Can I customize buttons for different remote control panels on the navigators?

[jevansoh]

I use T3's and T4's for navigation. 

I have a Lumagen video processor that all of my sources go through, as it's also an HDMI switch with 8 inputs.  I need to be able to add 3 or more direct buttons from the original remote control to control the aspect ratio, NLS, resolution, etc, and need these buttons to be on every on screen remote control page for every device under Watch.

I've noticed that most of my sources seem to use the same generic remote control screen that has buttons like eject, rewind, fast forward, and a number pad, even though several sources have no use for any of those buttons.

I've also noticed, unfortunately, several of my sources remote control buttons on the touchscreens are missing certain buttons found on the original physical remote control, leaving me with no way to use those functions.

My Roku driver is the only one I have seen that has the specific buttons that are on a physical Roku remote, are labeled correctly, and have no extra unused buttons.

This tells me the remote control screens are customizable in some fashion, but I can't figure out any way to do it.

For my Zappiti media player, for instance, I need an "NLS" button but I do not need an "Eject" button.

Is there any way to rename the eject button "NLS" and program it to perform the actual NLS function?

I would prefer to customize all of my remote control buttons for the touchscreens for each source, to not only add the Lumagen buttons that are used for all sources, but to clean up and get rid of unused buttons, for a custom remote screen that looks like the Roku buttons for that device.

I searched for a driver that would allow me to do this but haven't found anything.

I hope there is some workaround and some way to do this as I have just invested several thousand dollars in this system and it isn't even fully set up yet.  I just assumed this would be an easy thing to do so I didn't look into it when deciding between Crestron and Control4.

Any help in figuring out what I can do here would be much appreciated.

I'm more than willing to pay for a programmer's time if there is any way to do this manually or even create a driver that will do this.

Thanks.

[jevansoh]

Does anyone have any input on this?  A lot of my C4 remote screens are missing buttons from the original remotes.

For instance, last night I needed the "Option" button on my Sony BDP-CX7000ES 400 Disc Blu-Ray Changer but it isn't on the C4 remote on the touchscreen, so I had to find the original remote, go into the equipment room, point the remote at the device in the rack, press the button, then go back into the theater to make sure it did what I wanted.

There have been several examples like this, so I need a way of adding buttons or customizing/changing other buttons on the different remote screens on the navigators.

Any advice would be much appreciated.

Thanks.

[South Africa C4 user]

Depending on the underlying driver you can map physical buttons to different virtual buttons.  Also, if it is an IR driver your dealer can record the IR signal and link this to another button for you.  
 

In summary, best bet is to chat for your dealer.

[AceOfSpades]

3 ways to accomplish this.

- Use Custom Button Agent the create a Custom Button that is displayed on all screens/desired screens. Add Menu buttons for each desired action. Create Programming for each button action. Then the buttons will display on all targeted screens with action.

- Depending on the desired action, you may be able to use the "Room Control" driver to perform 

- This is probably a longer process, but you can Program the command in the room for each desired action. The screenshot below shows the command under Programming.

 

 

 

  the commands in each

[jevansoh]

Thank you to all who have replied.

I don't like the custom buttons because they are extra button presses and on a different menu and location.

I'd prefer to keep all the remote control buttons on the actual remote control screen of the touchscreens.

I'm interested in the last example, however, what if there are no extra unused buttons I could program for something else?  There are plenty of blank spaces where buttons could go on this particular remote screen, but I don't see how I could add a button then program it to what I want it to do or "train" it.

Thanks.

[jevansoh]

On 11/6/2022 at 2:51 AM, South Africa C4 user said:

Depending on the underlying driver you can map physical buttons to different virtual buttons.  Also, if it is an IR driver your dealer can record the IR signal and link this to another button for you.  
 

In summary, best bet is to chat for your dealer.

But does the IR command the dealer records have to go on one of the existing buttons?  All of the buttons on this particular remote are used, but there are blank spaces for more.  Is it possible to add a button to the remote and record/train it?

[msgreenf]

you can't add buttons but you can program any button to be what you want by saving the IR code

[South Africa C4 user]

Also, if the driver has removed some buttons then these can be added back by using another driver…

[jevansoh]

On 11/8/2022 at 7:57 AM, msgreenf said:

you can't add buttons but you can program any button to be what you want by saving the IR code

This is only for IR, though, right?  It is not possible to alter buttons on an IP driver in any way?

This may be a silly question, but "someone" has to be able to add/remove buttons, right?  How else would the remote screen for whatever driver is being used get created to begin with?  I'm not trying to be argumentative, rather I'm just trying to understand how things work with C4 and these remote screens so I can better understand exactly what is capable and what is not.

If I could edit buttons that use an IP driver, for the two-way feedback, I'd be much happier.  Using IR seems like a big step back for me, plus I have a few drivers that are serial only.  What about serial drivers?  Can I edit buttons for them?

Thanks for your help and input.

[jevansoh]

On 11/8/2022 at 1:51 PM, South Africa C4 user said:

Also, if the driver has removed some buttons then these can be added back by using another driver…

That's definitely an issue I'm running in to.

What is the name of the driver that will add buttons back?

Is this for IR, IP, and Serial, or just for IR?

Thanks for your help.

[msgreenf]

Control4 works on the concept of proxies which are predefined UI elements. There are limited ways to remove features. The media player proxy and the MSP are the only ones I know of that you can do this with

[Amr]

On 11/8/2022 at 8:53 AM, jevansoh said:

I don't like the custom buttons because they are extra button presses and on a different menu and location.

This is not accurate, you can have many custom buttons in each room, u can favorite the list to be visible in ur remotes and UI as well, I use a lot of them to do extra work that is not there in the original remotes! I also use the color buttons of my remotes to do the same and the 3 soft buttons on my 260, so there are so many options there for you to choose!

Also depends on the driver, there could be programmed commands not mapped to a button that u can leverage, just find what each driver do, it may or may not work!

[RAV]

Somebody long ago made these decisions.

Each AV Device Driver has commands that are prelinked to each button on the SR remote, Play, Stop, Up, Down, etc.
Any commands that don't have a logical link, can get added as a list, ie bonus commands.
Guy who created the driver, made those choices and which commands to include.

Each type of device has a proxy that defines which commands to use and show on the GUI. CD player doesn't get channel up down, navigation, that sort of thing.
You can't change which buttons show in the proxy, or their labels etc. Predefined templates.

Ways to 'modify' a driver commands relationship to buttons.
IR Driver - change the actual command in the driver, want INFO to show Closed Caption, replace the INFO command with the HEX for the CC command.
IP or Serial Driver - depends on if it's a protected file, and persons abilities, same idea as an IR driver.
Composer - at the room level, if a button doesn't have an associated command, you can program, When ROKU is selected in the Theater and INFO is pressed send the CC command.
If there's already a command on INFO, you get both.

Menu Custom Buttons - Each room can have 4 sets of 6 custom buttons. Programmed to do whatever. Originally they appeared in the corners of the GUI, and as a list on the SR screen. In OS3 GUI (and Apple Watch) they show as a popup like folder. No feedback, just a list of actionable commands.

User Interface Experience Buttons - graphic button that can be programmed to do whatever, commonly 2 states on/off, or a cycleable list.

Voice - hey dude, turn on closed caption.

 

[RyanE]

1 minute ago, RAV said:

Each type of device has a proxy that defines which commands to use and show on the GUI. CD player doesn't get channel up down, navigation, that sort of thing.
You can't change which buttons show in the proxy, or their labels etc. Predefined templates.

This is not 100% accurate.  Media Player Proxy does have the ability to hide / add some buttons dynamically, although this is not exposed to all proxies at this point.

RyanE

[RAV]

2 hours ago, RyanE said:

This is not 100% accurate.  Media Player Proxy does have the ability to hide / add some buttons dynamically, although this is not exposed to all proxies at this point.

RyanE

The driver itself makes those changes, correct?
Confirming, so IP drivers like Apple and Roku still aren't dealer tweakable.

[msgreenf]

3 minutes ago, RAV said:

The driver itself makes those changes, correct?
Confirming, so IP drivers like Apple and Roku still aren't dealer tweakable.

Correct 

[jevansoh]

Thank you to all who have replied.

This is really not what I was wanting, or expecting, to hear at all.

For a power user such as myself, having a button that has a label that says one thing but a command that does another is workable, albeit not ideal, but for the rest of the family, some of which are going on 70 years old, this just won't work.

The label of the button needs to describe what the command will do when pressed.

We also have some drivers that are IP/Serial only, so going IR isn't really an option, either.

I wish I would have known such a simple thing as renaming a remote button on the GUI wasn't possible before I invested in C4 over Crestron or some other system, but now that I have many thousands of dollars and many months of time invested, I'm going to have to work around it as I cannot afford to start over.

Is there any driver (or any way to create a driver) that would allow one to simply rename a button/change its label on the GUI of a touchscreen?  Is this possible in any way?  I'm happy to pay for custom programming and/or a custom driver if there is any possible way to do this.

Several of you have proposed a few different solutions, but before looking into them in detail, I'd like to ask what the consensus is as to the "best" method, meaning one that will get me closest to what I actually want.  

All I want to do is have a button on the remote GUI along with all the other remote control buttons already there, with an accurate label to describe a specific function that isn't already programmed or available to select in the preconfigured driver for a certain device.

What's the closest solution to what I'm looking for, in your opinion?  I'm not necessarily looking for the easiest solution, rather one that will get me as close as possible to the ideal.

Thanks again for all your help.

[South Africa C4 user]

I must say that I sympathise with your predicament.  One of the reasons that I have migrated to the Neeo is so that I can make my own touchscreen setups (I would imagine that one can do an even better job with the new Halo).  I don’t use the media UI at all but rather use experience buttons which I dynamically change based on what media device is playing.  Neeo limits one  to 6 buttons per page.  Presumably Halo is better.  

[jevansoh]

On 11/20/2022 at 8:14 AM, South Africa C4 user said:

I must say that I sympathise with your predicament.  One of the reasons that I have migrated to the Neeo is so that I can make my own touchscreen setups (I would imagine that one can do an even better job with the new Halo).  I don’t use the media UI at all but rather use experience buttons which I dynamically change based on what media device is playing.  Neeo limits one  to 6 buttons per page.  Presumably Halo is better.  

I don't like the Neeo because there aren't enough physical buttons, but I do like the Halo and plan to purchase one.

This may very well be the solution.

I still don't understand what the capabilities are with the experience/custom buttons and where I could place them, nor do I understand exactly what you've been able to customize with the Neeo.

If you could share some examples and/or screenshots, I'd really appreciate it.

I'm still not clear as to what I can and can't do, using a combo of Serial and IP drivers.

Thanks.

[South Africa C4 user]

On 12/3/2022 at 9:22 PM, jevansoh said:

I don't like the Neeo because there aren't enough physical buttons, but I do like the Halo and plan to purchase one.

This may very well be the solution.

I still don't understand what the capabilities are with the experience/custom buttons and where I could place them, nor do I understand exactly what you've been able to customize with the Neeo.

If you could share some examples and/or screenshots, I'd really appreciate it.

I'm still not clear as to what I can and can't do, using a combo of Serial and IP drivers.

Thanks.

The following thread may help:

 

[jevansoh]

21 hours ago, South Africa C4 user said:

The following thread may help:

 

If only there was a way to have this customization for touch screens and not just the Neeo.  I don't like the Neeo remote and instead use SR260's and T3's/T4's and have been struggling with several of the remotes for my system as a lot of them have too many excess buttons and some of them have missing buttons.

To be able to customize this would be just awesome.

Why can this be done for the Neeo but not a touchscreen navigator?