[Bermundo]

Hello. I'm a new Kodi user, having installed Kodi less than month ago, and I love it, for the richness of media control it provides.

I'm in the process of migrating from DVR/BD world to an HTPC system, with devices as listed below. The two basic criteria I had when choosing resources were:

1. The system must be compatible with CD/DVD/BD media: the ability to easily select menus, chapters and forward/backward speeds. My wife works in the dance world where many discs have up to 80 chapters, and also, having good control of playback speed is important.

I chose Kodi over other software because it seemed to be the only package that handles DVDs well. I know that Kodi's players don't have as much playing-speed flexibility as I need, but hopefully other players or future developments will address that. Of course, the rest of Kodi's features, the other 90% of it, say, are simply a bonus and will eventually be fully utilized. Thanks to all of Kodi's many devlopers for this very rich package.

2. The system must be easily controlled by my standard in-house remote control, Sony RM-VL610 (or equivalent), as this particular IR control is in every room of my house and works identically in each room. Its distinguishing features are:
a) Can control 8 devices through programming and learning;
b) Nicely sized 62-button unit whose buttons are laid out so well that they're easily memorized and found easily in the dark!!! Vital for the bedroom and for older media lovers who don't see close-up as well as they used to. This requirement rules out all softkey solutions (phone, Harmony, ...)
c) Has 10 playback speed control buttons. ONLY Sony & Pioneer DVD remote controls have sufficient physical buttons to properly control playback speed, and every button is vitally important: Play, Pause, Stop, Record, Fast Forward, Fast Reverse, Skip Forward (Next Chapter), Skip Backward, Instant Forward (Frame Advance/Slow Play, also Progressive Advance i.e. Pioneer CM Skip - thought I'd died and gone to heaven), Instant Back. The rest of the industry just never gets (or cares?) how important full speed control is.

So this requirement effectively eliminates every remote control listed in the Kodi Remote Controls section. I'm left with a big hole: how do I program a remote control in Windows 7 that is NOT listed on the Kodi Remote Controls page? I have spent probably a 100 hours or more looking at every Kodi and other web page for a solution. Kodi says:
"In XBMC/Kodi the primary environment was designed for the living room (10-foot interface) and controlling it only with a remote control. While XBMC/Kodi does support mouse, keyboard, and even touch controls, the main method of controlling XBMC/Kodi is designed around is the typical remote."

Please can you help? How do I implement a driver/keymap/... in Windows, Kodi, EventGhost, or IntelliRemote to detect an arbitrary IR remote and map it to a device in Kodi. I am able to control Kodi beautifully with a wireless keyboard, but that is not a handy remote control. I am really frustrated by this situation, as I'm not an expert in the Windows HID device world, and current Kodi documentation does not appear to cover this situation.

I'd be happy to document this missing hole in Remote Controls when a solution is found. Thank-you.

P.S. Doesn't seem to be a proper category in Kodi.tv for Remote Control probs. I hope I put this in the right subject area.

Kodi 14.0 RC3
OS: Windows 7 Pro x64 SP1
HTPC: Intel NUC D54250WYKH, Intel Core i5-4250U, 8GB RAM
Infrared: Nuvoton SIO CIR device, driver v2.7.1005
Microsoft eHome Infrared Transceiver driver
Bluetooth: ProSet dual-band AC-7269, v17.1.0 s/w & driver
Sony PS3 Bluetooth/IR Remote Control paired.
Media server: QNAP Turbo TS-469L, 8TB , on Gbit LAN.

[baijuxavior]

Buy Flirc. It can be programmed to work with any remote control. I'm using one and it is great to use. If you already have a mce ir receiver then you can use eventghost.

[nickr]

I endorse flirc for this. However another option would be to set it as a microsoft mce remote and use a standard mce receiver. Flirc is lkely to be more flexible, you have a lot of buttons and I am not sure mce has an equivalent for all of them.

Nice remote, just read some reviews.

[Bermundo]

Thanks baiju and nickr for the "Flirc" suggestion - it sounds like an ideal solution. I've bought and now have in my possession two "Flirc"s: one I'm about to setup with the existing Win 7 NUC in my main viewing area and the second I'm reserving for a later Raspberry Pi in the bedroom. I'll report back here when my set-up is going (or not - I see there are quite a few issues listed currently on the Flirc web pages. Fingers crossed.)

Nick, I appreciate your comments regarding mimicking a Microsoft MCE device. Unfortunately, one of the downsides of my relying on the Sony RM-VL610 universal remote to control Kodi is that it is an OLD control - its code database lists all kinds of Cassette, MiniDisc and VCR devices, for example, but NO devices of the Media Centre ilk. I suspect the 610 pre-dates MCE. I could buy a cheap MCE IR control and use it to program the RM-VL610, but I think I'll start presetting the 610 as a Sony DVR and use it with the Flirc, adding more buttons to fill out the Kodi set of commands.

The newer Sony RM-VLZ620 control (released in 2010) adds BluRay to its database list, but still NO Media devices. I suspect Sony refuses to acknowledge Microsoft devices or perhaps its IR protocols incompatible with Sony's.

Thanks again for your quick assistance - much appreciated.

[popcornmix]

Thanks baiju and nickr for the "Flirc" suggestion - it sounds like an ideal solution. I've bought and now have in my possession two "Flirc"s: one I'm about to setup with the existing Win 7 NUC in my main viewing area and the second I'm reserving for a later Raspberry Pi in the bedroom. I'll report back here when my set-up is going (or not - I see there are quite a few issues listed currently on the Flirc web pages. Fingers crossed.)

I played with an FLIRC on a Pi and it worked well.

[crawfish]

The RM-VL610 is my favorite remote as well. I have two in service and have collected three spares as the occasional new one has shown up on eBay. I would avoid the RM-VLZ620 you mentioned as the layout is worse, and from reviews, the learning process has been derped and requires additional button presses for each and every learn operation. I have a nice, seamless setup with WMC, Kodi, and various other devices. When I launch WMC with the remote, Kodi (and any other defined "multimedia program") automatically closes and vice versa, I have remote macros to start programs and switch inputs on my TV and AVR, etc.

Briefly, I use my original Microsoft MCE remote to teach my RM-VL610 the IR codes it has buttons for. For the 25 codes I use that do not have buttons on the MCE remote, I use a JP1 remote to get them into the Sony. I use ReportMappingTable to map the codes to F13-F24 key combinations. Then I have Autohotkey "modules" for Kodi, WMC, etc that catch those keys when one of those programs has the focus and forwards the program-specific shortcut keys to it. There are a couple of nice advantages to using F13-F24. Significantly, I don't have any programs that use F13-F24, which allows me to eat them when an unsupported program has the focus, removing any possibility of accidentally sending a valid key combination to a random program that has the focus, something you will do if you ever use a multimedia program in windowed mode while browsing the web or whatever. Also, by not sending WM_APPCOMMAND messages as is the default, I can leave iTunes open without it stealing various keys like Pause, Skip Forward, etc, something I'm told Chrome also does if a certain common extension is enabled.

I described what I do here in more detail here, where I gave a cut-down but fully working example focused on the iTunes/Chrome issue:

http://www.thegreenbutton.tv/forums/view...f=7&t=7555

The program launcher/closer code is here (and updated in message 47 in that thread):

http://www.thegreenbutton.tv/forums/view...211#p32211

This one gives some additional examples of using AHK to send custom skip commands to WMC (see message 5 in that thread for even more):

http://www.thegreenbutton.tv/forums/view...852#p81852