HELP my ISY has taken over the TV!

[arw01]

Now that I have your attention

 

LONG on my wife's list has been an "Ozzy Ozborne" remote control. Those being VERY expensive, and me being a purist with my tivo remote, I've been on a long, long quest to find a way to make watching tv or a movie a simplier process.

 

As you all know, teaching the baby sitter, or mother in law, or even the wife the proper order to use this remote to turn on the TV, use this remote to set the receiver and change the input, use this remote to control the blu-ray player, use this remote to make the kids mind, is a constant battle to remind them "you have to do it this way, remember?"

 

Along this line I have invested in a Raspberry Pi, Iguanaworks ir transceiver, and a couple of ir emitters. Total cost would be around $125 or so I imagine. On the journey I also bought, the first time, a Global Cachi IP2IR device, which if you wanted only 1 way control, is a great and simple item to use with the network module for the ISY.

 

Listening for the remote and getting the variables updated in the ISY was pretty straightforward using the rest interface via lirc and it's various little daemons. I use this to tell how many times I hit a particular button to set both some lights on and to set occupancy for the basement as my motion sensor is flaky at this at best.

 

Using software from Jeffrey Hoenig, who wrote the very capable ISYUTIL module, and a whole lot of head scratching while I deciphered his fine piece of perl programming, I have modified his module to let me listen to variable changes on the ISY and react to them by executing scripts which tell the lirc irsend to control my equipment.

 

So to the point of the post here.

 

How are you guys setting up your remotes, keypad lincs, etc for the various functions of tv, movie, radio, etc listening?

 

Current functionality for me:

 

press play 3 times in 5 seconds on either the blu-ray remote or the tivo remote sets a movie scene to slowly fade the lights down and out between the three zones I have in the media room.

 

any remote press on the receiver, or tivo remote causes occupancy to be reset

 

press pause 3 times in 5 seconds on either the blu-ray or tivo remotes causes lights to come up instantly

 

Press tivo button 2x, turns on the tv with a discrete on, the receiver with a discrete on, waits 2 seconds and reset the input to the proper hdmi port. With the discrete on commands I don't have to worry about toggling anything by accident.

 

Press the Movie Scene keypad button once and the tv turns on, the receiver turns on and set the input to bluray. I don't currently turn on the blu-ray player because the act of opening it causes it to turn on.

 

Press the Movie Scene keypad fast on and the tv turns on, the receiver turns on and sets the input to the Tivo. Since the TIVO is always on, I don't need to set that either.

 

Press the Movie Scene keypad off and the componts are told the turn discrete off, currently I lave my xbox alone as occassionaly like to leave a game running for instant access back into it.

 

How can I make all this easier for the wife or what have I not thought of?

 

Alan