I'm a complete noob at this and managed to get it all working nicely. I wanted to post exactly what I did in the interest of (hopefully) helping others.
I'm running Windows 7 Home Premium 64 bit, running XBMC stable build set up as portable. I'm using the default XBMC skin, but have tried a few other skins and the remote works fine. My remote is a Harmony One.
Here's a link to the MCE remote that I bought:
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vie...K:MEWNX:IT
It cost me US $28.93 delivered. You could do it with the receiver only - I wanted the remote in case I needed to learn any commands with the Harmony One, but didn't understand how XBMC receives commands when I bought it. What's important is that your reveiver is MCE compatible. I had previously tried a very cheap China Vision remote from Amazon that was very limiting.
Windows recognized the receiver and installed drivers without any help.
In the Harmony Software when adding the device select Media Center Computer -> Microsoft (Manufacturer) and type in "Microsoft MCE Keyboard". This will give you access to regular keys (qwerty).
My activity is called "Listen to PC" and includes the TV, receiver and media center PC. The Harmony One sets the right input on the TV and receiver, uses the receiver for volume control and gives access to make the keys on the remote deliver keystrokes to XBMC.
The key to getting everything working is the keyboard.xml file, in my case (portable) it's in the XBMC install directory tree. Open it up and you will see all of the functions and the associated key presses. Just program the keys on your Harmony to deliver the appropriate keypress - for example fast forward is f, rewind is r, etc.. You can also modify the various keys in the keyboard.xml file, but I saw no need to mess with it at all.
You can test the functions by just hitting the associated keys on your regular keyboard and watching how XBMC reacts. Once you tell the Harmony to send that key the result is exactly the same.
I set up a few custom buttons also. My PC can be awoken from sleep with the space bar, so I have a "Wake Up" key that does that. Also using Danielocean's excellent instructions here http://forum.xbmc.org/showpost.php?p=406...stcount=34 to program F7 to start XBMC I have a "Start XBMC" button. I have a "Fullscreen Toggle" button that sends "tab" and works great for that.
I'm very happy with the way this all works now and there are many more possibilities.
For anybody that needs help with Harmony programming in general there are a lot of resources on the web. Logitech has a forum with some very knowledgable folks that are willing to help. I found the best way to learn it was to dive in, it's incredibly powerful, but not all that complex.
Having the ability for the remote to deliver keystrokes to XBMC makes pretty much anything possible!
I'm running Windows 7 Home Premium 64 bit, running XBMC stable build set up as portable. I'm using the default XBMC skin, but have tried a few other skins and the remote works fine. My remote is a Harmony One.
Here's a link to the MCE remote that I bought:
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vie...K:MEWNX:IT
It cost me US $28.93 delivered. You could do it with the receiver only - I wanted the remote in case I needed to learn any commands with the Harmony One, but didn't understand how XBMC receives commands when I bought it. What's important is that your reveiver is MCE compatible. I had previously tried a very cheap China Vision remote from Amazon that was very limiting.
Windows recognized the receiver and installed drivers without any help.
In the Harmony Software when adding the device select Media Center Computer -> Microsoft (Manufacturer) and type in "Microsoft MCE Keyboard". This will give you access to regular keys (qwerty).
My activity is called "Listen to PC" and includes the TV, receiver and media center PC. The Harmony One sets the right input on the TV and receiver, uses the receiver for volume control and gives access to make the keys on the remote deliver keystrokes to XBMC.
The key to getting everything working is the keyboard.xml file, in my case (portable) it's in the XBMC install directory tree. Open it up and you will see all of the functions and the associated key presses. Just program the keys on your Harmony to deliver the appropriate keypress - for example fast forward is f, rewind is r, etc.. You can also modify the various keys in the keyboard.xml file, but I saw no need to mess with it at all.
You can test the functions by just hitting the associated keys on your regular keyboard and watching how XBMC reacts. Once you tell the Harmony to send that key the result is exactly the same.
I set up a few custom buttons also. My PC can be awoken from sleep with the space bar, so I have a "Wake Up" key that does that. Also using Danielocean's excellent instructions here http://forum.xbmc.org/showpost.php?p=406...stcount=34 to program F7 to start XBMC I have a "Start XBMC" button. I have a "Fullscreen Toggle" button that sends "tab" and works great for that.
I'm very happy with the way this all works now and there are many more possibilities.
For anybody that needs help with Harmony programming in general there are a lot of resources on the web. Logitech has a forum with some very knowledgable folks that are willing to help. I found the best way to learn it was to dive in, it's incredibly powerful, but not all that complex.
Having the ability for the remote to deliver keystrokes to XBMC makes pretty much anything possible!
