Bluetooth TiVo Slide Remote with QWERTY keyboard / keypad finally goes retail

http://www.engadget.com/2010/08/24/tivo-...te-review/
$89


if anyone picks this up please let us know how well it works out of the box. but i have a feeling just from what i read it would be VERY easy to get it to work, as both the remote and the keyboard just send keystrokes over the bluetooth dongle.

Are there any other remotes out there that have keyboards built in like this? What about a small track ball or some type of mouse item also?

the boxee remote, which should be out in nov,

http://www.boxee.tv/htdocs/images/logged...remote.jpg

I just got my Tivo Slide remote today and am trying to hook it up on an XBMC Live install and so far it's not working.

The funny thing is, when I first booted I was making some HD changes and XBMC gave me the screen to boot you into a terminal to fix things, and amazingly the thing worked out of the box as a bluetooth keyboard! Unfortunately, once I get into XBMC, I see a red X and the remote won't connect.

I've tried to do a few recommended things like installing bluez and running hcitool commands. I've even been able to get it into rfcomm intermittently but it doesn't appear to have any effect inside XBMC.

As an update to this:

1. I can use the top part of the remote via IR with Lirc, based of a Tivo Glo remote mapping (the Tivo button has a slightly different address, and there are the 4 a/b/c/d colored buttons added). The slide out keyboard, as expected, does not work in that mode.

2. I can, at least temporarily, get the bluetooth connected with bluez-utils, utilizing the simple-agent script and doing some work with hidd. In the bluetooth mode, the top part of the remote doesn't work, however the slide out works fine :\ (and quite quickly too).

Edit: Did some more investigating, and on Windows the top remote acts like a Media Extender Remote - it sends signals like a bluetooth remote, some of which I can capture in EventGhost using a PS3 Bluetooth Remote, but not all. Also, I attempted to set the event device up in Ubuntu according to the PS3 remote directions here : http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=50717, but I can't properly capture codes using irrecord: half of the keypresses don't register at all, and the ones that do end up with a blank address (0x0) in the analysis file.

Thanks.

Just wanted to see how this thing was working for you humbaba2525?

So does the whole remote operate as a bluetooth remote, or only the keypad and the top buttons are IR only?

I'm running xbmc on ubuntu and would love to get one of these if it really does work well...I'd like to not have to set up an IR receiver, just run everything over bluetooth.

Haven't progressed beyond the point of the last message, unfortunately. The remote is definitely sending some signals that irrecord and LIRC don't seem to be able to handle. Here is a thread from a couple guys who are more knowledgeable than me about the issues:

http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/my...ers/449436

For now, I'm using it as an expensive IR remote. To clarify, in full working order, the Tivo remote should function with all keys ("top" and "bottom") in bluetooth, or alternately the "top" part in IR if it can't connect via bluetooth. Currently, in XBMC Live, I can connect by Bluetooth, but only the "bottom" keyboard keys function -- this part is a keyboard device in /dev/input; the top sends remote-like signals -- this part is an event device in /dev/input -- much of which are apparently out of the scancode range to be picked up by LIRC (again, I'm not super knowledgeable about this).

keep us posted please

I just got this remote, and it is really nice. It's not going to replace a universal remote (Harmony) for complicated setups, but for my simple two device config (TV, HTPC) it is beautiful. Having a qwerty keyboard is great, I can't believe I've gone this long without it!
You can configure some keys to use IR. I've done this with the Power and Volume keys so that they will control the TV set. All the other keys work over bluetooth, and are treated like a keyboard in Linux.
Warning: it is not easy to set up this remote!

First, you need to patch your kernel using Jarod Wilson's work from MythTV. https://patchwork.kernel.org/patch/161481/ This patch improves the HID driver so that it recognizes the scancodes the remote produces, and generates the correct keycodes. Hopefully this patch will make it into standard kernels quickly.

Second, X sucks. It can't handle keycodes larger than 255 - which this remote uses. You can solve this a number of different ways (HAL FDI, eventlircd), I used a program called keyfuzz to do it. I had to compile this from source, and manually modify the init.d script it came with to work properly. http://0pointer.de/lennart/projects/keyfuzz/

Third, you need to modify ~.xbmc/userdata/keyboard.xml to remap the keys to useful xbmc functions.

As soon as Jarod's patch lands in a release version of Ubuntu, I'll work with the LiveCD guys to get it to work "out of the box".

toprunner2786 Wrote:So does the whole remote operate as a bluetooth remote, or only the keypad and the top buttons are IR only?

I am using this remote, and no longer have an IR receiver connected to XBMC - it's all bluetooth.
Some of the keys on the top - I don't know an exhaustive list - can be programmed to use both Bluetooth and IR. What this means is that when you press them the bluetooth keyboard device sends keycodes to XBMC, and the IR transmitter also sends a command. I use this for the Volume and Power buttons, though I know the Channel Up/Down can also be programmed this way.
Most of the keys do not do anything with IR, they just act as keyboard keys on the bluetooth device.

Note - using Volume as an example, having it transmit both the keyboard and IR when you hit Volume Up is a pain. The volume on both my TV and XBMC go up! I got around this by modifying ~.xbmc/userdata/keyboard.xml to assign the volume_up key to something worthless, an action called "yellow". I wanted to assign it to "nothing", but it seems like there is not a way to tell a key to do nothing.