Activate Z-Wave Scenes with your IR Remote Control

The following guide will show you how you can use an ordinary IR remote control to trigger Z-Wave scenes with InControl HA. We use this method in conjunction with JRiver Media Center to control media playback and Z-Wave lighting in our home theatre so we can (for example) start a movie and dim the lights with the press of a single button.  

Most Home Theatre PC (or HTPC) enthusiasts will be familiar with the concept of using software to map IR remote control key presses to custom tasks or actions. So, what if there was a way of triggering Z-Wave scenes from the command line or a script? This would mean you could use your remote software to map IR requests to Z-Wave scene changes! As it turns out, InControl provides a simple way for you to achieve this very thing and we'll explain how to get it all working in the following steps. 

Step 1: First, consider the scenes you want to control and create these via the InControl console. For example, when watching movies in our home theatre, we wanted two very specific actions to trigger when we hit PLAY or STOP on our remote control:-

1. PLAY: start movie playback and dim the lights to 10% (Scene 1)
   
2. STOP: end movie playback and raise light levels to 60% (Scene 2)

We'll be using these two actions as the basis for this tutorial. Here’s how they've been configured using scenes inside InControl:-

Scene 1 - Lights Down

Scene 2 - Lights Up

Step 2: Next, follow Ryan’s excellent guide: “Activate a scene from the command line”. This will provide you with the cURL commands needed to activate your selected scenes.

Step 3: You’ll want to save these cURL commands to separate command files. This will make it easier to call the scenes from your IR software. We've chosen to use simple .bat files named HTLightsDOWN.bat and HTLightsUP.bat. For example:-

HTLightsDOWN.bat (Scene 1)
@ECHO OFF
curl -X PUT -H "Content-Type:application/json;charset=utf-8" - d "{""password"":""1234"",""sceneId"":""8351ef73-d25c-468f-b260- 7833f1b92593"",""activate"":""1""}" http://192.168.1.100:1178/zwave/activateSceneByGuid

HTLightsUP.bat (Scene 2)
@ECHO OFF
curl -X PUT -H "Content-Type:application/json;charset=utf-8" - d "{""password"":""1234"",""sceneId"":""7839c489-5f77-47cf-a05d- e55840778b77"",""activate"":""1""}" http://192.168.1.100:1178/zwave/activateSceneByGuid

Step 4: Now it’s time to map the two .bat files to the PLAY and STOP buttons on your remote control. There are many different remote controls and IR software solutions available which makes this step a little complicated to describe. Irrespective of this, the process of mapping key presses to actions is going to be more-or-less the same. So, we'll demonstrated the way to set this up using a standard MCE remote with JRiver Media Center. In our opinion, JRiver’sTheater View is the best Media Centre front-end available and provides built-in support for most IR remotes:-

a) Open JRiver and navigate to Options > Remote Control:-

JRiver Remote Setup Screen

Note: We have disabled “Microsoft MCE” and chosen “Remote, keyboard, gamepad or other HID” as the Selected input device under Drives & Options. This allows us to use the standard Arrow, Enter and Play controls (which work natively under Windows 7) but also allows us to trigger custom commands as required.

b) Click the Commands link and select Play/Pause:-

JRiver Remote Commands Screen

c) Click “Start Learning” and press the PLAY button on your remote:-

JRiver Remote IR Learning Screen

Note: Ignore any prompts recommending not to learn the IR key press. As described above, PLAY will work out-of-the-box without needing to learn the command when using the MCE controller. However, we want to retain this behaviour as well as trigger an action (next step below). This is the way you achieve both! Again, this process will be the same regardless of the IR software you use when you use a MCE remote under Windows.

d) With Play/Pause still selected, click the Edit button and delete the default command action “MCC: Play/Pause”. Next, click the Add Run button.

e) Browse and select the HTLightsDOWN.bat file you created in step 3 and enable the Run Invisible check box (to prevent the DOS window from showing when the scene is triggered):-

JRiver Edit Remote Command Dialog

You’re done! Sit back and enjoy a fully automated home theatre experience.

Remember, if you're new to Z-Wave, you can read more about it in our What is Z-Wave?  blog article. InControl Home Automation software can be purchased here.