Speeding up the Logitech Harmony Software
As I've just recognized I've forgotten to write a notice here that we've bought a Logitech Harmony 785 programmable remote control.
This thing is quite interesting and fun to play around with, but it's also not so easy to configure as the standard off-the-shelf remote. The only thing is, that the configuration software on the PC is on the one hand not very intuitive and on the other hand... slow... as... hell...
Well at least I can offer a solution against the slowness.
The problem with the Logitech Harmony software seems to be, that Logitech bundles it with an older version of the Java Runtime environment. Something like Java 1.5 or so.
To speed up the software yourself you need a recent Java JRE installed on your computer somewhere, with at least a version equal or greater than JRE 6.
The following procedure is:
- Navigate to the installation directory of Logitech Harmony (something like "C:\Program Files\Logitech\Logitech Harmony Remote Software 7")
- go into the "jre" subdirectory and delete everything there (or back it up somewhere)
- next locate the JRE directory of Java (something like "C:\Program Files\Java\jre6")
- copy the "bin" and "lib" subdirectories of the Java JRE 6 directory to the Logitech "jre" directory
- finished
When you start up your Logitech Harmony software now, it should feel smother and react faster. I don't know exactly why this works but I suspect that the JRE of Java 6 is more advanced and faster in the areas which are used by the Harmony software than the JRE 5 which comes bundled with the software itself.
This is a relatively easy modification to do but if you're changing the configuration of your remote often, this can be something which helps you to make your changes faster.