Netherlands
Hi All,
News on a cheap Remote Control with the follwing features:
- Mouse / Trackball
- QWERTY keyboard
- Hybrid Infra-red (IR learning) / RF solution
- Transport controls
- Volume controls
- Program up/down controls
- TGB (if you want it!)
- Dual power buttons (one for TV, one for PC)
(Configuration: Windows 7 / MP 1.2.3)
I was using the NyxBoard as Remote Control. To be honest, it worked for me personally (with various hacks to some key controls). However, WAF was not there. It was not usable by other family members. In particular the way the mouse worked and the concept of two modes (IR / RF) was just not cutting it with non-nerd users, babysitters etc.
So.... the quest for RC solution continued. I looked and researched loads of options. It's amazing that so many products are so-nearly the answer but fail on some vital point. Eventually I bought this one direct from China as I could not find a supplier for this product in the EU:
http://www.tomtop.com/pc-tv-all-in-...-mouse-universal-learning-remote-control.html
Total cost, INCLUDING shipping from China: EUR 24.26 (!!)
Batteries (2 x AAA) are NOT included.
Got it yesterday (took about 2 weeks to arrive with standard postage) and, for the price, I am impressed. Again with some hacking (which I expected) it was possible to achieve the desired result and it solves all the problems that I had with the NyxBoard.
Build quality is reasonable. The trackball thing is El Cheapo but works (so far!). No backlight (but there are no RC solutions at this price point with that).
The main point is that it supports IR on/off (for the monitor - or in my case a video projector) and a few other controls, with RF HTPC control without changing "mode". Or, let's say, when you are in HTPC mode (which you never change in our case), you can still do enough IR functions to live with it (assuming your volume control is the HTPC volume control).
Main problems are with various keys...
First of all, the core of MediaPortal RC is that you need up/down/left/right with "Enter" key in the middle. This RC does not do that out of the box. Instead in the middle is the mouse trackball. This is a clickable trackball, so it does have a switch in the middle. So, what we need to do is that when MediaPortal is running, we need to map "left click" to "Enter" and also disable mouse movement. For this, we need AutoHotKey.
I solved this by creating two AutoHotKey scripts. One is used to launch MediaPortal. It has the function to prevent mouse movement in MP:
BlockInput MouseMove
RunWait, MediaPortal.exe, C:\Program Files\Team MediaPortal\MediaPortal
BlockInput MouseMoveOff
ExitApp
I then created a shortcut to launch this script when I want to run MP:
Shortcut target: "C:\Program Files\AutoHotkey\AutoHotkey.exe" RunMediaPortal.ahk
Start in (directory where the ahk script is).
Then you need another AutoHotKey script to run permanently, in order to prevent the RC from doing annoying stuff and also to map the mouse button to Enter when running MP:
This looks like this:
Browser_Favorites::Home
LWin::
#IfWinActive MediaPortal
LButton::Enter
#IfWinActive
This script does the following:
1) Maps the "Fav" Button on the RC to "Home". Handy for MP.
2) Disables the Left Windows key. This prevents the RC's "Guide" and "Menu" buttons from doing annoying stuff.
3) Maps the mouse button to Enter, only when running MediaPortal
Note also that I have disabled Windows MediaCenter in Windows Control Panel (Windows components). Otherwise the "round" transport key will act as TGB and launch this application - something you probably don't want.
By the way, most things work on this RC as you might expect.
The EXIT key is an ESCAPE key
The INFO key is F1
In general, looks like quite a good solution so far, I will let you all know if I experience problems.
Cheers,
mpadam
News on a cheap Remote Control with the follwing features:
- Mouse / Trackball
- QWERTY keyboard
- Hybrid Infra-red (IR learning) / RF solution
- Transport controls
- Volume controls
- Program up/down controls
- TGB (if you want it!)
- Dual power buttons (one for TV, one for PC)
(Configuration: Windows 7 / MP 1.2.3)
I was using the NyxBoard as Remote Control. To be honest, it worked for me personally (with various hacks to some key controls). However, WAF was not there. It was not usable by other family members. In particular the way the mouse worked and the concept of two modes (IR / RF) was just not cutting it with non-nerd users, babysitters etc.
So.... the quest for RC solution continued. I looked and researched loads of options. It's amazing that so many products are so-nearly the answer but fail on some vital point. Eventually I bought this one direct from China as I could not find a supplier for this product in the EU:
http://www.tomtop.com/pc-tv-all-in-...-mouse-universal-learning-remote-control.html
Total cost, INCLUDING shipping from China: EUR 24.26 (!!)
Batteries (2 x AAA) are NOT included.
Got it yesterday (took about 2 weeks to arrive with standard postage) and, for the price, I am impressed. Again with some hacking (which I expected) it was possible to achieve the desired result and it solves all the problems that I had with the NyxBoard.
Build quality is reasonable. The trackball thing is El Cheapo but works (so far!). No backlight (but there are no RC solutions at this price point with that).
The main point is that it supports IR on/off (for the monitor - or in my case a video projector) and a few other controls, with RF HTPC control without changing "mode". Or, let's say, when you are in HTPC mode (which you never change in our case), you can still do enough IR functions to live with it (assuming your volume control is the HTPC volume control).
Main problems are with various keys...
First of all, the core of MediaPortal RC is that you need up/down/left/right with "Enter" key in the middle. This RC does not do that out of the box. Instead in the middle is the mouse trackball. This is a clickable trackball, so it does have a switch in the middle. So, what we need to do is that when MediaPortal is running, we need to map "left click" to "Enter" and also disable mouse movement. For this, we need AutoHotKey.
I solved this by creating two AutoHotKey scripts. One is used to launch MediaPortal. It has the function to prevent mouse movement in MP:
BlockInput MouseMove
RunWait, MediaPortal.exe, C:\Program Files\Team MediaPortal\MediaPortal
BlockInput MouseMoveOff
ExitApp
I then created a shortcut to launch this script when I want to run MP:
Shortcut target: "C:\Program Files\AutoHotkey\AutoHotkey.exe" RunMediaPortal.ahk
Start in (directory where the ahk script is).
Then you need another AutoHotKey script to run permanently, in order to prevent the RC from doing annoying stuff and also to map the mouse button to Enter when running MP:
This looks like this:
Browser_Favorites::Home
LWin::
#IfWinActive MediaPortal
LButton::Enter
#IfWinActive
This script does the following:
1) Maps the "Fav" Button on the RC to "Home". Handy for MP.
2) Disables the Left Windows key. This prevents the RC's "Guide" and "Menu" buttons from doing annoying stuff.
3) Maps the mouse button to Enter, only when running MediaPortal
Note also that I have disabled Windows MediaCenter in Windows Control Panel (Windows components). Otherwise the "round" transport key will act as TGB and launch this application - something you probably don't want.
By the way, most things work on this RC as you might expect.
The EXIT key is an ESCAPE key
The INFO key is F1
In general, looks like quite a good solution so far, I will let you all know if I experience problems.
Cheers,
mpadam
Last edited:
