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Hello all, I just recently purchased a Flirc, a device I have had my eye on for a very long time, and so far I am very happy with it. It is currently connected to my Windows 10 HTPC running Plex. I wanted to share a small AHK script which will do three things to prevent me from having to grab the PC keyboard when plex is closed/minimized, the volume is muted, or I want to minimize plex when using Netflix (TV App). Launch plex if it is not already running, maximize it, then full screen it if needed (Record button on remote > CTRL+SHIFT+F1) Note: You may need to update the plex directory if yours is not "C:\Program Files\Plex\Plex Media Player\PlexMediaPlayer.exe" Unmute and set the volume 100% (Volume Up on remote > CTRL+SHIFT+F2) Minimize Plex to prevent the button pushes in Netflix from doing things in Plex (Netflix button on remote > CTRL+SHIFT+F3) I hope this helps and let me know if you have any questions! Cheers, Ned FlircAssistant.ahk

Looks awesome. Do you have pictures of finished version? I think I'll use your idea for my own hat (an RF controller for my home automation).

Yes, that's the idea. I see that this model supports 4 devices. Just select one that is not being used for anything right now and enter some setup code. For example on my OneForAll Simple 4 (URC 6440) I'm using a TV setup code 2051, which is for a Samsung TV (I don't have a Samsung TV) and it works really good with Flirc. To use a TV setup code on non-TV device on OFA remote, you first need to remap that device. It's easy to do: http://www.hifi-remote.com/wiki/index.php?title=Manual_Programming_-_9xx_Commands#.28992.29_Mode_Map_-_Re-define_a_Device_Button (this page contains codes that may not work on your remote or work in a different way than described, you should be careful if you want to try some of them - but if they're used correctly, they can be really helpful) As you can see, the 992 code can be used to remap device button. From what I can see, your remote doesn't have physical device buttons, but just a MODE button which switches selected device (indicated by LED at the top). Also the Magic button on your remote is the same as SETUP in the instruction. When the linked instruction says: "TAP the "from" DEVICE, (ie, the one you are copying from)", you need to use MODE button to select the device and press magic. So for example, if you want to use TV code on SAT device: 1. Hold Magic until you see 2 blinks 2. Enter code 992 using digit keys - if code is accepted you should get another 2 blinks 3. Using MODE button, select TV, press Magic 4. Using MODE button, select SAT, press Magic - the remote should confirm with 2 blinks After that you can try programming 2051 on the SAT key. Hold the Magic until you get 2 blinks, select SAT and enter 2051. You should get another 2 blinks as confirmation. If you get a single long blink, that means the remote didn't accept the command.

OneForAll remotes are universal remotes. You should have a user manual with yours, which explain how to program multiple different devices on it. Just select a different device button on your remote, program it to some different device than your TV and use that device to program your Flirc. If you want more information then you need to provide more info yourself. At least what is the exact model of the remote?

Download the latest GUI on the website, you should be prompted that there is an update. Macs are the only reliable machines at notifying of an available update. Let me know if that helps.

Are you trying to use your original TV remote you're using to also control your TV, to also control your HTPC? Does this remote has any universal remote control capability? If not then both your TV and HTPC (through Flirc) will see the same signal and react to it - both devices may execute some actions upon pressing some buttons.

Can you elaborate what this means: "It seems to be getting confused and not registering any keys properly... Other remotes that aren't connected to my TV work fine." Make sure you're on the latest firmware. We're on v4.4.2, and that has some fixes for sony remotes.

I'm using a service called travis to do building and releasing for me. Kinda new and it looks like I had an issue with the last release. I posted a new version this afternoon, should fix it. You'll need to grab the latest from the downloads section on the website. Very sorry for the inconvenience. Please let me know if all is well, we're on version 3.5.2 now.

You're a wizard Jason, remote works as intended now - I can't thank you enough! This sort of personalized support is next to nonexistent these days, I'll spread the good word bud.

I have a similar issue, my old flirc is on Firmware: v255.7.0 [0x020A07FF]. The GUI just says it's too new and won't update it. On ubuntu, the flirc_util is still bundled with the GUI. So what I did was: sudo chmod +x /usr/bin/flirc_util then you can run things like /usr/bin/flirc_util version That should tell you if it's working. Now to update it here is what I just had to do (what a pain in the balls). on Ubuntu: sudo apt-get remove flirc wget http://apt.flirc.tv/arch/x86_64/backup/flirc_1.2.6-1ubuntu1_amd64.deb sudo dpkg -i flirc_1.2.6-1ubuntu1_amd64.deb Flirc Then it updated the firmware to 2.6.0. Half way there! sudo apt-get remove flirc (gets rid of 1.2.6 version) sudo apt-get install flirc (re-installs 3.1.0) Flirc (now it prompts you to upgrade the firmware) I don't really enjoy having to scrape through archive.org to find the old repository to get an older version, kind of lame.

You need to remember, that for your Android device, Flirc is not an IR receiver, but a keyboard. You can only do what's available from a normal keyboard. The original remote on the other hand uses a different input channel - probably there's some kind of system app which interprets IR commands from the original remote and has deeper access to the system itself. The mouse feature is probably some kind of mouse emulation, where you switch the mode and then control the mouse pointer using direction keys. I think this is not possible in Android by using only a keyboard.

Hi, Flirc doesn't support mouse events so point 3 is not possible. As for the Home button, you can use FireTV controller in the Flirc GUI. It has an Android compatible Home button. Not sure about the power button though. You can try using wake/suspend button on the Media Keys controller.

From my old notes (to be verified) : 402 KEYCODE_CHANNEL_UP -> 156 102 403 KEYCODE_CHANNEL_DOWN -> 157 102 362 KEYCODE_GUIDE -> 141 102 I don't have anything for DVR

Don,t press up on your keyboard, do it on your remote control.

It should already do that. At least this should work in full keyboard controller but I think it's also true on others. Also you can display all recorded keys using a command line tool flirc_util. It's being installed together with Flirc GUI.

Fn key is not a modifier key in the same sense as other modifier keys like ctrl, alt, shift. Normal modifier keys are being processed on the USB host device (your computer or other device you connect the keyboard or Flirc to). When you press for example ctrl + F, the keyboard sends hid code for key F with modifier code for ctrl. Fn key is being processed on the controller which is built into the keyboard. When you press Fn + F12, the keyboard doesn't send hid code for F12 key anymore. It sends something that's dependant on the keyboard itself (different makers and models have different Fn functions on different keys). In your case, the Fn + F12 is the media key for Play/Pause. You can find it in Flirc GUI in Media Keys controller.

Don't use that instruction. It's not valid anymore. To get new instructions, go to https://flirc.tv/downloads, select Linux, accept terms and click on the link. It'll take you to the page with current instructions. Follow the one for Debian based system.

Some suggestions to make more script friendly, or just to improve security or missing things. flirc_util options: - format : does not asks for confirmation. It is dangerous. Any "delete all" action should ask for confirmation, if not overridden by a force switch. - keys : does not show which HID code is tied to the key index, if it is not recognized by the default listed keys (it always shows !). It should be anyhow a good practice to show the HID code used, even if the key is recognized. Perhaps by inserting a new column between "ID" and "key" columns, as the "key" column is of variable length and should be the last one. If this is to be implemented, then it would allow to "delete_index" the index bound to the shown HID code, when delete_index would have been fixed (it is not working right now). Scripts could retrieve the list of indexes bound to HID codes that way, and act properly. It should be a good idea, to have a "play_index" or "trigger_index" option, to emulate any recorded key in a script. That way, it should be possible to play a manually recorded special HID code (with record_api), and see if it works as it should, in any application that is receiving that special HID code. And everything without the remote. Keyboard layouts in GUI, do not allow for any special HID codes to be recorded (as numpad keys, for example). So you can emulate a numpad without a numpad in scripting. Inhibit the triggering of the newly recorded key, for, let's say, 1 second (put the FLIRC to sleep?). That way the computer may not sleep itself, just after recording the sleep command, which is annoying. And helps avoiding any side effects, by triggering the key, in the "recording environment" (Alt+F4 should be annoying too, in a Windows environment, as it closes the window). May be it is a side effect, as interkey_delay is not working, and I get lots of double keypresses with FLIRC. Keep the good work going on. It really is very valuable.

Did you use an Windows MCE remote profile on the Harmony? If yes then either don't use it (or any other RC5 or RC6 ones) or you need to record each remote button twice. RC5/6 protocols have a toggle bit which changes for each consecutive button press making the signal seen by the Flirc different.

Hi, Flirc basically works like a keyboard. You teach it by selecting a keyboard key or key combination (with modifiers) and assign it to a button on a remote, by pressing the button. It should work with most remotes but some may cause problems. Flirc is "tuned" to remotes which use 38 kHz carrier frequency. This frequency is used by most consumer appliances' remotes. It won't work properly with remotes which use frequencies too far from that, like some MCE remotes working at 50-something kHz for example. Also there are many different IR protocols. Some work better than others and some may be unusable. For example many settop boxes (like cable boxes) use strange proprietary protocols that don't work well with Flirc. I think the best solution is to look for a universal remote that lay good in your hand. You can then switch device profiles and test which works best for you. My personal preference is to use a device profile which uses one of the NEC family protocols (preferably NECx1 or NECx2). For example LG uses NEC protocols (NEC1 for TVs, NECx1 for soundbars/sound systems). Also Samsung uses NEC for some TVs. I don't know what Panasonic uses but @jason also recommends that brand. I don't recommend Philips or MCE as these are RC5/RC6 based. These protocols have toggle bit that changes on each key press. This means you'd need to record each remote button twice. I'm using AllForOne Simple 4 remote (URC-6440). It's really nice universal remote and the price is really good. It's 4-device by default, but there's a possibility to upgrade it to 12-device one using custom firmware (really easy to install and fully reversible). The custom firmware also adds a lot of features. There's also a community developed PC software (for Windows, Mac and Linux!) that allows you to configure the remote whatever you want (the remote has microUSB port to connect to PC). If you can learn something about this and other remotes from the same manufacturer, you can go to http://hifi-remote.com/forums/. It's a community forum focused on providing support and extra features for this remotes. You can also go the Logitech Harmony way. There're even ready to use Flirc profiles in the Harmony software which are supported by Flirc without any programming. They do not give you 100% of functionality out of a box. Rather something like a quick start. I don't have Harmony so I can't tell you much about them.

In case anybody is interested, I have figured out how to turn off the Shield TV with Harmony 650+Flirc (or more precisely, put the Shield TV to sleep.) Yes, I'm THAT OCD about keeping my power bill down (not to mention keeping my house cooler in Phoenix summers.) What you'll want to do is tell your Harmony that in fact you do want to control the power of your Shield TV, and then set the Flirc to recognize your profile's power off button. Different profiles have different defaults in this regard, and I know people use different ones, so I'm just going to tell you how I configured mine: 1. I used DanVM's instructions (found here), only I used Flirc XBMC profile (when I chose it, MyHarmony called it Flirc Kodi) as my beginning template and renamed it to Shield TV. 2. In the MyHarmony application, Under Devices > Change Device Settings > Power Settings > Next > I want to turn off this device when not in use. > I press the same button for on and for off > Next > +Add Command > Under the dropdown menu, select PowerOff > Leave everything else default and click Finish 3. Open the Flirc application > Controllers > Media Keys > click the power icon button. 4. On your Harmony remote's LCD screen buttons, go to Devices > Shield TV (or whatever you named it) > Power Off. (If your flirc application says 'Recorded Successfully', then it worked, even if it suspended your PC.) Done! Connect your Flirc to your Shield TV and your harmony remote should turn it off as expected. Ideally, somebody could pester logitech (I don't know how to contact them) to add a Flirc + Shield TV profile that effectively does everything I mentioned above. Here are some things that I wish we could have but probably can't ever have: - Universal 8 second back / 30 second forward buttons that don't bring up the playbar overlay - Universal subtitle toggle button (for those moments when you're not quite sure what the person is saying) - A way to use voice search without having to reach for the Shield TV stick remote (By universal, I mean works on every app) One can only dream, I suppose. Nonetheless, this works really well, and I have to say that the Shield TV is the best STB I've ever owned (you really can have it all with this thing; netflix, amazon, youtube, plex, kodi, hbo, Dolby TrueHD, DTS-HD, emulators, all on a very speedy UI) and Flirc makes it even better.

I have a MacBook and a silver Apple TV remote. I wanted to use this remote the same way with my MacBook that it would work on a MacMini. I just got a Flirc receiver and tried setting it up, but I don't see a controller profile (or even a combination of profiles) that will make my Apple remote act the same way as it would on a MacMini. Is this possible? I'm also running EyeTV 3 and want the Apple remote to act the same way it would on the MacMini with EyeTV. However, besides the volume buttons, none of the other buttons act the same way. In particular, the left and right arrow seem to work inconsistently... sometimes it changes the channel other times it skips to live or rewinds. The way it works on the MacMini is that a simple press of the left/right arrow cycles through the channels and a long press goes to live or rewinds. I also cannot reliably navigate the EyeTV menu with the remote. Is there a trick to get this to work. I tried searching for something but only see XMBC + EyeTV instructions which isn't what I was looking for. Thanks!

The basics of how it all works, just in case: Start with the Harmony config since this seems to be tripping you up. You only need to pick one device for your Shield profile, and (ironically enough) you don't want to pick "Shield TV" WITH the Harmony since that profile is for models that have IR (or WiFi/BT if you have the Harmony hub) and you don't want that since you are using a FLIRC. Just pick something that has a lot of buttons available (for flexibility) and won't interfere with any other devices you have. A lot of us here us the ViewTV AT-163 profile. Pick it and name it whatever you want, like "Shield TV" :) Now your Harmony is programmed to send IR signals for all (or at least most) of it's buttons. *It doesn't matter what those signals are* as long as they are each unique and don't accidentally trigger other equipment (which is why the AT-163 is a good choice....unless of course you have one :) ). All that matters is that when you press a button, a unique IR command is blasted out. The FLIRC will do the rest. Now, the FLIRC. The FLIRC dongle takes those discreet IR signals and translates them to commands the Shield TV understands. When you program the FLIRC via its application and assign IR commands to buttons you want to make sure you use the Shield layout first, for the basics, because Jason updated the software with the correct commands the Shield needs. Specifically, the "ok" button now functions correctly cross-app. So choose that profile and manually (don't click "Go" and have it do it automatically, that will map some commands you want for Kodi later twice) click each button, then press the corresponding button on your Harmony remote to map it. Basically, the 4 directions, the "ok" button, the back button, and the home button. Pick the buttons on your Harmony you want to do those functions (should be obvious) and have at it. Once you've done that, bring up the Kodi layout. Now you can program buttons for things like Play, Pause, ff/rw, etc. If you want even more control, skip the Kodi layout and use the full keyboard layout instead. Pull up (or print) this page for reference: http://kodi.wiki/view/Keyboard_controls . That's a complete list of keyboard shortcuts for Kodi. You can assign buttons to whatever keys on the keyboard you want. Don't forget that with most Harmony's you can also create custom buttons if you want to map advanced stuff, like for subtitles. Again, it doesn't matter what IR commands are assigned to the Harmony for each button, as long as it is discreet! The FLIRC is going to take whatever IR signal you sent it and translate that to the correct keyboard command. Doing this will give you: Basic Shield remote functionality across all applications (except voice control, since there's no mic on the Harmony.) Advanced keymap control for apps that support full keyboard commands - like Kodi. Get it?

This is probably unsupported in any way by Jason so please don't report bugs in other threads when using this solution. If you have any problems with this setup it is better to post them here and I'll try to help if I have time to do so. Hi, This how-to is for users who want to build more advanced control schemes using their Flirc devices. It is mainly directed to Windows users because there is no way in Windows to capture input from a single keyboard, but can be done in Linux. But it should be also applicable in other OS-es when used with correct software. The problem is that not everything can be done just by defining a single key combinations. There are applications like AutoHotKey (AHK) or EventGhost (EG) that can capture specific key combinations but there is a problem. Having many buttons on the mapped remote it is sometimes hard to find key combinations that are not used as OS or other apps shortcuts already. By capturing the specific key combination in AHK or EG user basically blocks this combination even on a normal keyboard connected to the PC (as there is no way in Windows to capture only input from one specific keyboard). Here comes HID standard for the rescue. HID keyboards are just one of the many usages of this standard. Because of that the HID standard has been split into multiple usage tables. Standard keys on keyboards use table 7 and in Windows codes from this table are immediately captured by HID keyboard filter driver and are converted into key presses. On the other hand keys like multimedia keys are defined in usage table 12. Codes from this table are not captured by the Windows. Only a few of them are natively supported (like volume, mute, play, pause etc). Flirc GUI and CLI util provide the ability to map only a few of the keys from table 12. Those keys when mapped are not recognized by AHK or EG when used with keyboard input plugins. This gave me an idea to do some experiments. I needed to find out how these multimedia keys are stored in the Flirc which can be checked by inspecting saved config file. After that I checked if I can assign any HID code from the table 12 and I was successful. I've found out that there is a key code which acts as a marker for Flirc to send usage 12 instead o 7. When this marker is found then the actual HID key ID is stored as a modifier. It is possible to use flirc_util to map almost any code from table 12: flirc_util.exe record_api 176 102 where 176 is decimal value of key ID (Play key in this case) and 102 is a marker that tells Flirc that this is key from table 12. Table 12 has more than 256 keys defined but unfortunately Flirc can only hold a single byte value so there is still a restriction in the number of keys. There are also holes in the list of keys in this table which I've used in my own config so I don't have any conflicts with other hardware and software. These are the usable values: 4-31, 34-47, 55-63, 73-95, 103-127, 159, 165-175. There are probably more but I've stopped looking other codes that are not mentioned by the standard. I think that other keys that are in the standard are also usable. Most of them are not natively supported by the Windows but I used these ranges in my case to be on the safe side. The way to record these keys is to change the first value to one in these ranges and record a button to them incrementally. In my setup I've used EventGhost to capture HID events and map them to things I want them to do. It provides some nice features like programmable on screen menus and many plugins for specific apps like XBMC (it uses XBMC RPC API). To capture events from HID device a Generic HID plugin must be used. Unfortunately there is a small problem with this plugin and it sometimes sends multiple HID events on single button press (this is not the same problem as with repeated keys). I have a modifier Generic HID plugin that works very well with Flirc in this mode of operation. I can share it if there is a demand for it. I can also extend the how-to to some basic EG configuration. I haven't used AHK but I know that there is also a way to capture HID events in it and use them to control things. All the numbers I'm referring to are taken from this document http://www.freebsddiary.org/APC/usb_hid_usages.php

The Flirc has some great features and *can* be relatively easy to use. However, without documentation of any kind, I must start actively recommending fellow hardware users in various hardware forums I participate in to avoid purchasing the Flirc (I have been actively pushing the Flirc for various devices for over a year up to this point). I can't understand how anyone can release hardware of this potentially advanced nature without any documentation whatsoever. Even as a one man shop, documentation should be of the highest priority in any hardware and software released for public consumption. Take the command line utility flirc_util.exe. It seems to be very powerful and is often given as the cryptic answer for various issues all over this forum. Cryptic is the key: without documentation, how is anyone supposed to guess at its actual workings? A perfect example is the record_api fucntion.. I've seen 10's of threads asking how to record the "menu" key for various hardware. The answer is often given as use flirc_util's record_api fuction. Wonderful that the developer has created such a utility that can solve those kinds of issues, but without documentation it is limited to his own use and a cabal of a few other advanced users only. I'm not trying to bash the Flirc in any way... I see it as a wonderful piece of hardware with great potential and easy use for limited applications. I am a realist, however, and the conclusion of that realism is: without documentation the Flirc is more of a potentially frustrating curiosity than an actual tool for many people. Please document both the GUI and, most important, the command line utility for those that actually need to go beyond an extremely simple setup. Thank you.