them.  And some TVs
(Samsung?) now have a defined Internet API for remote control.  I hope
other manufacturers will copy this.