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Original thread:
Post 1 made on Friday December 11, 2020 at 17:47
simon07
Junior Member
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December 2020
1
My Home Theatre now consists of a Firestick 4k and a laptop running Kodi.
This is my experence with Flirc and my harmony 665/700.

I have kodi on my firestick also but it does not support audio passthrough for DTSMA etc. If it did, that would be all I need. It still is a fantastic piece of equipment for $35 on sale.

I have 3 activities now on my harmony. One for bluray which I hardly ever use. [I rip blurays and watch them with my laptop via kodi]. Another for the firestick which has not been implemented yet. [waiting on second Flirc] and the other for my laptop setup.

My laptop prior to getting the Flirc was navigated by keyboard and mouse. I was hoping to eliminate them and just use my harmony to control it all. I have succeeded and will detail it all here.

Prior to Flirc I would open my laptop lid and press the power button then close the lid and let the laptop boot. I had a harmony activity called laptop that just controlled my tv and denon receiver and I would start that.
The next step was to use the keyboard to enter my password, then I had a script that disabled pulse on autostart [for audio passthrough]. I used a keyboard combination to start and navigate kodi. When finished and exited kodi I would use the mouse to power off the laptop.

First step turning on the laptop.
I do not have WakeOnLAN so I have to physically get up and do that.

I was able with Flirc to reprogram the number keys [full keyboard] to enough letters etc to put in my password [needed 7 keys for that] and one key combo to start kodi and one key combo to shut down the computer. Starting kodi and shutting down the laptop were done by key combos I had setup in Ubuntu 20.04 and mapped to Flirc full keyboard 8 and 9 key.

Now when I first got the Flirc I added Flirc/Kodi as a device in myharmony software then added that device to my activity. Then sync the remote.

A lot of the keys worked right away but some like the play pause ff etc would not. I fixed that by going back into the myharmony and dragging those keys over again. I had trouble with pause/play but adding the spacebar via flirc software fixed that.

Now for putting in my password.

I created another sequence that used a combination of 7 letters followed by Select. 8 steps. It was great to find out that sequences are no longer restricted to only 5 steps. This was after reprogramming the number keys to letters with the Flirc software, full keyboard.

When I first downloaded the Flirc software and updated the firmware everything was fine but sometimes the Flirc works fabulously and sometime I get no response. I should point out that I use Windows for this. Yes the Flirc software can be finicky and it cost me a lot of hair pulling until I just accepted that sometimes it works great and sometimes not at all. I rebooted when it wasn't responding and that fixed it and I think it likes it better if you open the software first then plug in the Flirc.

Once you get the keys programmed on the Flirc you do not need the software again.

One other thing I should mention is that after programming the Flirc and updating your harmony remember your Flirc is in your computer and not in your home theatre system. I would update the harmony and then wonder why the buttons would not work only to remember that the Flirc was still in my other computer. :)



I now have the second flirc setup to run my firetv stick. I added the firetv/flirc in myharmony profile but some of the buttons would not work. i fixed that by going back into myharmony and actually dragging the buttons over. Even still I had a problem waking up the firetv. The next day i was finding just a black screen. I fixed that by going into the flirc software/firetv and programming the home button.

Hope this helps someone.

Last edited by simon07 on December 23, 2020 17:20.
Always look on the bright side of life.


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