Need help with IR remote

[Shrader]

I have a harmony one remote to control my system, the problem I have is that it will not turn on/off my PJ unless I stand up, turn around and point it at the eye, I would also like to control my Lighting with the remote also. There is 2 seperate zones of lighting, both on dimmers now, what is needed to accomplish this? I have been reading a little about repeaters,targets,and what not, but am pretty lost as to what equipment i need, and how it works? Thanks for any help.

 

[adk highlander]

Harmony offers a RF base station that will receive signals from your remote in RF and then convert them to IR and send out the data via flashers. You would need to run a flasher wire from the base station location to the projector. You can use cat5 wire to extent the length of the flasher wire as they probably would not be long enough out of the box. If your projector is mounted in a hush box or something you may be able to put the base station with the projector and run the flasher directly to it.

As far as lighting goes there are RF (propriety RF and universal like X-10 or Zigbee) dimmers which would not work with that remote or IR dimmers like those from Lutron. I use the Lutron IR dimmers and they work will but do require you to point the remote at them.

Depending on if you want to really integrate your system I can make suggestions for URC products that would give you RF lighting control, IR, IP and RS-232 protocols and even the option to use your IPad. You would need a decent budget of around $500-800 depending on your choices and if you want to use your existing Ipod or Ipad.

 

[BMXTRIX]

I would go with the Harmony RF base station as mentioned above. Then you will need a wire to the projector to carry the IR signal from the RF receiver directly to the projector to turn it on and off properly. You can actually do similar with lights if you get IR controlled lights. A Lutron Grafik Eye can do a great job if you only have a few switches side-by-side which need control, or you can go with the Spacer System (SPS) switches from Lutron and bury an IR emitter inside the box for each switch. It takes time, but does work well. Likewise, you can get any IR controlled light switch and point the remote at the switch to control the lights. Of course URC makes directly controllable dimmers from their remote. I JUST go some Insteon stuff, and so far that has been working well and has proven to be very interesting. I expect those dimmers in my home will replace all my standard switches/dimmers.

 

[Shrader]

What about switching to an rf based remote rather than the ir? will they control all of my equipment without eyes,targets etc? or does your equipment have to be rf compatible? like i said I am a noob to this stuff, so please forgive the dumb questions. I have not been real impressed with the harmony remote for the money I paid anyway.

 

[BMXTRIX]

RF remotes don't work that way. Your equipment doesn't magically change. What RF remotes do is that they talk, via RF, to a base station. The base station then converts the RF signal back to an IR signal. That IR signal can be sent to a IR blaster which can hit multiple pieces of equipment in a credenza/rack, or more often, you put individual IR emitters on each piece of equipment that needs to be controlled. This would include the projector and is why a couple of pieces of cat-5 cabling ALWAYS should be run to any equipment location. Projectors especially must be heavily wired, or run with conduit/retro access or they will need to be rewired later - every single time. Anyone who just runs HDMI to any display has made a horrible mistake that they will pay for later. This is what an IR emitter looks like when on a device:

Note: You always should run an IR emitter from the top down, not from the bottom up. Someone needs to tell me why the

 

[Shrader]

Ah, okay, starting to understand now, I did run a huge hdmi Shielded i think, cable itself was about the size of my finger, and also ran it on a seperate run. cat5 is not an issue, as i ran a couple 2" pvc pipes behind the drywall for future use, and the pj is mounted to the basement ceiling, which is a drop type, so running a cat 5 is pretty simple. so to just run the pj i will need an eye for the pj and an emitter? for in the a/v rack?

 

[BMXTRIX]

You will need a RF receiver designed to work with your remote control in the A/V rack, then out of the back of the RF receiver should be a 1/8" mono jack. Plug the 1/8" plug into the back of the RF receiver and extend the cable over CAT-5 to your projector. At your projector, put the IR emitter right over the IR receiver on the projector and splice the IR emitter wire into your cat-5 cable. It's really very easy when you start doing it because you are just basically extending a wire. Now the rub is that it seems like the Harmony One remote does NOT support any RF functionality. Similarly, you may use a IR extender system. There are a number of cheap ones on eBay/Amazon, but quality is with the Xantech Dinky Link - Xantech 48095BKIT Everything Proof IR Kit Dinky Link | eBay