Kymera Magic Wand Remote and Windows 7

Posted by Venerable High Pope Swanage I, Cogent Animal of Our Lady of Discord 21 September 2010 at 01:25PM

I recently was presented with the opportunity to purchase a Kymera Magic Wand Remote. "I get to play wizard while controlling my television?" I thought, "SIGN ME RIGHT UP!"

It's a very neat toy and considering the technology problem it is trying to solve, very well done. (I find there's some crosstalk between "flick down" and "tap top").

However it's a learning universal remote, and the problem with these is that if you use it with Windows via a Windows Media Center receiver device, the operating system will "Debounce" all inputs. Essentially you will end up able to do any input once, but not multiple times in a row without some other input intervening.

This is a stupid, compatibility breaking feature. Fortunately you can disable it. Point REGEDIT to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Services\HidIr\Remotes\745a17a0-74d3-11d0-b6fe-00a0c90f57da. Find the EnableDebounce key, and change it's value from 1 to 0. Poof! You've just done a little more magic to make Windows compatible with something Microsoft didn't build.