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Living in Harmony with Plex

January 11, 2009

Harmony 500

Plex, the fantastic media center software I’ve written about before, added some icing on the cake recently: out-of-the-box support for Logitech Harmony universal remotes.

Logitech Harmony remotes are great because Logitech maintains a massive database of all the codes for pretty much every consumer electronics device ever made (the Harmony 550 was my pick for the best gadget gift under $100). You (usually) don’t have to sit there “training” the Harmony with your original remotes — you just hook it up to your computer, type in the model numbers of your TV, receiver, game console, etc, and you’re off. It vastly improves (and simplifies) control of your home entertainment center.

However, while Logitech did have remote codes for the Mac Mini (which is what I’m using to run Plex), the six buttons of the Apple remote aren’t enough to control a full-featured software suite like Plex. So I wound up buying a piece of software called Remote Buddy that interprets signals from remote controls and turns them into keystrokes. Basically, I spent 2 hours having my Harmony learn IR codes from 7 “virtual” Apple remotes (7 distinct sets of 6 IR codes) to give me 42 effective buttons, but then I had to create keystrokes for each of those 42 IR codes in Remote Buddy so that the proper commands would be sent to Plex (as keystrokes). It was extremely tedious, and I wound up having to do most of it over again because one of the learned IR commands was corrupted (resulting in double-presses).

Not happy with this solution either, a few users over on the Plex forums got together and decided to do something about it. An special IR profile could be added easily enough to the Plex code by the developers, but the catch was that Logitech would have to create a Plex “device” in their massive database. When I found that out, I pretty much lost all hope because while I love Logitech’s hardware, they’re a big company and I didn’t really expect them to pay attention to a little open-source project run by some home entertainment geeks.

Fortunately, I was wrong. Within a few weeks, Logitech was working with the Plex team to establish an expanded set of IR codes that a Mac could receive and that Plex would specifically listen for. Right around Christmas, the Plex device was added to the Logitech Harmony database. As soon as we got back from visiting our relatives, I eagerly updated Plex on the Mini, plugged in the Harmony to my laptop and fired up the Harmony control software. I found and added the Plex device, flashed the remote, and within minutes I was successfully controlling Plex just like any other device in the Logitech database.

Plex treats the Harmony remote as just another type of input device, so you can customize the key mappings using an XML file just like you can with the keyboard. I tweaked a few of the buttons to my liking, which only took a couple more minutes. All told, I had everything configured exactly the way I wanted in less than 10 minutes — compared to almost 2 hours I had to spend before learning IR codes and configuring Remote Buddy.

With the addition of Plex to Logitech’s device database, Plex now integrates as nicely into your media center as any other device. In my follow-up after my first couple months with the software, the one big drawback I mentioned was the struggle to find a good way to control it. That concern has been solidly dealt with. Considering how much we use this to watch archived video, I want to give a big thank you to the Plex enthusiasts who initiated this crusade, and the folks at Logitech who cared enough to listen to the little guy. From the comments on the Plex forums, it looks like they’re going to sell a lot more remotes because of it!

14 comments ›
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14 comments

  • dj dead serious January 11th, 2009 at 7:34 pm

    this is great news. i’ll probably be purchasing the remote in the immediate future. i’ve been getting the hang of plex lately and it’s working great.

    i do have a question about your system, what kind of speakers/connection are you using for your mac mini?

  • Matthew January 11th, 2009 at 9:39 pm

    I have a standard Panasonic receiver with a few digital inputs; I bought an optical cable that goes from the Mini to one of the optical (TOSlink) inputs on the receiver. Gives me 5.1 sound from any of my high-quality videos that have it.

  • Eduardo January 19th, 2009 at 10:05 pm

    Hi Roger,

    I love your tips. I install Plex in my MacBook Pro but the movie info didn’t work. When I try to find in imdb, there is no return. Could you please help me ?

    Thanks,
    Eduardo

  • Raphael Essoo-Snowdon January 30th, 2009 at 10:48 pm

    Great news, I’m hoping on a Mac Mini update very soon but I’ve waiting too long, this sounds great though because I wasn’t looking forward to configuring the Harmony. Guess I wont have to now :)

  • Follow up: Plex and the Mac Mini media center | RogersMJ.com March 15th, 2009 at 9:10 am

    [...] Update: Since I wrote this, Plex has integrated Harmony support directly into the software, so remote setup is now practically effortless. See my newer post. [...]

  • Luciano April 15th, 2009 at 10:56 am

    Hi Roger,

    I would like to thank you for all the tips you have posted, them were very useful for me to take decisions about which way to go. So far I have got a brand new Mac Mini (2.26GHz, 4GB, 120HD) in addition to my Onkyo receiver and my Samsung 42” plasma TV (I’ll be buying an external drive shortly). I have all connections working fine (mini-DVI to HDMI for video and Optical for sound), I’m trying to use Plex (after first read about it here) so 2 days ago I bought a Harmony One remote control but I’m struggling to make it work. If you don’t mind I have few questions about it.

    1) How did you add the Mini as device? I used “Media PC”, “Apple”, “Mac Mini”. Is this even necessary when you are adding Plex as device? I’m kinda confused here.

    2) Does your remote turn on/off the Mini? I was reading about it and I guess the only option is to leave it on and just put it to sleep/wake when you start/stop an activity, is that true?

    3) I couldn’t get the remote to start Plex when I pick the activity. What should I do to archive this?

    I would appreciate if you could explain in details how you did the setup and how your system is working (i.e. Mac Mini is always on and just go to sleep, remote starts Plex, etc.)

    I’m sorry about all these questions but I’m very anxious to have everything working to be able to just enjoy it. :)

    Thanks!!

  • Matthew April 15th, 2009 at 11:01 am

    Luciano,

    You’ll want to poke around the Plex forums and wiki for the most up-to-date info about this, but you actually add “Plex” as a device — not the Mac Mini.

    There is a way to map a key to sleep the mini — Plex has that function built in, so if you map one of your Harmony’s soft keys to that you can trigger it to be sent at the end of the activity.

    I believe what you can do to have Plex start when you pick the activity is to enable the option in Plex to have it running all the time. That enables Plex to start (instead of Front Row) when the mini receives a Menu command. Then, set up the Harmony to send a Menu command to the mini when you switch to the activity (and after the mini is awake…you might have to have two signals sent).

    Ask around at the Plex forums if you need more detailed help, those folks are up to date on everything.

  • Luciano April 15th, 2009 at 11:56 pm

    Thanks a lot! I will try and let you know how it goes!

  • lh_newbie June 16th, 2009 at 6:08 pm

    I got a Mac Mini about 3 weeks ago. Have been ripping my DVD collection, cleaning up my iTunes and tweeking Plex ever since. I wanted to get that work out of the way before I for a Harmony remote.

    Yesterday afternoon, the good woman at UPS delivered my new Harmony 890 remote. It took a little tinkering to get it all setup, then paired with the wireless extender, but now it’s working wonderful. The RF range on it is awesome.

    Once Plex gets DVD functionality integrated, the entire system will be quite wife-friendly. And you married folks know exactly how important that is!

  • paolo September 28th, 2009 at 9:00 am

    hello there.
    Me too have installed Plex device into my harmony remote.
    The fact is…sleep command doesn’t work, so my mac mini stays up and running forever.

    Does the sleep command work with your configuration ?
    Ciao !
    Paolo

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  • Dan Z November 10th, 2009 at 1:51 am

    Matthew, Do you receive a roughly half second delay from a button press on your Harmony remote to when Plex reacts onscreen? I just set up the newest Plex on a new Mac Mini and am noticing the Harmony “Plex” device is much slower than the Harmony emulating a single Apple Remote. Seems like everyone thinks this Harmony Plex device is the best thing since sliced bread – I am wondering if no one else cares about the unresponsiveness of it, or if I am unique in having this problem. Please let me know.

  • Mac Mini + Television Part 1 » Webomatica - Entertainment and Tech Digest December 22nd, 2009 at 1:01 am

    [...] applications. Plex looks great on a big TV screen and you can launch other apps from it. Lastly, Plex is controllable with the Harmony Remote. If I could only figure out how to get the Apple TV to ignore the remote while using the Mac [...]

  • Harmony One + Mac = sant « Spridda tankar om allt möjligt January 4th, 2010 at 9:20 pm

    [...] Har du inte det är du härmed färdig och kan börja leka med Plex och dess knappinställningar. Här och här finns guider hur du [...]

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