R800

Based on my previous post about getting my Logitech R800 presenting tool working with Keynote using Karabiner, I’ve now spent some time extending my private.xml to add support for QuickTime Player also. It now supports (inside QuickTime Player):

• Left: Rewind the video at various speeds.
• Right: Fast-forward the video at various speeds.
• “Start presentation”: Go into fullscreen.
• “Blank presentation”: Pause/play presentation.

This is very useful when giving a “live” demo from a QuickTime video, as you can pause/play/rewind etc. all from the presenter tool.

Recently I attempted to get my Logitech Presenter R800 working with Keynote on my Mac. I swiftly discovered that although it works with PowerPoint for Mac out-of-the-box, in Keynote the ‘start/stop presentation’ and ‘blank presentation screen’ keys didn’t work.

After a bit of investigation, I found the solution, which was to use KeyRemap4MacBook. The presenter tool behaves like a USB keyboard, and uses  for blank screen, and F5 for show/hide presentation. I installed KeyRemap4MacBook, and installed a private.xml based on the one on this page for a slightly different presentation tool. I’ve uploaded the one I used to github. Tip: Don’t forget to read the KeyRemap4MacBook manual. You need to explicitly reload the private.xml once it’s in place (you’ll also need to rename it to that name when you download from github), as well as tick the ‘R800 for Keynote’ checkbox on the Change Key tab in the KeyRemap4MacBook settings.

I recently acquired a Logitech Presenter R800. It’s a beautiful device - not particularly cheap, but very slick and easy-to-use. Unfortunately, Windows XP (Service Pack 3) on my system refused to recognise it - the device was listed as USB Receiver in Windows Device Manager, but Windows kept claiming it couldn’t find the driver. It is presented to the system as a standard USB HID device, so there is no Logitech-specific driver: it uses the standard Windows HID Driver. It worked perfectly out of the box on Ubuntu 9.10.