No focus w/usbuirt

[stingray]

Hi everyone,
Realtively new user to Sage and things are going pretty well. Had a few trouble spots along the way, but with the help of the good old search engine I was able to work my way thru them. However, came across an issue and was wondering if someone can help me out. I recently decided to upgrade a bit and bought the USB-UIRT. It controls the Sat box fine as long as Sage is the main function. However, when I am doing other things on the PC and Sage is still running but not the main window it appears as though I cant control it unless I click on its window. I have read that there is a program someone developed where you can still control Sage with the remote when its not the main focus but it doesnt appear to work with the keyboard. Wondering if anyone has a solution to this issue ?
Thanks

[dvd_maniac]

I was wondering if anybody uses the Remote-Wonder with Sage? Can't it act like a mouse and bring focus to Sage? I have one and will give it a try, but I was just wondering if anybody else knows and could save me some time.

[Opus4]

Originally Posted by stingray

I recently decided to upgrade a bit and bought the USB-UIRT. It controls the Sat box fine as long as Sage is the main function. However, when I am doing other things on the PC and Sage is still running but not the main window it appears as though I cant control it unless I click on its window. I have read that there is a program someone developed where you can still control Sage with the remote when its not the main focus but it doesnt appear to work with the keyboard. Wondering if anyone has a solution to this issue ?

What remote are you using to control SageTV? Are you using the USB-UIRT as the receiver, or are you using a different IR receiver?

- Andy

[stingray]

Using a OFA 9910 universal remote. This way it allowed me to use it for both the Sat, as well as Sage. Since purchasing the UIRT I reconfigured Sage to let the USBUIRT act as a receiver for the Sat, this way it will record/switch channels automatically.

[Opus4]

Are you using the USB-UIRT as the IR receiver for the remote? If so, I _believe_ SageTV will receive signals from it regardless of Windows focus. Or, are you using something else to receive the signals from your remote & send the commands to SageTV -- using the remote with the Hauppauge IR receiver would be an example here.

You mentioned the keyboard in the first post. I guess I'm not sure what focus issue you are having -- when SageTV doesn't have focus, what problem are you having? A problem with the remote or keyboard to control SageTV, or what?

- Andy

[stingray]

Thanks for taking the time to respond Opus. I'm probably not making myself very clear, still not familiar with the terminology yet. Let me try and explain things a little better. The source configured for Sage is the Hauppauge WinTV PVR II Capture TV Tuner Channel 3 : my Sateliitle provider. Input type is TV Tuner, RF channel 3. For the input signal to the PVR 250 card, I split the signal comming out of a Sat box I have in a spare bedroom. Before getting the USB UIRT device, in order to change channels while watching TV on my PC I would use a Universal remote with the aid of a Leapfrog IR blaster. This would work well, but if I wanted to program Sage to record a show at a later time I had to make sure I tuned to the apprpriate channel for Sage had no way of changing to the correct channel. Because of this I purchased the UIRT and installed it in such a manner that Sage now has the capabilty of changing channels, and I can also change channels using my PC's keyboard.

However, here's my minor issue I'm having. Lets say I open up Sage and start watching TV . However, I also want to go onto the internet but wish to keep the TV screen viewable. So, I click on the header bar that says view always on top. Now I have the internet full screen while the TV is inset on the bottom left of my monitor. As I surf the internet it seems as though I lose control of Sage ( the usual blue header bar turns gray). I can longer change channels using the keyboard unless I click on the TV screen's inset and appear to give it "priority". The header bar now turns from the gray color to blue again. I'm just wondering if there's a way to continue using the keyboard to control sage even though it may not be the priority or "main focus".

[jsturtevant]

http://www.girder.nl/help/gettingstarted/index.php

Girder can control the USB-UIRT and take commands from your keyboard.

This tool sits in the system tray accepting input IR or KB and uses the Windows sendmsg interface to send commands to various programs (including sage). By using sendmsg the program does not require focus.

Here is a description of how to setup with Sage, http://users.mcleodusa.net/r/ratpac/girder_setup.html

good luck

[Opus4]

Originally Posted by stingray

As I surf the internet it seems as though I lose control of Sage ( the usual blue header bar turns gray). I can longer change channels using the keyboard unless I click on the TV screen's inset and appear to give it "priority".

Normally, keyboard input goes to the active window with focus, not the 'top' window that happens to be set to "always on top". Essentially, you seem to be looking for a way to send keyboard input to some app other than the one with focus.

Originally Posted by jsturtevant

Girder can control the USB-UIRT and take commands from your keyboard.

Here's a question for this, not an argument against it... If the browser has focus, it will be taking the keyboard input. Can Girder grab the keys anyway, or can you set up hot-keys that it will always accept, regardless of which window has focus? If not, the keys will still just go to the one with focus. Just another detail to check & one I don't know the answer to.

- Andy