[Vulture1162]

Hello Everyone,

Been using XBMC for a few years now but haven't done more than the standard stuff. I recently got my Harmony universal remote to work with the system and it works great thanks to a MCE plugin! The question I have is to make the universal remote more advance. Currently to browse to a plugin I have to either go to Video's/Music and go to their Add-on's and select the plugin from there. Is there a way to custom map Keyboard shortcuts, possibly using the Keyboard.xml file to individual plug-in's so as I can map those to specific button's on my Harmony remote?

I just have this picture in my head of being able to push the command on my remote to launch Youtube and have it pop up instantly. This would make XBMC 10x easier to use for my non-tech friends and family when they visit. Thanks for any support

[artrafael]

You can bring up your list of Video Add-ons, highlight YouTube, open its context menu ("c" on keyboard or right mouse click), and select "Add to favourites". Next, look in your favourites.xml file located in your userdata (wiki) directory and you should see a statement similar to this at the bottom of the file:

Code:

<favourite name="YouTube" thumb="/home/art/.xbmc/addons/plugin.video.youtube/icon.png">ActivateWindow(10025,&quot;plugin://plugin.video.youtube&quot;)</favourite>

This reveals the command you need to launch the YouTube add-on, which you can then use to map to a remote control button (the stuff in-between the <favourite ...> and </favourite> tags).

Create (or add to) a custom keyboard.xml file located in your userdata (wiki)/keymaps/ directory with the following contents:

Code:

<keymap>
  <global>
    <keyboard>
      <some-button>ActivateWindow(10025,&quot;plugin://plugin.video.youtube&quot;)</some-button>
    </keyboard>
  </global>
</keymap>

[Vulture1162]

That worked out perfectly!!

I had to play with the functions a bit as certain key combinations didn't work (like using #'s instead of letters). Thanks for the support this really helped make my media center useful to non-techies!

[artrafael]

Glad it worked out for you! You can use the same technique to launch your other favorite add-ons... until you run out of available buttons on your remote

[Yukonhijack]

That worked out perfectly!!

I had to play with the functions a bit as certain key combinations didn't work (like using #'s instead of letters). Thanks for the support this really helped make my media center useful to non-techies!

Do you mind if I ask which Harmony button you bound that command to?

[Vulture1162]

How I have it setup now is i'm using the Harmony 880, but it should work for all of them. Under the software you can assign additional buttons to the main menu screen. So using the Microsoft Windows Media Center SE I was able to assign custom commands for the Ctrl+w, Ctrl+x, Ctrl+z, etc... These I custom labeled to Pandora, Youtube, Hulu, XBMCFlix, etc... So now when my GF uses my computer she can just hit the Pandora button and go straight to our playlists. You can map the functionally to almost anything if you wanted. With nicer remotes I'm sure you could even include a picture if you wanted!

Check out the new Harmony Touch remote, that would be pretty awesome I'm sure!