Which IR remote to select in OSMC

I’ve got an Harmony 900 and I would like to add the Vero 4K to control in my AV setup.

In the Harmony software I was able to select OSMC as a vendor in the list of media center equipment. And select model VERO 4K as model.

But my question now is which IR remote should I select in MyOSMC on the device itself?

Probably the OSMC remote if you picked that profile. We didn’t add that profile however. If you search for Harmony you’ll find a couple of threads from Vero 4K users about the best way to set it up

I’ve just set my Harmony remote up using that Vero profile on their software and it works fine. I didn’t need to change anything on the Vero 4K :+1:

Cool – some people preferred BT for better performance or more buttons.

Thanks for the suggestions. But I’m looking for more “buttons” in order to maximize the use of all the (soft) buttons in my Harmony Remote 900. :slightly_smiling_face:
BT is unfortunately not an option on my Harmony 900 because it is not supported. I would like to go to a newer Harmony Elite with Hub but the old one still working okay…

Well tomorrow some more tinkering to see which combination of Harmony emulated remotes and remote LIRC drivers on the OSMC works best in my case.

Probably best to emulate an MCE remote and select that.

After a lot of experimenting I used the MCE remote of OSMC and on the Harmony the Philips SRM 5100. Together with the Keymap editor I was able to configure my Harmony 900 remote to my wished configuration.

Albeit I need to adjust one thing because now when I press the switch off button on the Harmony remote every device is shutdown including OSMC. But then the problem arises that OSMC cannot be powered on again by the remote. Really a pity.

Can you not separate the OSMC device from the power on/off routine? I can with mine; only my TV, AVR and PVR switch switch on/off when I power up/down and you can set that in the Harmony software.

I’ll do that. Thanks for the suggestion. Although I would have liked that Vero would support a kind Hibernation mode you still can switch the box with the IR / RF remote.

This is being worked on.

Great!

So with harmony hub to work work Vero, do I plug in the extender into vero ? Or does it work fine without it… the hub & Vero are next to eachother, so far the remote on the harmony app isn’t working to navigate Vero.

2nd question is could I use the BT Vero remote & have the Harmony IR hub control side by side? Or do you have to choose between Vero BT remote & IR option?

I’m mostly documenting here what I ended up doing to get my Vero 4K+ working with my Harmony 650 remote. I used someone else’s suggestion above for which remote pairings to use. Specifically on the Vero 4K+ I set the remote in MyOSMC to rc6-mce-lircd and added the Phillips SRM 5100 in the Harmony software. That resulted in something that was about 90% of the way there. Here are the last few changes I made:

Harmony Software
Note that you have to do these remaps in both the device AND the activity. I don’t know why, but it’s about par for the course with Harmony’s crappy software.

  1. Remap the Exit button to RETURN (apparently the CLEAR key isn’t in the RC6 mapping, so without a change the Exit key is dead)
  2. Remap the SkipBackward button to DirectionLeft and the SkipForward button to DirectionRight. This will make those two keys use the Skip Back and Skip Forward Kodi functions instead of the previous and next chapters, and you can do previous chapter with channel down and next chapter with channel up.

Kodi
By default there aren’t any keys mapped to the context menu or information screens, but the Harmony remotes have both. You can use the Keymap addon to map the correct Kodi function to those two keys, or you can manually create a keyboard.xml file and put it in ~/.kodi/userdata/keymaps/. I did the latter. Here’s my keyboard.xml file for that:

<keymap>
    <global>
        <keyboard>
            <key id="195">Info</key>`
            <key id="247">ContextMenu</key>
        </keyboard>
    </global>
</keymap>

I hope this helps anyone trying to use their Harmony IR remote to control the Vero 4K/4K+.

1 Like

I’d seriously consider only using BT with the Harmony Hub and your Vero… It’s way more responsive than IR!
A basic guide as to how this is set up can be found here: Configure Harmony Elite + Hub with Vero 4k/Kodi - #24 by Nickelig

The OSMC remote that comes with the Vero is not a BT remote, but RF. It can be used side by side with any other BT or IR remote :+1:t2:

2 Likes

Hi PKscout. Thanks for this info. I’m having similar issues with Vero4K and Harmony One. I’ve tried various setups, and tho using the Phillips SRM5100 as you describe is the best so far, I’m still having problems:

• often get multiple keypresses for no known reason

• can’t seem to resolve problem with Harmony software and keymap editor addon as follows:

I want to use the hard “Menu” button for Return aka Back (as AppleTV, using Guide for Context Menu), and the Skip Back Button for BigStepBack. I also discovered “Clear” didn’t work. So I mapped “Enter” to the hard Exit Button. Mapped “Return” to the hard Menu Button. Mapped “ChapterPrevious” to the hard Skip Back Button.

Then in Keymap editor I tried to assign that “Enter” command (Exit button) to go to Home Screen, and the “PrevChapter” (Skip Back button) to ChapterPrevOrBigStep Back, and “Return” command (Menu Button) appropriately. But I keep getting this result:

<keymap>
<global><keyboard>
<key id="22">activatewindow(home)</key>
<key id="44">showsubtitles</key><key id="196">reboot</key>
<key id="37">activatewindow(videos)</key>
<key id="101">activatewindow(settings)</key>
<key id="216">chapterorbigstepback</key>
<key id="216">back</key></keyboard></global>
<fullscreenvideo><keyboard>
<key id="223">chapterorbigstepforward</key>
<key id="216">chapterorbigstepback</key><key id="216">chapterorbigstepBack</key>
</keyboard></fullscreenvideo>
</keymap>

In other words, problems:
• chapterorbigstepback is improperly specified in “global” section, even tho I’ve repeatedly removed it.

The 216 key seems to conflict. Seems to be both the “Return” command (again, Menu hard button) and the “PrevChapter” command (Skip Back hard button). I’ve checked this several times in keymap editor and updated the Harmony in the software several times. Can’t figure out why both keys seem to issue the same remote code.

I recall that for some reason PrevChapter was mapped to Return in the Harmony app, so I changed PrevChapter to Direction Left (and NextChapter to Direction Right) so that it matched what I was used to. I wish there was an easy way to share remote configs in the Harmony app, but I know I remapped a few keys just so it worked the way it did with my FLIRC.

I don’t use the Keymap Editor addon, so I’m not sure how much help I’m going to be there. I’ve been using Kodi a long time and tend to do stuff by hand. This is all I had to put in my keyboard.xml file:

<keymap>
    <global>
        <keyboard>
            <key id="195">Info</key>
            <key id="247">ContextMenu</key>
            <key id="251">ReloadSkin()</key>
            <key id="252">OSD</key>
            <key id="253">CodecInfo</key>
            <key id="254">RunAddon(script.speedfaninfo)</key>
        </keyboard>
    </global>
</keymap>

The last four are the four color keys, so really the only thing I had to do was map Info and Context.

I’m not a fan of the keymap editor either, but it seemed useful for getting keycodes at least. Any other recommended way to get the actual keycode being sent by the remote?

In case it helps others, here’s my final setup for Harmony One. To recap, I used the Philipps SRM5100 Media Center in Harmony 7.x and the rc6-mce-lircd profile in MyOSMC. (Both as recommended by pkscout.) I had to change the device power to always stay on.

As I said, I prefered the hard Menu button to go back (RETURN) as it is with the Apple TV, and hard Guide button to send Menu command. If PreviousChapter and Return are indeed sending the same code (216?), it worked to have Previous Chapter specific to the fullscreen video mode only.

.kodi/userdata/keymaps/keyboard.xml:

<!-- MS Media Center keyboard shortcuts sent by emulated Phillips SRM 5100 -->
<!-- sent by Harmony One, remote in MyOSMC set to rc6-mce-lircd  -->
<keymap>
<global>
    <keyboard>
        <key id="22">activatewindow(home)</key> <!-- ENTER (hard mapped to EXIT) -->
        <key id="41">NextSubtitle</key> <!-- "#" (hard mapped to + button) -->
        <key id="40">showsubtitles</key> <!-- "*" (hard mapped to E button) -->
        <key id="44">showsubtitles</key> <!-- Teletext (soft) -->
        <key id="196">reboot</key> <!-- PowerToggle (soft) -->
        <key id="37">activatewindow(videos)</key> <!-- Media (soft) -->
        <key id="101">activatewindow(settings)</key> <!-- RecordedTV (soft) -->
        <key id="251">activatewindow(programs)</key> <!-- Red (soft) -->
        <key id="252">OSD</key> <!-- Green (soft) -->
        <key id="253">CodecInfo</key> <!-- Yellow (soft) -->
        <key id="254">RunAddon(script.kodi.loguploader)</key> <!-- Blue (soft) -->
    </keyboard>
</global>
<fullscreenvideo>
    <keyboard>
        <key id="223">chapterorbigstepforward</key> <!-- NextChapter (hard mapped to SKIPFORWARD) -->
        <key id="216">chapterorbigstepback</key> <!-- PrevChapter (hard mapped to SKIPBACK) -->
        <!-- Note: For NextChapter, Harmony may send equivalent code as BACK -->
    </keyboard>
</fullscreenvideo>
</keymap>
<!--Other Hard Map changes in Harmony: -->
<!--"RETURN" hard mapped to MENU button (as Apple TV)  -->
<!--"RETURN" hard mapped to PREV button (as Vero Remote)  -->
<!--"MENU" hard mapped to GUIDE button  -->

Note: There was still at least one key on the SRM5100 config in Harmony that I didn’t use, if needed: LiveTV

tail -f .kodi/temp/kodi.log

Hi there thanks for informative post. I trying to configure a Harmony One remote given to me by relative. I’ve followed instructions so far but as I’m not very tech minded am stuck on the key map Addon bit??