Apple IR remote not detected
I am learning about Max for Live, and opened up the tutorial in Ableton Live 9 entitled 'Using an Apple Remote' (found in the M4L Building Tools section).
I have an Apple Remote like the one shown in the picture, but it does not appear in the drop down menu. According to the tutorial it should show up as 'AppleIR'.
Is there some other step I need to do for the remote to be detected? To be honest, I would have been quite surprised if the 'AppleIR' device actually had shown up in the menu, as I have never tried to make a connection between my MacBook pro and the remote before. Is the remote supposed to be detected automatically without prior setup?
Looks like there's a button pressing trick for pairing:
https://support.apple.com/kb/PH25509?viewlocale=en_US&locale=en_US
I think I'll give this a try too as an Apple TV mine was acquired with is now exclusively on AirPlay duty and doesn't need its own remote.
Here's some more info. It looks like Apple TV remotes pair with Bluetooth not IR, and newer Macbooks don't have an IR receiver anymore:
https://www.apple.com/ca/shop/question/answers/mac/does-apple-remote-pair-with-macbook-pro-retina/Q9UAUDFU7YYC7AJF2
I bet I could do what I'm trying to do anyway, but now I know to try pairing via bluetooth for my case
Thanks for the information. I have a MacBook pro retina (2013) so I guess it doesn't have the IR receiver. I just tried the bluetooth pairing, but no luck. I would be interested to know if you get it working.
It sounds to me like you have an Apple Remote that works by IR and a MBP that doesn't have an IR receiver. In your case the simplest thing to do might be to get a USB IR receiver.
Reading more on the wikipedia page, I think in my case it will work with my 2010 Macbook Pro which was from before they stopped putting in the IR receiver (up until mid 2012):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Remote#Compatibility
Also looks like they didn't add in bluetooth until very recently
Yup just to confirm, although I have to remap a few of the button values for my generation of IR Remote, it works both with the [hi] object this patch uses, as well as the older aka.appleremote object available here: http://www.iamas.ac.jp/~aka/max/#aka_appleremote
(though obviously I can't fix it in the aka object since that one is coded to work only with your generation of remote)
I paired it using the 7-button technique described in my first link above, I think yours would need to use the 6-button technique.
One interesting thing to note is you'll get a different value on some of the buttons if you hold them long enough, like the left and right buttons on the wheel. I think this works the same way for all generations of remotes.
I bought a cheap USB IR receiver, but still no luck I am afraid. The pairing techniques do not work for me. The IR receiver flashes when I press buttons on the remote, but nothing meaningful seems to happen on the MacBook itself. I tried installing Mira and RemoteBuddy but they do not recognise the remote either.
Any other suggestions? Otherwise I may have to live without being able to use the Apple Remote in Live after all...
If the IR receiver flashes when you press buttons, there must be some kind of interaction happening. When I used the pairing procedure, there was a fullscreen overlay that showed two links of a chain together suggesting confirmation of connection.
I recommend debugging with the [hi] device in Max. The step in such cases is to select the device with [hi] (setting up a umenu which autopopulates with a list of available human interface devices is best, probably there is an example of doing this in the [hi] help file).
Then simply attach a button to output of [hi] once your remote is chosen from the menu, and see if [hi] bangs the button when you press a physical button on the remote.
This will help separate the troubleshooting whether it's connecting properly from whether data is getting through the connection