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HDMI CEC - USB Adapter [Pulse-Eight]
#31
Maybe this has being asked before, I don`t know, so I tire.

As far as I can find out, this CEC adapter makes it possible to use only one of my TV/AVR/MCE remote to control this three things.
But is it possible to make it control my PVR if I change the input on my AVR?

Off course every component of the system has be CEC qualified.

If I change to input TV, the volume is still AVR, but my arrow keys, channel, OK and back for instance is for the PVR.... And so on.

Is this something doable?

Isn`t the producers of this product in this threed anymore.. Then I don`t think I want to order from them eater...
Petter :-)
Many thanks for all the effort YOU all do! THANKS! :-)
nVidia Shield TV (2015), Samsung QE75Q70R and Yamaha RX-V767
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#32
(2013-03-11, 01:21)pettergulbra Wrote: Maybe this has being asked before, I don`t know, so I tire.

As far as I can find out, this CEC adapter makes it possible to use only one of my TV/AVR/MCE remote to control this three things.
But is it possible to make it control my PVR if I change the input on my AVR?

Off course every component of the system has be CEC qualified.

If I change to input TV, the volume is still AVR, but my arrow keys, channel, OK and back for instance is for the PVR.... And so on.

Is this something doable?

Isn`t the producers of this product in this threed anymore.. Then I don`t think I want to order from them eater...


We are in the thread, (taking my XBMC dev hat off) you can email the support desk, [email protected] if you have a detailed question
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#33
I bought one of that and it worked almost out of the box, just a couple of quick settings to do. I like the device, it does its job. The problem is the configuration of remote keys. On the pulse-eight forum I found a couple of discussions on that topic and very little help from the company. The answers are to look this page of the xbmc website and that they are working on a wiki page for that, but is one year ago and still no documentation. Actually, I tried to create and customize keyboard.xml file, but with no success. My setup is xbmc 12.1 on a win7 machine and a samsung smart tv.

My first try:

Code:
<keymap>
  <global>
    <remote>
      <return>back</return>
      <exit>XBMC.ActivateWindow(Home)</exit>
      <red>back</red>
      <green>back</green>
      <yellow>back</yellow>
      <blue>back</blue>
    </remote>
  </global>

Unsuccessful, the log says:

Code:
14:43:00 T:8164    INFO: Loading special://xbmc/system/keymaps/keyboard.xml
14:43:00 T:8164    INFO: Loading special://xbmc/system/keymaps/mouse.xml
14:43:00 T:8164    INFO: Loading special://xbmc/system/keymaps/remote.xml
14:43:00 T:8164    INFO: Loading special://masterprofile/keymaps/keyboard.xml
14:43:00 T:8164   ERROR: Remote Translator: Can't find button return
14:43:00 T:8164   ERROR: Remote Translator: Can't find button exit

Furthermore, the red, green, yellow and blue keys do not execute the back action.

So, I tried this:

Code:
<keymap>
  <global>
    <keyboard>
      <91>back<91>
      <216>XBMC.ActivateWindow(Home)</216>
    </keyboard>
  </global>
</keymap>

And in this case the remote did not work at all.

Please add some documentation on how to remap the remote keys.
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#34
Im interested as well in the implementation of this device and how easily customizable any remote may be to work. This is a dumb question, however this device basically can be used as a substitute for the normal IR receiver/adapter directly from the HTPC, or will it still be needed?
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#35
@Madiusmax Yes, the device is a substitute of the normal IR receiver.

Well, after some testing I succeeded in customizing my remote. Once you get in on the technicality of the remote mapping (i.e. how to edit a xml file and what keyword to use) customization is very very very simple. I am astonished no documentation is available on the pulse eight website: I found a lot of people having trouble in this and very little help in the pulse eight forum. Basically, to customize the remote you just need to create a remote.xml file as below and put it in your keymap folder (the location of that folder depends on your OS, look here).

Code:
<keymap>
  <global>
    <remote>

      <remote_key_id>action_id</remote_key_id>

    </remote>
  </global>
</keymap>

When you will press the remote_key_id on your remote, the action_id will be performed by xbmc. The available actions are listed here, the remote_key_id depends on your remote. The difficult part is to find what remote_key_id is associate to what key on the remote. I did not find a complete list of remote_key_id, but I found several of them in a post on the pulse eight forum. I created the following remote.xml file.

Code:
<keymap>
  <global>
    <remote>
      <select>Notification(Keypress, You pressed ok!, 3)</select>
      <up>Notification(Keypress, You pressed up!, 3)</up>
      <down>Notification(Keypress, You pressed down!, 3)</down>
      <left>Notification(Keypress, You pressed left!, 3)</left>
      <right>Notification(Keypress, You pressed right!, 3)</right>
      
      <title>Notification(Keypress, You pressed option!, 3)</title>
      <back>Notification(Keypress, You pressed back!, 3)</back>
      <clear>Notification(Keypress, You pressed exit!, 3)</clear>
      
      <red>Notification(Keypress, You pressed red!, 3)</red>
      <green>Notification(Keypress, You pressed green!, 3)</green>
      <yellow>ShowSubtitles</yellow>
      <blue> NextSubtitle</blue>
      
      <one>Notification(Keypress, You pressed one!, 3)</one>
      <two>Notification(Keypress, You pressed two!, 3)</two>
      <three>Notification(Keypress, You pressed three!, 3)</three>
      <four>Notification(Keypress, You pressed four!, 3)</four>
      <five>Notification(Keypress, You pressed five!, 3)</five>
      <six>Notification(Keypress, You pressed six!, 3)</six>
      <seven>Notification(Keypress, You pressed seven!, 3)</seven>
      <eight>Notification(Keypress, You pressed eight!, 3)</eight>
      <nine>Notification(Keypress, You pressed nine!, 3)</nine>
      <zero>Notification(Keypress, You pressed zero!, 3)</zero>
      
      <play>Notification(Keypress, You pressed play!, 3)</play>
      <stop>Notification(Keypress, You pressed stop!, 3)</stop>
      <pause>Notification(Keypress, You pressed pause!, 3)</pause>
      <skipminus>Notification(Keypress, You pressed rewind!, 3)</skipminus>
      <skipplus>Notification(Keypress, You pressed fast forward!, 3)</skipplus>
      <record>Notification(Keypress, You pressed fast record!, 3)</record>
      
      <pageplus>Notification(Keypress, You pressed pageup!, 3)</pageplus>
      <pageminus>Notification(Keypress, You pressed pagedown!, 3)</pageminus>
      
      <teletext>Notification(Keypress, You pressed teletext!, 3)</teletext>
      <subtitle>Notification(Keypress, You pressed subtitle!, 3)</subtitle>
      <guide>Notification(Keypress, You pressed guide!, 3)</guide>

    </remote>
  </global>
</keymap>

Then I started xbmc and proceeded tentatively by pressing all the keys on my remote and took note what key triggered the notification. You will find that some "bindings" are intuitive and other not: on my samsung the red key is correctly mapped, but the teletext is mapped to a key called "pre-ch" not to the teletext key. Once I found out what keyword to use, I mapped them to my favourite actions.
Please note that this is a very basic configuration. You can fine tune your remote using a window-based approach (i.e. the same key can have a different behaviour depending on what screen you are, home, video library, tv show library etc.) as explained here. Furthermore you can trigger more actions using built-in functions and built-in controls. For instance, when I am in the video library I want to toggle between all and unwatched movies pressing the red button on my remote. To do that I added the lines below in my remote.xml file.

Code:
<keymap>
  <global>
    <remote>

    </remote>
  </global>

  <VideoLibrary>
    <remote>
      <red>SendClick(14)</red> <!-- Toglle between unwatched and all movies -->
      <green>noop</green>
    </remote>
  </VideoLibrary>

</keymap>
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#36
2 weeks ago I buy a USB-CEC Adapter.

My Hardware:
HTPC: AsRock FM2A75-Pro4M
AMD A8-5600
8GB Ram
OpenElec 3.1.5
AVR: Onkyo TX-NR525
TV: Samsung LE46...

I' ve connected as follow: HTPC -> USB-CEC Adapter -> Onkyo -> Samsung TV
My TV don't find the HDMI signal from xbmc. it always shows me the Onkyo. Only if I conect the USB-CEC Adapter directly to the TV
it shows me "xbmc connetect" and I can use the Samsung Remote to control xbmc...
But if I conect via Onkyo nothing happens...

I have enabeld TV and AVR in the CEC Settings in xbmc and enabled HDMI RHID in the Onkyo settings.
I also use HDMI port 2 in the xbmc settings and conncet the Adapter in the HDMI port 2 of the Onkyo and the
Onkyo in the HDMI port 2 of the TV.

But I get no success...

any Ideas?

Edit:
I found in the xbmc-log some errors and warning... So I think there must something wrong...
Board: B85M-ITX
CPU: i3 4330
GPU: Geforce GTX 750ti
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#37
Hi guys,
I bought one of these things.

Firstly, there are no install instructions provided or on the Pulse eight website. Really freaking poor form.

Secondly, I can't get it to work. Running Win 7 64 bit.

When I plug it in, it's recognised immediately as 'USB-CEC adaptor" or something similar.

When I install the driver found on the Pulse Eight website, the name in Device Manager changes to "COM5" or similar - every time I reattempt the install the number increments by one.

Re-booting doesn't change this. It seems as if the device is not being recognised or the driver is not installing properly (no error messages though).

I tried installing the lib-cec package and it installs ok but the software doesn't work - I get an unhandled exception error and the program will open but never moves beyond 'initialising'.

Does anyone have any idea how to fix this? I've emailed Pulse Eight but given they can't even be bothered putting install instructions on their website I'm not too hopeful.
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#38
(2013-09-11, 01:02)cageracer Wrote: Hi guys,
I bought one of these things.

Firstly, there are no install instructions provided or on the Pulse eight website. Really freaking poor form.

Secondly, I can't get it to work. Running Win 7 64 bit.

When I plug it in, it's recognised immediately as 'USB-CEC adaptor" or something similar.

When I install the driver found on the Pulse Eight website, the name in Device Manager changes to "COM5" or similar - every time I reattempt the install the number increments by one.

Re-booting doesn't change this. It seems as if the device is not being recognised or the driver is not installing properly (no error messages though).

I tried installing the lib-cec package and it installs ok but the software doesn't work - I get an unhandled exception error and the program will open but never moves beyond 'initialising'.

Does anyone have any idea how to fix this? I've emailed Pulse Eight but given they can't even be bothered putting install instructions on their website I'm not too hopeful.

Support is now baked into XBMC itself, so you should literally be able to just plug it in to HDMI, then plug in the USB cord, and XBMC v12.2 should see it. No other installation or set up is required for basic operation, normally. It's mentioned on the install video and on the product page: http://www.pulse-eight.com/store/product...apter.aspx

Pulse-Eight has excellent customer support, so please contact them if you feel there is an issue with the unit itself (a bad part maybe?). I've met some of them in person and they're really good people. Of course, we can also try to help you here on the XBMC forums.
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#39
Yeah, plug and play didn't work.

As mentioned above, I don't think it's being picked up by Windows.

If I uninstall all the drivers etc, Device Manager goes back to showing it as 'USB CEC adaptor' but the firmware upgrade tool tells me there's no Pulse Eight USB-CEC adaptor installed.
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#40
Bump... anyone have any ideas? Day 3 of no response from Pulse Eight.
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#41
(2013-09-11, 02:48)Ned Scott Wrote: Support is now baked into XBMC itself,
I'm curious, how does the CEC implementation affect stuff like scheduled tv recording or automated scraping of epg data. Wouldn't the CEC adapter also turn on my tv and avr at night when XBMC wakes the pc from sleep?
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#42
I don't have a CEC adapter or CEC TV myself, so I don't know, but I would assume there's some way to tweak the behavior.
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#43
Hm, can anyone with a CEC adapter commend on this? Is there a way to prevent the TV/AVR from being turned on by the CEC adapter on scheduled tasks?
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#44
(2013-09-18, 16:48)TOMillr Wrote: Hm, can anyone with a CEC adapter commend on this? Is there a way to prevent the TV/AVR from being turned on by the CEC adapter on scheduled tasks?

CEC is a pain in this reguard. All HDMI devices in our house connect to a 4x4 switch in the closet and because of this we CANNOT relay it on in any room. If we, say, turn on a BR players in one room via a CEC command it will turn on other BR players in other rooms :/. What I have done at times is turn off CEC in all devices except in one of the rooms so I can at least use it somewhere.

There use to be places that hdmi cables that without CEC because, IIRC, the early versions of the spec did not include CEC. But I havent seen any for sale anywhere lately.

There is one trick you can try but I cannot confirm that it works since I never had a real need to try it. Supposedly, since DVI does not support CEC, if you get two coupled adapters and put them together, it will drop the CEC commands but still transmit video AND full audio (which pure DVI does not support) since the wires are the same:

Image
Image

Its worth looking into if it solves your problem.

Ernie
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#45
Well, that was dumb of me, Pluse Eight sells non-cec hdmi cables! Smile :

http://www.pulse-eight.com/store/product...cable.aspx

Another idea would be to block pin 13 with a piece of skinny tape at one of the ends since that is the CEC wire:

Image
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HDMI CEC - USB Adapter [Pulse-Eight]1