I've received my MX-980 today and I'm a software developer (and have programmed several JP1 remotes), but I have a few questions about programming the MX-980:

1) What is a "toggle" in the macros section?

2) Can I have the watch page use the last pages buttons? (eg. if I selected my satellite receiver (from the Watch menu), and then pressed Watch again, I'd like my previous device selection (satellite receiver) to have it's button still active unless I actively choose another device)

3) When I press a button several times in rapid succession, it only registers every few button presses. If I press the same button twice (but quickly) sometimes it actually sends three commands instead of two. Is there some kind of button delay I can adjust so each button press has a lightning fast response?

EDIT: Actually, the MX-980 seems a LOT more sluggish via IR than the MX-810. However, both are more sluggish than the original remote controls (via IR).

4) Can I macro the listen or watch buttons?

5) Is there more documentation available aside from the "Programmer's Guide" included with the application? It doesn't cover Learning IR and many other things.

My primary concern is actually question #2 from above. The MX-810 also seems to respond very "slowly" to button presses as well.

Also, on a side note, bothof my brand new remotes (MX-810 and MX-980) have slightly defective center "joystick" areas. If you press on the left (MX-810) or right (MX-980) it sometimes doesn't register. You have to press the button down hard which is different than every other button on the remotes. How can _both_ remotes be defective like this? It makes me skeptical about URC's build quality :(

Thanks for any help!

Hi John I can answer some of your questions. Although I have not used the toggle macro on the mx-980, but if it works the same as a toggle in a msc-400 you could have a button toggle different macros that you set up.

You can accomplish what's described in question two with variables.

You can assign macros to the watch and listen buttons.

I have not noticed a problem with the centre button but you will find that URC has very good build quality with their remotes.

cheers

Pete

Thanks for the reply!

I think I understand what toggle commands are (the MSC-400 describes them in a little more detail as well).

Can you tell me how you would use variables to achieve what I'm asking for in question #2?

If anybody has any other advice on my delayed button press issue or sticky center button/joystick please let me know.

Thanks!

Toggle has many uses. Here is one example: Say you have a Yamaha receiver that has a lot of surround modes and discrete codes for each. Instead of having a button for each surround mode. You could have one button and by using the the toggle command you wolud have three of the most common surround modes within this command. Whenever you hit that button it will toggle between only those commands. This works great for aspect ratios ar any type of 'favorites' activity where you want to limit the selection.

I'm not sure exactly what you are trying to accomplish in #2.

Bob

Per a suggestion in the Dealers forumn on the URC web site, if you have access, download the Programming Manual (not the Users Manual) for the MX-3000. The editor software is almost identical and the manual is quite detailed. It was a huge help.

Shame on UCR for such a useless MX-980 manual, especially when they had most of a good manual already written with the MX-3000.

Thanks for the help again! (you guys are great!)

I think I fully understand the toggle commands. I actually downloaded the MX-3000 and MX-900 programming manuals (from this site) and it provides a LOT of good information. I'm really disappointed that they didn't include a better manual for the MX-980.

Anyways, in my above question #2 let's imagine that the user hits [Watch] and then [Play a DVD]. Everything is setup to play the DVD. The user then hits [Watch] to see what other activities are available but he doesn't choose any and decides to stay with his current activity (eg. he doesn't press any buttons).

While the user is at the main Watch menu all of the keys don't do anything.

Anyways, that's not a big deal. I think I understand what I need to do with variables but it will be a decent amount of work to get it working.

My main concern is the delayed/inaccurate button response when I press the buttons.

For example, my original Sanyo PLV-Z5 projector remote scrolls the projector menu very, very fast but the MX-810 and MX-980 both go much slower and sometimes jump two menu items at a time.

I'm only using IR and not RF for now until I get this fixed.

OK. I think I found the source of my button pressing problems. When I turn off "Repeat while button is pressed" it's a lot more responsive to rapid pressing of the buttons. When it's turned on, I think the remote gets confused into thinking two rapid presses are really just one long press.

Does anybody else have this same problem?

The solution seems to be to turn off "Repeat while button is pressed" for _every_ button but that seems a little strange... (and I lose the ability to hold down a button I guess?)

Yes!

The software allows you to set your global preference for how many repeats you want, but not for the "repeat on button hold". It makes no sense. I would love a default setting to turn off the repeat on hold.

Hi Roger for question two I do something very similar with my favorite channel macros. I have three satellite DVR's that all are pointed to with various macros depending on who the user is. These macros are outlined by genre and contained on a single device called channels. If one of my kids selects a channel on their DVR, I want the buttons on the remote to correspond to their DVR.

I have set up a variable for each of the DVRs that is pointed to depending on which channel icon is pushed. So in the case of a kids channel I would indicate that the other two DVR's were false and the kids DVR was true. Then on the hard buttons on the remote, I have three nested if statements that depending on which DVR variable state is true will alias the appropriate button on the DVR.

Hope that helps

Cheers

Pete

YES!!! and its been very annoying, thanks for the tip. i though my PVR was just recieving the commands sparatically and was blaming it on the PVR. so this fixed that problem but leads to the next, i can now no longer hold down a button for repeated presses.....???

I programmed an IF command that checks an activity variable I've set. First, create variables for your activities, such as Activity_DVD, Activity_TV, Activity_CD, or whatever. When I press 'Watch a DVD' the macro includes a variable that sets Activity_DVD=True. I then use the IF command to check the state of that variable. If I go back to Watch or Listen, then try to return to 'Watch a DVD', it checks to see if Activity_DVD=True. If it is True, then it just jumps to the correct page. If it's False, then it runs the normal startup macro for watching a DVD. The OFF command for every activity sets its activity variable false. That is, if I press OFF from the pages that used to Watch a DVD, then one of the macro commands is to set the DVD activity to false.

From the Watch page, Watch a DVD would go something like this:

IF [UI Var[Activity_DVD], True]
JUMP[Watch DVD/Page 1]
ELSE
UI Var[Activity_DVD], True]
.
.
turn on / setup sequence for needed devices
.
.
JUMP [Watch DVD/Page 1]

On the OFF button, include this:
UI Var[Activity_DVD], False]

...to reset the variable to the proper state.


Hope that helps.

Jeff says that problem is fixed in the latest live update.