Hi all, I’ve been through various iterations of trying to control Plex from a rather wide variety of universal remotes over the years. IR blasters, FLIRC, cloning Harmony code, Windows Media Player remotes, you name it. I am now rebuilding home theater, and will be using either a Control4 or URC remote to control the embedded version of Plex Media Player running on a new Kaby Lake Intel NUC.
I was hoping to learn from this audience what the current best practices or recommendations are to control Plex in this scenario? For example, are there IP controls/programming available so I can avoid IR blasters or Flirc? Or should I be looking at something like PulseEight’s Intel NUC HDMI CEC expansion options? (Not really sure if that gets me full control?) Or, is there something else?
Appreciate whatever insights you can share! Really hoping to improve upon the best solution I’ve found so far (IR blaster->FLIRC USB adapter sending keyboard commands, but with annoying lag.)
Thank you!
I have the Skylake version of the NUC which has a built in IR receiver. Using my URC remote, I programmed it with the Windows Media IR codeset and found that in general, things just worked*.
If you want to get fancy, you can customize an input config, and identify what commands the NUC is receiving by using the command line tool ‘irw’ over SSH. However the basics (navigation, play, pause, etc) should work with the default input map. This article can help you with that: https://support.plex.tv/hc/en-us/articles/216459997-Create-your-own-inputmap
(.* there was a small bug in the Skylake NUC BIOS that required a workaround in autostart.sh to get the ir receiver working, but I think it was unique to that generation nuc.)
Hey James, thought I recognized your account! Good to see you!
I’ll definitely look at the Windows Media IR code set this time around - I’m waiting to get a Kaby Lake NUC to rebuild, and my main goal is to reduce latency as much as possible. Been really happy with the Nvidia Shield TV’s Plex support, except for the UI. Would prefer to go back to PMP.
What keeps you on URC out of curiosity? I have been considering moving to Control4, but my theater guy still likes URC. No reason to change?
Ultimately I like their remotes the best (I really dislike tablet/touchscreen remotes), both the TRC-1080 and TRC-820 remotes are very nice. I can also fully manage the programming for the system myself, which is critical for my setup since it is seemingly always changing. Come by sometime and I’ll give you a demo.
One note on the Kaby Lake NUCs. Super cool device, but there is still a linux driver bug preventing bitstream audio passthru of high-bitrate audio (TrueHD/Atmos, DTS-HD/DTS:X). Not an issue if you are running windows, but a problem if you run PMP embedded. The issue is being tracked here: https://communities.intel.com/thread/110994
Still tracking the HD bitrate audio issue - it’s the one thing keeping me from going back to embedded. But am pretty happy with the Win10 setup so far.
One question - have you found a rock solid, reliable discrete on and off solution for the NUC? MCE IR seems to be a toggle, and I can’t find MCE RC6 discrete on/off commands anywhere (in pronto hex) for the RTI remote I’m programming. Another hack solution seems to be to issue the audio stream MCE IR command - turns NUC on, but at times the NUC also seems to decide to ignore IR commands until reboot. Any suggestions?
@avrignaud said:
Still tracking the HD bitrate audio issue - it’s the one thing keeping me from going back to embedded. But am pretty happy with the Win10 setup so far.
One question - have you found a rock solid, reliable discrete on and off solution for the NUC? MCE IR seems to be a toggle, and I can’t find MCE RC6 discrete on/off commands anywhere (in pronto hex) for the RTI remote I’m programming. Another hack solution seems to be to issue the audio stream MCE IR command - turns NUC on, but at times the NUC also seems to decide to ignore IR commands until reboot. Any suggestions?
Check this thread, it may work (check page 2 for Power On) RC: Win7 MCE Discrete on off codes Help (Page 1 of 2)
Thanks! I had found that before, and didn’t have any luck - have tried quite a few discreet code sets, and haven’t had luck. But I found that turning off NUC entirely, and then using the Power button for on, seems to work pretty reliably.
