[voip-ninja]

Well, it's worth pointing out (I guess) that there are several MS/Media-Center/Xbox remotes... and they don't all work natively with either OE or XBMC. The Harmony One itself isn't doing anything special, you just tell it which device you have and it is programmed with those IR frequencies and key-presses.

If it helps you out, I've programmed the Harmony One with both the "MS Keyboard" remote profile and the "Media Center PC" profile. Each of these profiles offers different keys that OE will recognize with the CIR USB IR... for example, the Media Center PC profile allows for power on and off (although under Windows all it does is a power suspend, it does do a real power on/off with OE).

My "XBMC" device profile has buttons from both devices programmed, so I can do things like get the "info" or "debug" window up in OE very easily.

You can get a Harmony remote pretty cheap, rather than trying a grab-bag of 3rd party remotes that may or may not work properly maybe you should just pick up a Harmony from Amazon. You can get one for $50 or so and then you also have the advantage of having a remote that can work your TV, cablebox/DVR, AVR, etc.

Well, I exchanged the Xbox remote for a Rebuf Harmony 900.. so I'll try that out a few days I suppose, and see if I can get it to do what I need.

I have Media Center PC 2 (MicrosoftMCE Keyboard)
as well as
Media Center PC (MicrosoftWindows Media Center SE)

Neither of which do anything at all with my OpenELEC haswell nuc.

As soon as I plug in the 15$ remote IR and that, it works just fine. I don't know what the hell I'm doing wrong, but it just doesn't seem to work at all.

Beginning to think that the consumer IR only probably works in Windows. Can't be sure about that. Tried XBMCbuntu, no luck there.

update: I found out that using Windows Media Center turns on the NUC it just doesn't do anything else.

I'm new to this remote, but once everything is on, i should be able to use the directional controls to utilize it right? I feel like this is definitely user error at this point, hopefully.

Yes, once the NUC is up on OE the remote should handle the directional key-presses, etc. There is however more than one model of Windows Media Center remote, you might have one that doesn't have native XBMC support. You will probably have more success when you get the Harmony. For my Harmony setup I use the Media Center remote profile so that I can power the PC on and off and use it for directional keypresses. I then use the MS keyboard buttons that I want and map those in to specific buttons on the Harmony. It works quite well other than OE in general being a little bit laggy in IR response compared to running Windows on the same machine.