Harmony 880 Remote
Posted by Kyle Heon Thu, 14 Sep 2006 00:19:01 GMT
So I’ve wanted a decent universal remote for quite awhile now and have been watching the Harmony line a bit. The 880 was in my price range and the other day I found it for $159.99, which is nearly $90 cheaper then I could find it anywhere else. Given that this is a three check month I ordered it with free shipping and had the remote within a couple days—not bad for free shipping if you ask me.
So how do I like it? Well, I’m torn. It is definetly pretty cool looking, with it’s Tivo like look and feel but with a rechargable lithium batter, a blue glow backlight that turns on automatically when you pick up the remote and tilt it ever so slightly.
Programming it however hasn’t been quite as easy as I’d like. The Harmony website that you use to program the remote is pretty unfriendly, and I’m a savvy computer user (programmer by trade for anyone new to the site). I’ve managed to work through most of my problems though but it’s been a timely process. Part of my pain has been with my new Samsung televion. The pain centers around automatically changing the televisions selected input and how Samsung does this. You have to hit “menu” on the controller, then select the “input” section and cycle up/down to the one you want. Alternatively you can cycle through them by clicking the “source” button. This is pretty tricky to program into the Harmony remote.
Researching things online lead me down the path of using the discrete IR codes for the required inputs. Another part of the problem is that many of the input codes in the Harmony database are wrong so fixing these was the first task. For instance, someone pointed out that Component 1 was actually Component 2 in the database. I tested this and it was in fact which made fixing the problem I had with my “Play a DVD” activity quick and easy.
Last night I hooked up the Xbox, PS2, and VCR but have not yet setup the remote. I’ll get around to that later this week[end]. We bought a new upconvert dvd player (Sony 5-disc model) and adding this was pretty easy, just removed my old one and added this new model and then configured it for the “Play a DVD” activity.
The Harmony 880 remote employes the concept of an Activity, something such as “Watch TV”, “Play a DVD”, etc where you can string together what is in essence a macro. For instance, my “Watch TV” activity ensures the following:
- Samsung TV is on
- COMCAST PVR is on
- Sony Receiver is on
- Samsung TV input is set to HDMI1
- COMCAST PVR input is set to Tuner
- Sony Receiver input is set to TV/SAT
The remote also has the ability to keep track of when a device is on so that it doesn’t get shut off by choosing a new activity. To shut down for the night you can click the “Off” button and it powers things down one at a time.
I still have some timing issues from time to time but overall it’s been working pretty well.