Mike's Realm

So this was a challenge–I wanted to eliminate the X10 remote and disable X10 on my INSTEON switches for the home theater.  In doing so I wanted to use the INSTEON IRLinc to convert IR signals to INSTEON.  This would allow me complete control via my Logitech Harmony Remote.

I hooked up the IRLinc and paired up my devices to Scenes A/B and everything worked fine with the IRLinc credit card remote.  To get the Harmony setup I had to add custom commands for Scene A on/off (Screen Up/Down) and Scene B on/off (Wall Scones on/off).  These had to be learned on the Harmony using the IRLinc remote when I was done I quickly discovered control from the Harmony was very unreliable.  I toyed with this for a few days on and off and eventually got fed up and tossed it in a drawer to forget about.

Last night Ken was over and I decided to have two minds look at it I knew it should work, and with a fresh pair of eyes we got it working.  We hooked it up and everything worked properly–I had previously added the INSTEON switches to the IRLinc’s scenes and it had retained those settings.  Testing it with the IRLinc’s credit card remote everything worked fine (as before) but with control via Harmony was very unreliable just as before.  We tried relearning the IR signals and that wasn’t getting us anywhere while sitting there staring at the screen we saw the “Custom” button on the IR Learn page in the Harmony software.  When we hit that we saw that all our learned commands had “Analyzed” next to them so we hit the new Learn Raw button that appeared once we hit the Custom button.  The learning process was a lot faster and we quickly updated the remote to test.  Success!  We learned that the Harmony doesn’t replicate IR codes it learns exactly.  By default the remote analyzes the IR signal and fixes any issues or interferance it encounters (sunlight in the room for example has IR light).  When the Harmony analyzed  the IRLinc’s signal it would clean the signal so much to the point that the IRLinc wasn’t able to respond because it wasn’t receiving the proper IR signal.  Hopefully this post helps others who have IRLinc’s in drawers from failed integration with Harmony remotes.

We mounted the IRLinc’s receiver on the front of my A/V receiver since I have no spare IR Emitters.  I don’t think I’ll even pickup another IR emitter for this since it’s always behind a closed door.

Prepared the INSTEON controls and PJ outlet for the attic.  Also mounted the relay board up in the attic and wired it all up.  Sconces are wired into this as well, programmed them so they ramp up/down.  Made a macro on my USB programmable INSTEON controller so whenever the screen goes up the Sconces ramp on, and when the screen goes down they ramp off.

TV is all wired up and center channel & sub RCA cabling is done.  TV wires look all gummy because the cheap electrical tape that wrapped around the plastic protecting all the connectors and binding the cables together left all the adhesive behind…and I pulled it off early so some insulation came in contact with it.  Will clean it up later on.

Clean speaker wire installs all done.  The mounts I used for the speakers suck–cheap plastic junk, no covers for the screws, ugly as hell… The cool part is I used a very handy tool from LSD (Labor Saving Devices) called a “Wet Noodle”  it’s a flexible bit of thin stiff tubing with a magnet on each end.  It comes with some ball chain attached to a split ring.  The way it works is from the attic you drill a hole through the top plate of the wall frame and drop the ball chain in the hole (split ring prevents the end from falling into the hole) and then drill a hole in the wall where you want to bring the wire out, and you retrieve it using by inserting the Wet Noodle and catching the ball chain on the magnetic tip affix your wire or poly and go back in the attic and pull the ball chain out and you got your wire through.  I was able to drill holes just a bit bigger then the gauge of the speaker wire and pull the speaker wire through using this tool/technique.  Well worth the 22 bucks, will definitely come in handy again.

IR connecting block installed and IR Receiver too.  Receiver went in the vaulted ceiling area since the screen being down would block it’s placement elsewhere.  Doing this again I wouldn’t use an inwall connecting block, it just added more wires traveling from the wall to the media cabinet, had I used the non-in wall version I would simply have a Cat5 cable coming across and that would be it.  This way I have 3 emitter cables traveling across, along with a power cable.

Wired in the HDMI and Component splitters to get output for both TV and PJ.  Super Cheap HDMI splitter, so far no issues.  Component picture really suffers on the PJ pretty sure I need to get a better VGA to component cable.