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Apple remote long press


calavera

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Hi,

I'm trying to find some information on how to set up apple remote style long press handling. For example if I press "up" once on remote then it means Up, but if I hold "up" on remote it means Volume up.

 

To be honest I'm getting frustrated from your forum based documentation. I've read through many forum threads and some blog posts but in the end I usually find out that those threads are outdated. My current impression now is that at first long press was supported by custom beta firmwares which are now outdated (and no longer available) by official beta release of gui which contains latest firmware. If this idea is correct (I'm not even sure about it) it means current gui should record long press from apple remote out of the box, by automaticaly uploading new firmware first. However it doesn't work for me.

 

When I tried to solve it, I noticed a button for forcing firmware update which told me if I want to replace current 1.0 by new 2.0. Although I didn't understand why it didn't updated the firmware automaticaly, I agreed so I think I now have the latest firmware, but that doesn't help. Current gui behavior is that the key is recorded imadiately after I press anything on a remote.

 

I noticed another setting in advanced gui menu - Inter-key delay. Does it somehow relate to long presses? Because I've read some threads that mentioned that long press could be mistaken with fast consecutive presses which is pretty bad because I don't want my walking through some list being mistaken for volume up (using the example I've given in the begining). So although I know what I want I don't even know how this feature works or how it's supposed to work. After hours spent reading a forum threads I give up.

 

Is there any up to date info about how to set up long press detection and how does it actually work? Can somebody explain this topic to me?

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long presses can mean two things:

 

Originally, when you held a button down on an apple remote, it wouldn't do anything. I now support this and commonly referred to this as long key presses, let's name this detecting button holds. Firmware 2.0 has this.

 

Then there is this which will eventually make it to the firmware:

https://flirc.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/200837116-Long-Key-Presses

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Then there is this which will eventually make it to the firmware:

https://flirc.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/200837116-Long-Key-Presses

 

This is exactly what he means and what i'm waiting for too.

 

@calavera: I've also tried some configs to impement this feature in software (importing the keyboard.xml from ATV-XBMC,played aroud with advanced settings.xml and the setup within xbmc) with no luck.

 

So i guess, the dongle needs to recognizing the longpress, to map this action with a second command, which is not implemented in the firmware yet.

At the moment,the dongle recognizes a long press as a hold (repeat), so you can e.g. turn volume up or down by hold the button.

(Jason,please correct me, if i'm worng)

 

What i have in my mind for the future is, the gui works as follows:

 

- tap a button-> program function as usual.

- hold a button-> the gui give a message like "long press recognized. Please choose action:1. Hold, 2. second action

 

I have no idea if this is possible to program for the flirc device, but it would be very nice to have ;)

 

So i whish a happy new year to all the flircers out there, especially for you and your family, Jason! Keep up the good work, this thing is quite amazing!

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This is exactly what he means and what i'm waiting for too.

 

@calavera: I've also tried some configs to impement this feature in software (importing the keyboard.xml from ATV-XBMC,played aroud with advanced settings.xml and the setup within xbmc) with no luck.

 

So i guess, the dongle needs to recognizing the longpress, to map this action with a second command, which is not implemented in the firmware yet.

At the moment,the dongle recognizes a long press as a hold (repeat), so you can e.g. turn volume up or down by hold the button.

(Jason,please correct me, if i'm worng)

 

What i have in my mind for the future is, the gui works as follows:

 

- tap a button-> program function as usual.

- hold a button-> the gui give a message like "long press recognized. Please choose action:1. Hold, 2. second action

 

I have no idea if this is possible to program for the flirc device, but it would be very nice to have ;)

 

So i whish a happy new year to all the flircers out there, especially for you and your family, Jason! Keep up the good work, this thing is quite amazing!

Thanks so much for the positive feedback, yes, you are exactly right. I will definitely figure out how to implement this, it is possible.

 

Happy and healthy new years to you as well.

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  • 1 month later...

A little pressure ;) this is without a doubt a sought after feature, received my flirc and it works real good, but sorry to say that is going in a drawer untill longpress is a go. I think alot of people use this with their htpc, and having a apple remote with longpress is kina ideal for this.

I also think that your gonna move alot more units with this feature.

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  • 3 months later...

No, I re-architechted the firmware to set it up to be easier, which was in the 3.x firmware. That also included much better support for other remote controls that always gave flirc problems. 

 

I quietly released a second product: 

 

http://www.streacom.com/news-item/introducing-flirc-se/

 

That's going to ramp up soon.

I have a third product that I pre-announced (teased): https://twitter.com/flirc/status/535914395650383872

 

That's going to be released this coming Friday.

 

I need to try and get the website ready for the new product.

 

I also need to work on another version of firmware that captures the waveform from the remote so not only can I examine what others are seeing, I can reproduce it at home.

After that version of firmware, I'll continue on that feature. I assure you, it's not intuitive to make intuitive. The work I did already for 3.x was an enormous under the hood change.

 

Thanks for the patience. I'm sorry, I hadn't realized how tough this was going to be when I estimated and signed up for it. But it's on my list.

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  • 3 weeks later...

Hi,

 

I was under the impression that i could just reuse my Apple Remote with my new MBP together with your flirc.

Although i understand that this is a one-man show it is somewhat of a let down that this issue is almost a year in  develoment.

 

I am also missing a plain Apple Remote controller in your controller overview. The basic controller misses the play key in the layout.

 

I think that most apple users just want to reuse their Apple Remote with their mbp, since there is no mbp with ir on board anymore.

So boxee/xbmc etc is not interesting for me.

 

I only want long-presses and Apple Remote controller that has all keys in the layout.

Do you have any plans to implement these two feautures, so as to accommodate for imo growing Apple userbase with rel. simple requirements ?

 

kind regards Michael

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Hi,

 

I was under the impression that i could just reuse my Apple Remote with my new MBP together with your flirc.

Although i understand that this is a one-man show it is somewhat of a let down that this issue is almost a year in  develoment.

 

I am also missing a plain Apple Remote controller in your controller overview. The basic controller misses the play key in the layout.

 

I think that most apple users just want to reuse their Apple Remote with their mbp, since there is no mbp with ir on board anymore.

So boxee/xbmc etc is not interesting for me.

 

I only want long-presses and Apple Remote controller that has all keys in the layout.

Do you have any plans to implement these two feautures, so as to accommodate for imo growing Apple userbase with rel. simple requirements ?

 

kind regards Michael

 

I can make an apple remote GUI, no problem. Let me add that to the list.

Long presses is a planned feature, just finished releasing my new product. I will return to firmware shortly. My day job at NVIDIA is very demanding until christmas.

 

Although people think this is conceptually very easy, this is a huge, difficult, and complex challenge. It adds a lot of complexity to the GUI and firmware. I've started working my way towards it, but it's no easy task, especially on this microcontroller which is optimized to hell. It's old. I know I keep saying I'm working on it, but it breaks so many architectural concepts and programming principals in the GUI. I'll get it. 

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