I recently purchased a Raspberry Pi to use as a Media Player to stream Dutch TV (BVN) for my elderly mother-in-law, on the advice of a friend. I have installed LibreElec and Kodi and enabled Catch-up TV and I am able to access BVN.
The challenge I have is I need a SIMPLE Remote Control for this device so that my mother-in-law can use it easily, which is what I am hoping to get your expert advice on.
For reference, I have considered using the Kodi Smartphone App however this is too complex for the intended user.
This may be a bit of a challenge, the first thing that comes to mind is to use CEC (Consumer Electronics Control) because if your TV already supports it, with a suitable HDMI cable that supports CEC you’re already done in terms of hardware
If not, I’d suggest taking a look at the FLIRC USB that Core Electronics carries (we’ve got 27 on shelf at the time I wrote this), it likely won’t provide as much functionality as using CBC, but should be extremely quick and easy to get set up with:
Thank you for the input. I have tried CEC on my own TV however I have not been able to get it to work. The RPi says it is connected but the remote doesn’t do anything. I’ll keep trying but no luck so far. I’ll also see if the target TV (mother-in-laws) has CEC before I do anything more as this sounds like the best way forward.
CEC is now working on my TV’s (yet to try it on the final target TV) as I discovered that I needed to change the HDMI output on the Raspberry Pi to the other port and it worked as originally expected.
Brilliant! I’d imagine that there’s a method of being able to change the HDMI port in the configuration settings of the Pi, although it shouldn’t matter anyway
All the best with your future projects! We’ll be here if you’ve got any questions.
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