Standby Issue on Pro Box With IR Remote

[rbz5416]

Question for @Luke or anyone else using an IR remote to control the Pro Box:

I've had my Pro Box for a couple of years now, controlled by a Logitech Harmony remote. Around mid-way through last year I started getting problems with the box intermittently not going into standby. The LED on the front of the box flashes to confirm it's receiving a signal, but the box main light only goes off for a fraction of a second before coming back on. It can take 3 or 4 goes before the box finally goes to sleep.

No issues with waking or any other command, so just curious if anyone else is seeing the same, either with a Harmony or one of the older Humax remotes?

[gomezz]

What happens if you use the native supplied remote control to put the box into standby?

If that does work properly it may indicate a tweak needed to the Harmony remote control code sequences. Do you put the box into standby with its own button press on the Harmony (which is what I do with a long press of the Exit button) or do you allow activity switching on the Harmony to take care of that?

[rbz5416]

I don't think you can make a like-for-like comparison given the Pro remote is bluetooth. That's why I was keen to see if anyone using the Humax remote was seeing the same thing with IR.

From the way the main LED dips & then comes back on, I suspect that it's actually seeing the power toggle command for too long,  so going to standby & immediately waking. That would require a shorter duration from the Harmony so I'll give that a go.

I rely completely on the activity to shutdown, but then have to switch to Device Mode when it fails. But Device Mode exhibits the same behaviour of needing multiple presses.

Oddly when trying to test by turning on & off repeatedly in Device Mode, it never fails. I need to experiment with leaving on for a while.

[rbz5416]

So the minimum duration for the power toggle is 500mS, so nothing I can do there.

But I remembered that in the bowels of the garage was one of the ancient BT TV "puck" boxes, together with it's unused remote. So I dug that out, but sadly it's the same. So it's either a fault with my particular box or something was changed in a software update.

The issue doesn't appear to happen with the bluetooth remote but as I said earlier, it's comparing apples & oranges.

[brookheather]

Yes I had the same problem with my Harmony remote - I solved it by using an HDMI CEC blocker which stops the TV turning the Pro box back on after it goes into standby.  They are about £8 to buy on Amazon.

[rbz5416]

Thanks, but I don't think it's that as this is happening when everything is shut down. So the TV is off & CEC is disabled anyway. Also the box goes through an Arcam amp which also has CEC disabled. I'll try pulling the HDMI cable though before issuing the shutdown process.

Playing around a bit more it seems that that holding the Humax standby button down rather than just pressing it always turns the box off. You can see this as the IR LED on the box remains lit until the button is released. I've tried extending the power cycle duration in the Harmony software but that doesn't seem to be working. Despite extending it to two seconds, the IR LED only blinks briefly.

It's a shame the Pro Box isn't in the Harmony database, as then it would know to use bluetooth from the Hub. But given it's a dead product I doubt it will ever appear. In fact the 2100 & 4000 boxes are also absent.