And this is A nice remote for my TV, written , and concerning MythTV, Howtos, and Linux
My television is run by the MythTV PVR software, which I use for watching films and recording TV and playing music and the like. Now, Myth is sort of organised around having a horrible massive remote control with a million buttons on it, which I can't stand. I want something nice and simple (Apple Remote sort of thing), but I wanted it to not use infrared (because IR is a pain in the arse, and you have to be pointing it at the TV, and apparently there are different sorts of IR which are incompatible (you can't buy an Apple Remote and point it at any IR receiver you like and have it work, much to my disgust)).
TomTom make a Bluetooth remote control for their high-end satnav units. (It's available at Amazon for thirty quid, which is a bit steep; I think I paid a bit less for it.) Anyway, owing to the wonders of Bluetooth and the Linux Bluez software all working nicely, just pairing with the remote means that it works like a keyboard and everything's perfect.
If you see any guides out there on the web telling you to use "hidd" on the command line to set this sort of thing up, they are wrong and out of date. Use the Bluetooth icon on your Gnome panel to pair with the remote, and then use Preferences to connect to it. That's all.
Comments
leif81
Saviq
@leif81
I'm on openSUSE 11.1 now but I successfully used some bluetooth HID-enabled phones.
It's fairly easy in gnome, just pair it and use it.
It's just as well in kbluetooth.
sil
leif81: Ubuntu intrepid. Just worked, right out of the box.
Alex Stansfield
Just for those who don't want to play the bluetooth lottery I can recommend the ATI Remote Wonder. Uses radio to connect to it's supplied usb dongle. It's supported by the kernel and just appears as a keyboard.
Very cheap on eBay and worked great for my VDR based PVR before I decided I had too many remote controls and went for a One For All IR job.
leif81
@sil
Consider yourself lucky then! Here's the ubuntu bug i've been following hoping for some upstream action
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/268502
Mikael
I bought a tomtom remote as well and I am very happy with it.
Ubuntu intrepid currently has this problem:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bluez-gnome/+bug/284994
see the bug for workarounds.
Peter
Cool idea :)
You said is works like a BlueTooth keyboard, so what do the keys on the TomTom remote get mapped to? And could you change this to suit the media centre?
curious...what distro are you running where bluetooth pairing actually worked? i have a logitech bluetooth keyboard and it's been horribly broken in fedora 8,9,10 since package updates around august 2008. From googling the problem seemed to be hitting ubuntu too so I'm curious what you are using and how?
cheers.