Remote Control the Mac

This is really cool: sitting on the sofa and browse iTunes! This is possible by the means of Triggers.

What are Triggers capable of?

Using a standard remote control, of which the IR codes has been taught to iRed before, you can control applications on your Mac, e.g. browse your iTunes library or run a Keynote presentation.

VRCs with examples for controlling several applications are part of the iRed distribution and can be found in the folder "VRCs".

With the help of triggers it also possible to send IR codes "around the corner", e.g. iRed waits for a specific IR code and reacts by sending out a different code. So you may remote control devices with a "foreign" RC, or iRed can send a series of codes to turn on the video beamer, close the blinds and start the DVD player.

How to assign Triggers?

There are two ways to create triggers:

The trigger is part of a VRC button and so is only active, if the respective VRC has been loaded
The trigger is stored inside the archive and is always active, when iRed has been started

Triggers on VRCs

A VRC button can be configured to wait for a specific IR code, i.e. when the VRC is on-screen and the respective code is sent by a RC, the button will react, as if it had been clicked.

To assign an IR code to a VRC button,

switch the VRC into Edit mode,
select the respective button on the VRC
open the Inspector.

There you will find the popup button labeled Infrared Remote Trigger.

Select the desired IR action from the archive,
then choose "Use IR-Code from archive" from the popup button:

If you want to assign a new code to the button, simply repeat this procedure. To delete a remote trigger, choose "Delete" from the popup button.

Triggers without VRCs

You may create triggers independently from VRCs, so iRed has to be started but no VRC has to be loaded to let you remote control the Mac.

Please go to the inspector window and click on the tab labelled "Triggers" to open the trigger list for editing:

In this table you find the list of all triggers which are active at the moment.

In the column VRC is noted whether the trigger is part of a VRC button or part of the archive (no entry). In the column RC/Title the title of the trigger is listed, i.e. the short description of the respective IR code, the trigger is waiting for.

In this example you will see that several triggers are duplicates, e.g. the code "Chck" of the RC "Sony CD" is part of the VRC "iTunes" as well as of the archive. If this code would be received, only the topmost trigger would be activated, in this case the one on the VRC "iTunes" - the ordering is important.

When you select the trigger above you will see the actions which would be performed in the lower list, here one AppleScript will be sent in reaction to the "Chck" code received by iRed.

To add or remove actions from the action list please use the buttons on the top of the inspector window.

Adding Triggers

To add a trigger to the list, please select an IR code in the archive, then click "To Triggers":

The Ordering of Triggers

As noted above the ordering of the triggers is important to decide which one will be executed in case of duplicate IR codes.

If you load a VRC, its triggers will be sorted just above the triggers already in the list. So, to change the ordering of the triggers you may close and re-open a VRC to bubble the respective triggers up the list. An easier way is to use the context menu, i.e. Control-click or Right-click directly on the trigger list:

The functions of this context menu are:

Delete: removes the selected trigger from the list and from the VRC if applicable
Move to Archive: the trigger will be moved to the archive and deleted from the VRC. So the trigger will be active regardless of an open VRC
Copy to Archive: the same as above, but the trigger will not be deleted from the VRC
Show Trigger Button on VRC: if the selected trigger is part of a VRC the respective button will be selected, the inspector will reflect the new selection
Prioritize selected VRC: this changes the ordering of the trigger list. All triggers of the selected VRC (or archive) will be sorted just above all duplicates in the list.

Last update: July 16, 2004