zaphod Posted January 13, 2018 Share Posted January 13, 2018 What's the best way to control a PC running Windows 10 with a C4 remote? Using the Windows Media Center driver? Will that allow you to map a button to "Ctrl-Escape" which is equivalent to pressing the windows key? That then allows you to use the transport keys to select items on the Win 10 tiled start screen, including Netflix, etc. wappinghigh 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
msgreenf Posted January 13, 2018 Share Posted January 13, 2018 Windows media center no longer is part of win 10Sent from my Pixel XL using Tapatalk Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sonic30101 Posted January 13, 2018 Share Posted January 13, 2018 usb ir dongle and learn it to c4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zaphod Posted January 13, 2018 Author Share Posted January 13, 2018 23 minutes ago, msgreenf said: Windows media center no longer is part of win 10 I know, but I have an older remote that is a Windows media center remote and my HTPC has an IR receiver built into it. Microsoft used to sell these remotes in conjunction with IR receivers (that also had blaster connectivity). I am pretty sure that the drivers for this still work in Win 10. And this is the only C4 driver I found that looks applicable But are there other ways that make more sense when you have a controller like C4 that has IP connectivity? Like maybe running a program on the PC that listens for commands on an IP socket that simultes a HID on the PC - assuming that there would be a C4 driver. For example: MCE Controller - https://github.com/tig/mcec/wiki I am guessing that there isn't a driver for MCE Controller or anything similar in Control4? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cdepaola Posted January 13, 2018 Share Posted January 13, 2018 Don't know if this will work for you or not, but we've used it in the past. http://www.houselogix.com/shop/houselogix-windows-control Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zaphod Posted January 13, 2018 Author Share Posted January 13, 2018 MCE Controller looks for interesting. I think I will try to adapt an existing Media Player driver in Control4 to send commands that work with MCE Controller. On a PC as a server it opens a raw TCP socket and listens for commands. If you send it "winkey" that simulates the Windows Key on a PC which brings up the menu on Win 10. You can then send "up", "down", etc that are the equivalent of direction keys. It also easily acepts the transport keys. Sending "Mute" to the socket has it execute VK_VOLUME_MUTE on the PC. No wonder MCE Controller makes sense for this purpose: Quote MCE Controller was initially developed to enable integration of a Windows based home theater PC (HTPC) into a Crestron whole-house audio/video system. However, it is general enough that others have used it within other control system that support sending text strings to a TCP/IP port. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ecschnei Posted January 14, 2018 Share Posted January 14, 2018 17 hours ago, zaphod said: MCE Controller looks for interesting. I think I will try to adapt an existing Media Player driver in Control4 to send commands that work with MCE Controller. On a PC as a server it opens a raw TCP socket and listens for commands. If you send it "winkey" that simulates the Windows Key on a PC which brings up the menu on Win 10. You can then send "up", "down", etc that are the equivalent of direction keys. It also easily acepts the transport keys. Sending "Mute" to the socket has it execute VK_VOLUME_MUTE on the PC. No wonder MCE Controller makes sense for this purpose: My MCE remote came with a usb IR receiver. I still have it. Is there a way to control it through DNLA or would that limit what you could actually do to the windows environment? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zaphod Posted January 14, 2018 Author Share Posted January 14, 2018 I don't know h 51 minutes ago, ecschnei said: My MCE remote came with a usb IR receiver. I still have it. Is there a way to control it through DNLA or would that limit what you could actually do to the windows environment? You mean DLNA? I am not sure - what are you looking to do? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zaphod Posted January 14, 2018 Author Share Posted January 14, 2018 18 hours ago, zaphod said: MCE Controller looks for interesting. I think I will try to adapt an existing Media Player driver in Control4 to send commands that work with MCE Controller. It was fairly easy to whip together a proof of concept and start sending commands to my PC by adapting an existing C4 IP based media player driver. This actually looks like a very powerful tool. And the functionality goes way beyond controlling a Media Center PC. It should be fairly easy to write a driver to control a PC including running programs on your PC - not unlike the Chowman Generic TCP command driver. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ecschnei Posted January 14, 2018 Share Posted January 14, 2018 3 hours ago, zaphod said: I don't know h You mean DLNA? I am not sure - what are you looking to do? ya...lol Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Matt Lowe Posted January 14, 2018 Share Posted January 14, 2018 plex media with plex driver. limited to plex but what more are you trying to do with the PC? there are some awesome BT keyboards with trackpads built in now Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zaphod Posted January 15, 2018 Author Share Posted January 15, 2018 One basic thing is to be able to start Netflix from the Win 10 tile menu. This is easy to do as long as you can send the Windows key which is also Ctrl-Escape. Once that menu is up you just need directional keys. Being able to send any of the Media keys would also be usefult control playback of various Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
THawes Posted January 15, 2018 Share Posted January 15, 2018 22 hours ago, zaphod said: It was fairly easy to whip together a proof of concept and start sending commands to my PC by adapting an existing C4 IP based media player driver. Which driver did you start with as a base? I'm happy to throw some development time at this as well, I agree it would be a useful drive to have. Maybe not for many of our customers, but certainly in my own system! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zaphod Posted January 15, 2018 Author Share Posted January 15, 2018 I used a driver for SageTV that was IP based - I was familiar with this driver as I adapted it to create a new SageTV driver. But I think this may have come from an XBMC driver. Take a look at the MCE Controller docs on Github - it is pretty flexible as you can send all sorts of commands from media commands (Play, Pause, Mute, Vol+, etc) to start application commands to mouse clicks. And you just send them as raw text - I was using Putty to send commands to the MCE Controller server. Then within putty if you type "Mute" you can see that the MCE Controller received something like "VK_VOLUME_MUTE" Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RyanE Posted January 16, 2018 Share Posted January 16, 2018 You could also probably use EventGhost and it's HTTP plugin API. RyanE Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zaphod Posted January 16, 2018 Author Share Posted January 16, 2018 Good suggestion Ryan - that seems quite similar to MCE Controller in terms of functionality although EventGhost is acting as a web server and MCE Controller is just listening for raw commands on a port. Here's some of the docs from the EventGhost Wiki: http://www.eventghost.net/mediawiki/index.php/Webserver And here is some Groovy code from GitHub for SmartThings: https://github.com/aderusha/SmartThings/blob/master/Send-Events-to-EventGhost.groovy Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
msgreenf Posted January 16, 2018 Share Posted January 16, 2018 someone wrote an eventghost driver a long time ago Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zaphod Posted January 16, 2018 Author Share Posted January 16, 2018 8 minutes ago, msgreenf said: someone wrote an eventghost driver a long time ago Would it be IP or IR? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
msgreenf Posted January 16, 2018 Share Posted January 16, 2018 Just now, zaphod said: Would it be IP or IR? IP Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zaphod Posted January 16, 2018 Author Share Posted January 16, 2018 Great, I will check it out. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
msgreenf Posted January 16, 2018 Share Posted January 16, 2018 2 minutes ago, zaphod said: Great, I will check it out. well...It was me that said I was going to create a driver, lol, but no one was ever interested. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zaphod Posted January 16, 2018 Author Share Posted January 16, 2018 It really is pretty trivial to do, either with C4:SendToNetwork for sockets or C4:urlGet for Eventghost. The main work will be in mapping keys on a C4 controller to the commands you want on the PC. It might make sense to have most, or all of them, be Properties that can be changed in Composer. Maybe the best way to even do this is to create a generic driver where you enter a URL prefix and port as Properties. You also have all of the keyboards mapped to commands in Properties. Then you could use this for pretty much anything. You could also add a suffix in case some apps needed that as well. g_URLPrefix="http://192.168.1.149/myapp?command=" RyanE 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
msgreenf Posted January 16, 2018 Share Posted January 16, 2018 7 minutes ago, zaphod said: It really is pretty trivial to do, either with C4:SendToNetwork for sockets or C4:urlGet for Eventghost. The main work will be in mapping keys on a C4 controller to the commands you want on the PC. It might make sense to have most, or all of them, be Properties that can be changed in Composer. Maybe the best way to even do this is to create a generic driver where you enter a URL prefix and port as Properties. You also have all of the keyboards mapped to commands in Properties. Then you could use this for pretty much anything. You could also add a suffix in case some apps needed that as well. g_URLPrefix="http://192.168.1.149/myapp?command=" that would be cool just harder for dealers to use Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zaphod Posted January 16, 2018 Author Share Posted January 16, 2018 Yes, it would be nice if you could come up with a text or csv file that you could use as the command mapping table that then gets imported into Properties. Is something like that possible? Something like this (although I am not sure these are the correct EventGhost Actions) C4 Remote Key EventGhost Action Play {MediaPlay} Cncl Keyboard.Escape Blue Keyboard.Ctrl-Escape Left {Left} Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
msgreenf Posted January 16, 2018 Share Posted January 16, 2018 1 minute ago, zaphod said: Yes, it would be nice if you could come up with a text or csv file that you could use as the command mapping table that then gets imported into Properties. Is something like that possible? Something like this (although I am not sure these are the correct EventGhost Actions) C4 Remote Key EventGhost Action Play {MediaPlay} Cncl Keyboard.Escape Blue Keyboard.Ctrl-Escape Left {Left} no way today to do that I am aware of. maybe @seth_j knows something Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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