I've finally bought a Harmony. Oh joy.

I've had a Harmony 895 (I think that's the model no) for a couple of year now. I rarely pick up my other remotes.

I have been using this for years

I've had several universal remotes over the past few years and none came close to the Harmony 885. My only complaint with it was that the contacts in the remote and base unit are very delicate and eventually after about 5 years of regular, heavy use it just stopped charging. They were worn down, corroded, and recessed so they could no longer touch. I recently replaced it with a 785 which has much bigger, more robust contacts but is nowhere near as nice on the eye or hand.

But the convenience of the single remote is only part of it. The Harmonies are much less directional than proprietary remotes tend to be so they work from almost anywhere in the room, at virtually any angle.

Aside from the appalling desktop software the harmony's are in general great. I have a 1000 and it controls everything including my mac mini.

TomK,

Whilst I'm sure its nice to buy a new remote every few years its likely that Harmony would have replaced your charger for free had you asked (?). Harmony replaced mine free of charge about 3 yrs ago. Their email service is excellent. A year later my battery stopped recharging. They replaced that free too. (885 model).

They have the best after sales service ever (Naim is close though).

B

I am using a Harmony One together with the PS3 adapter. Fantastic piece of kit and so girlfriend friendly! I keep meaning to do a write up on it and post it.

Blueknowz,

I used to use one of these but haven't been able to reprogramme it since I moved away from a desktop computer with a serial port. I tried various different USB-serial adaptors but none worked on my laptop. How do you reprogramme yours?

Unfortunately, I just couldn't get a Harmony One to work my system despite umpteen phone calls to their help centre and I ended up returning it for a refund after they finally admitted it was incapable of doing what I needed.

The device wasn't flexible enough to cope with the macro to run nine or so separate events needed to switch on my A/V system, some of which require variable delays and multiple pulses.

The Harmony also was insufficiently powerful to work certain components reliably, which is a nightmare when SWMBO tries to watch the telly but something in the chain hasn't worked!

I now use a Philips Pronto which although expensive and a complicated device to program is totally flexible, has very powerful IR, and can present a friendly face to users.

quote:

Originally posted by Brucie:
TomK,

Whilst I'm sure its nice to buy a new remote every few years its likely that Harmony would have replaced your charger for free had you asked (?). Harmony replaced mine free of charge about 3 yrs ago. Their email service is excellent. A year later my battery stopped recharging. They replaced that free too. (885 model).

They have the best after sales service ever (Naim is close though).

B

Damn! Now you tell me
I had considered contacting them but went ahead and bought the new one on impulse. The 785 is not as nice as the 885 but the contacts and charger seem much more robust.

Richard ,I use a serial port connection on my PC/ Pronto Edit & Remote Control Central
And just adapt the files to my needs.

My laptop has a serial port as well, Toshiba Satellite P200-1EE
Sorry I could not be any more help Richard......Jim

We had a (then) top of the line Harmony, 885 I believe. It was a disaster and for the money a rather poorly constructed device. Maybe I had a duffer. The software was particularly irksome. It was sold on and a replacement for the previous MX-850 rolled in, complete with RF, a feature that attracted me to the Harmony and worked about 60% of the time. When I see threads in forums praising the Harmony I wonder if they can possibly be talking about the same piece of shit that I got lumbered with. Different strokes for different folks eh?

quote:

Originally posted by Tony Lockhart:
We used to have a Cambridge One multi remote back in the olden days, about 1997-2000, but haven't bothered since. Boy do I wish I'd bought one of these little bundles of excellence ages ago.
It's a Harmony One, ideal for us, and it made me smile to see Naim on the listings of devices.

Aaaah.

Tony

Good choice Tony! Have lived happily with the One for over a year and no complaints.

I have a few comments. One, no remote is perfect, but my experience is that the One's help button works very well when some device doesn't react, or react properly to the first IR spray.

Two, if you have any line of sight issues, there a number of IR repeaters that work well. I am using the Microsmith Hotlink product because all of my A/V gear is in a closet in a room behind my wall-mounted panel. High WAF when you do this!

Third, the activites-orientation of the One has been perfect for training my better half to use the A/V setup. Whenever our neighbors or Goddaughter come over with their kids, she shows off her One abilities by getting Sesame Street videos going. Works a treat!

Hook

Harry the desktop software is something else it really is, but all in all the harmony 1000 has been fantastic for me.

quote:

Originally posted by garyi:
Harry the desktop software is something else it really is, but all in all the harmony 1000 has been fantastic for me.

This would be the predecessor of the 1100 with a square form factor? I must admit it comes over as tempting but once bitten... Can I ask - is it task orientated? One of the things that pissed me off with my previous dip into Harmony Land was that I never succeeded in reliably operating a component, it was all "watch a DVD" or "listen to music" which involved a series of commands that never quite set everything up correctly. I'd flick from eg. SAT to DVD and it would switch the telly off, or something equally daft. The MX-800 can easily be set to be task orientated or flick between components, the latter suiting my brain best. As you say, trying to do anything via the clunky software was a joke and this was the biggest killer of the relationship. I wouldn't be surprised if it's better sorted now. maybe I adopted too early. It must be a good 4-5 years ago.

It runs along the same premise, i.e. watch DVD. and It does rely on the understanding the IT is the device that controls devices. i.e. if you decide to turn off the TV manually then the harmony will believe it is still on. I don't suppose its any different for other such remotes.

FWIW I had an 885 back when the software was *really bad* but it has improved dramatically. Yes one still needs a masterclass in using it and the amount of confirmations required is still a joke. But once set I have to say all in all its been rock solid and I have a fair amount of stuff here. Including mac mini running XBMC which has a hack to enable the harmony to offer up over 65 commands to the mini instead of the five or so offered by apple.

Interesting. Tanks for that. maybe next time I'll revisit it - as a possibility. I'm such a geek - I find these things difficult to resist even when I should know better. Plenty of life left in the old MX I expect.

I got the 1000 at crack convertors for 60 quid looked like it had never been used, so I am a little rosy tinted, I might have been a bit non plussed at its original sell price.

If you wouldn’t mind indulging me, perhaps you could comment on the following scenario, which had me pulling my hair out last time round:

Watch DVD. Press button, telly comes on, input selected, DVD player starts up. Great. I then want to watch Sat. Press the button and the first thing that happens is an IR signal is sent to the telly to switch on, which switches it off. I can omit telly switch on from the activities macros to prevent this from happening but I then need a way to switch it on. Somewhat moot in any case because if I flip from Sat back to Watch DVD it will turn the DVD player off.

User error?

Codes which toggle devices on and off are a bit of a pain. First, check if your particular TV also has discrete codes (i.e. separate codes for off and on). Many devices have both sorts.

The best way of setting this sort of thing up (and I'm assuming you can program your remote with macros) is to have separate "Watch" macros, e.g. Watch TV, Watch DVD etc., which will switch the devices on, set inputs etc., then set up a subroutine linked from your device control screen that switches between inputs etc.

Sounds a bit complicated, but here's an example -

"Watch DVD" button - switch on TV, select input, switch on DVD player, set surround sound input, jump to DVD control screen.

On DVD control screen, 'to TV' button, select input, select surround sound input, switch on satellite, jump to TV/Satellite control screen.

In my experience it's best to have each "Watch" button switch everything on, with subroutines to jump between devices & their control screens, then after your viewing session have an "Everything Off" button.

The only device I've got that hasn't got discrete on/off codes is my Naim AV2 Processor! (shame on you Naim...) so I just leave it on.

Thank you for taking the time. As always, the devil is in the detail. Looking through the 1100 manual I see that it's configured so that from any activity you can get through to a device screen. That's a step in the right direction if it works smoothly. You could do something similar with the 85 whateveritwas but it never worked seamlessly and equipment would start switching on and off. I guess an up front investment in a good long scoping session and a clear idea of all the permutations is required. Thanks again.

The only marco I have on the Pronto is for SWMBO to watch a DVD, otherwise I scroll through the Devices Simples!

I'm sitting here a little confused. My Harmony 895 has various "activities" set up : Watch Oppo, DVD recorder, Play XBox360, Listen to to CDs etc etc.

When I go from one activity to another the appropriate boxes switch on or off. My TV NEVER switches off when I go from one TV related activity to another, but does switch off if I decide to "Listen to CDs", and will switch on again if I go back to a TV related activity. What's the problem that others here seem to be having?

The only real problems I have had with the Harmony software are that I can't use the autostart facility when I want to change my Harmony settings, but have to go via the website, and I had to get their technicians to do the needful so that I could use two Sony DVD recorders without their commands switching the wrong recorder.

Also, on the rare occasions that I want to do something with an individual piece of equipment which isn't on the main screen as set by the appropriate "activity", then I just press devices, go to the appropriate device, do what I want to do, then press the activities button, select the activity am currently using, and all is restored for me to use again. Nothing is inappropriately switched off.

Don't know what I did to get it working properly, but it is!

quote:

Originally posted by Dr John William Martin:
When I go from one activity to another the appropriate boxes switch on or off. My TV NEVER switches off when I go from one TV related activity to another, but does switch off if I decide to "Listen to CDs", and will switch on again if I go back to a TV related activity. What's the problem that others here seem to be having?

This is what I was after but I never managed to configure the remote to behave accordingly. It just struck me as a clunky, ill conceived brick. Could be that after six months I still didn't have the necessary intelligence to set it up properly. Could be the remote I had was a duffer. Either way it put me off big time but it appears that since then the functionality and particularly the software have been developed.

John, Harry You could always try Remote Control Central Harmony1000