I have recently purchased a Harmony 880, which I think is a great remote. I'm coming from a Pronto 3000, which was frustrating in that you always had to look at the screen , line up your finger over the "button", air the remote and press. The Harmony, with its ergonomic design and tactile feel, it about as good as a universal remote can be.

My question is this. How do you enter an activity that is currently in progress without initiating it. For example, when I press "watch TV", the remote send commands to all associated devices, etc. From there, I may need to exit the "Watch TV" activity to enter a different one. How do I get back into the "Watch TV" activity without the remote thinking it has to send power on commands, etc to the associated devices?

An activity will always send the power on/off/toggle command if it thinks it is required.

However there are a few things that you can do to modify the power handling behaviour somewhat:

- You can configure a device as always being on. The remote will then not automatically send any power commands for this device.

- You can configure an activity to leave unused devices on. This means that if you switch to an activity that doesn't use this device then it will be left on and so when you switch back to the original activity it doesn't need to re-send the power command as it knows it is still on.

- You can include a device in an activity as an additional device so that activity will always have that device on (even if it is otherwise unused in the activity).


So it might be appropriate in you situation that your "different" activity could be configured to leave unused devices on so that when you switch back to the "Watch TV" activity it knows that the TV is still on.

If possible you should use discrete power on/off comands rather than a power toggle if your devices support them. Then if it does happen to resend a power on command it should generally have no effect as the device is already on.

Also remember that the Harmony tracks the power and input status of all devices. So even if a device does not support discrete power/input commands, it will not, re-send a toggle power command when switching to another activity that uses the same device. It knows the device is already on. It also knows how many input next command(s) to send for devices that use the cycling method. Also, if a device gets out of sync (for whatever reason), simply press the "Help" button and follow the instructions. Note: Make sure the device power and input settings are configured properly.

Press the Activity button twice to get back to the last selected activity.

" How do you enter an activity that is currently in progress without initiating it."

Hold your hand over the end of the remote while pressing the activity button :-)