Is there a way to dynamically display and hide buttons based on the value of a variable? Here's my scenario: I have a "room" page that lets the user select what room they're in by choosing "media", "family", "bedroom". Each button sets a corresponding variable to 1 and the other two to 0. On some pages I'd like to have a particular button be different, depending on which of the rooms has been chosen: essentially, 3 buttons all in the same place, but only one of which will be active and visible, depending on the value of the variables.

Well, on a 3000, you can use the "Press" state of a button with variables, so you could just not have a press state, and make it dissapear that way. I'm not sure there's a way to make the button dissapear per se on a 950, but you could use variables to make every subsequent press after the initial not do anything.

Using the method described for the 3000, you could "Stack" 3 buttons, when you press one button have it switch It's own Variable to 1 (the invisible state) and set whatever button you want to replace it to to 0 state (Visible State). Hopefully that makes sense. (and works)

Search for the user Darnitol, who is now a URC employee. Then check his user profile and see if his email address is posted.

He has done wonders with variables that show different buttons at different times using quite sophisticated variables.

He's certainly more qualified than me. I'm convinced that with creative use of variables, you can do darn near anything. Once I got a good grip on how they work, they changed the way I programmed. Totally sweet.

I do have an answer for this, but I'm working today and tomorrow to get some projects done before CES. I'll try to write up a usuable explanation when my projects are done.

The short answer is that while you can't actually make a button "exist" or "not exist" with a variable, you can use variable and aliases to make a button that switches among various functions, then you can show or hide a separate button image with a variable. The end result in the remote is what you want: It looks and works like the button is completely changing appearance and function based on the state of the variables. that the button in that position appears to change in both appearance and function based on the settings of the variables.

Dale Crawford
Instructional Media Designer
Universal Remote Control, Inc.

That's why they call him "Darn"itol! he he he He knows variables! ;-)

I figured it out -- I set each button to use a variable to select its display image, deleted the "0" image, and set the "1" image to be what I wanted displayed when the variable was "1". Then stacked them up. Works great. Thanks for the tips.

After programming the RC9200 for a number of years, I guess I'm a little stuck in a box with how I think about making the remote do things. MX3000 == way cool ;-)

By doing this you can display any single image you want by setting only that variable high, but the only button programming that will work will be the top button. Even if you see the icon from the bottom button, the top button is the only one you can press.

Did you create all of your logic on that top button?

The top button stays transparent and that plus some hidden ones do all the logic. The buttons farther down the stack are only used to get a variety of images displayed.

I'm going to optimize this to work with only 2 buttons instead of 4 since I only need 3 different images and that only takes 2 buttons.

Mike:

Clearly, you have it figured out. The method you described is exactly what I do on my own remote.

Thanks,
Dale