

Youll find yourself on the main screen with a generic remote with the message Click a key to start recording and a go button. Once the dongle is recognized by your system run the Flirc application. Thats a bit tedious but it is foolproof in that you see exactly what each key does in a real world use scenario.

Idealy this process should be as simple as turning to Google and looking up something like media center name keymap or media center name keyboard shortcuts.įor reasons unknown Amazon lists the simple shortcuts (like arrow key navigation) but fails to list the more advanced (and useful) shortcuts like pressing F12 to return to the Fire TV home screen.ĭigging up those more advanced shortcuts required turning to a section in the Kodi wiki about pairing USB keyboards with the Fire TV. Lets look at how to figure out what your devices keymap is and then how to use Flirc to link the existing keymap with your remote. Microsoft Mce Remote Control And Xbmc How To Figure Out You can link literally any IR-based remote to any media center system that has a USB port that will accept a keyboard input.Ĭlearly the folks behind the Flirc project are into helping build a high quality media center experience all around. You dont need special drivers, you dont need to edit the keymaps of your device (if youre even able to), and you dont need a special remote. Then when you have the FLIRC dongle plugged into your media center and you press the remote button the media center is tricked into thinking the FLIRC USB dongle is actually a keyboard and that youve just pressed the Home key. You can take a button on your media center remote and map it, via the FLIRC system, to represent the Home key on a traditional keyboard. Rather than acting as a dumb IR-to-USB bridge that simply passes the IR commands along to the host operating system the FLIRC unit is actually a programmable device that uses USB HID (Human Interface Device) standards to emulate a keyboard. Its not a light task, however, and certainly not a task for beginners.įurther, it requires youve already purchased an IR dongle of some sort (which can run you anywhere from 10-20). You see there is a fundamental problem when it comes to linking your typical universal or TV remote to a media center system like a Raspberry Pi running KodiXBMC, an Amazon Fire TV, a computer running Plex or Windows Media Center, or the like: these devices are either optimized for their own special remote (such as the bluetooth remote that comes with the Amazon Fire TV) or they are optimized for keymaps that map onto a keyboard (like KodiXBMC and Windows Media Center). Microsoft Mce Remote Control And Xbmc How To Figure Out.
