Disadvantages of all according to URC: Your processing power is compromised (I think that is nonsense but that is the trainer's line).

Disadvantage of all general: If you are taking over a job from someone who doesn't know what a labeler is, it is nice if they did port routing so you know what goes to what (especially if a flasher goes bad or if the MRF is in a rack where all the wires are zip-tied along the side of the rack, etc.).

A timely thread for me too, thanks all. But I'm unclear on the resolution. If you have some commands that are set to blast out of all ports and some directed at particular ports and they are interspersed in a macro, do you need to:

- add an artificial delay after any command that is directed at a particular port (other than the final command of course)

or

- add an artificial dealy after before any command that is directed at a particular port (other than the first command of course)

or

- both of the above?

Or is there some other approach people are suggesting?

And is the consensus that you need delays of at least 0.3 seconds each? That could noticeably slow things up if you string together a 10 step macros.

Two more related questions:

- When using the mx-980 with an mrf-300, what's the reason that people tend to set up it up so that it outputs both IR and RF? I would have thought that so long as you have it output RF the mrf-300 will feed the right IR, right?

- If I am right that there's no reason to have the remote output both IR and RF, does that eliminate the problem? Do you need a small delay between commands if the remote is only outputting rf?

Bringing up this older topic because I'm running into this problem right now. I have assigned a port to each device and on the corresponding device page the commands get sent correctly but as soon as I attempt to call aliased commands from say, a system shutdown macro, the commands to each specific device do not fire. Any tracking variables used are updated correctly so I know the macro is being run through but the actual device commands do not. Again, all commands are aliased from the corresponding device pages so in theory it should be working correctly. Setting the IR ports to "ALL" fixes this. This is with a 980+350 combo.

I have tried the delays in between commands, even up to 2 seconds (as a test), but it still doesn't work. The only "fix" is to set output to "ALL". Is this a widely known problem and is URC doing anything to address it?

I guess it's not a huge deal but it somewhat defeats the purpose of port assignment, no?

Also, can I leave the individual device pages set to the corresponding port or do you need to set all devices (actual devices and activity pages, etc.) to "ALL"? I did the latter (set to ALL across the board) and it's working now but I'm wondering if I only need to do so for the pages that contain macros for multiple devices (e.g. page with the shutdown system macro).

One reason we set the tv for example for IR/RF is because the cleaning lady keeps knocking off the emitter on the tv and now nothing works. I always select ir/rf for devices in the room line of site so that the customer can get through the weekend with his cabinet doors open instead of me making a weekend service trip. That way I can spend more time in the woods killing deer!