BT TV Remote pair to box.

Saven

At the moment my two BT TV remotes each control both boxes. Is it possible to pair a remote to a single box? I can’t find any way to do this.
This would enable me to have a four tuner setup in one room for £50 (two boxes off gumtree at £25 each) and £200 in the bank.

Lukе

It is not possible to pair a BT TV remote for a specific box, but I have used two BT Youview boxes in 1 room with no issue using two different remotes to control them separately. How I did that would not suit everyone.

All youview box come with some accessibility features.One of those accessibility features is to use a keyboard instead of the remote that came with the box.

https://support.youview.com/youview-box/accessibility/use-a-keyboard-as-a-remote/

The keyboard has to be either wired or use the Wi-Fi dongle that came with it.  Obviously I chose to use keyboards that came with a Wi-Fi dongle.  Keyboards that connect wirelessly with a youview box have to be described as Wi-Fi keyboards.  Blu-tooth keyboards do not, and can't, work.

I used the same model of keyboard for both youview units.  The keyboards that I used were described as appropriate for "android".  This meant that they had some audio/tv buttons.  The importance of this is that common functions like volume, mute, navigation and "OK" had their own dedicated buttons so that for those functions you didn't have to remember which keys on the keyboard mapped to which remote function. 

For details see https://support.youview.com/youview-box/accessibility/use-a-keyboard-as-a-remote/

Initially it looks like it will take a great deal of effort to remember which keys do what.  There is a logic to which keys on a keyboard do what and this does mean that it a lot easier to remember which key does what than it may at first appear.

The keys that I found difficult to remember were the keys for red, green, yellow and blue. I used coloured pens to mark them.

There are a couple of illogical key assignments, but I soon got use to them without much practice. You need to press 'Del' to do the same as 'Back' on a normal remote, and you need to press 'Back' to do the same as 'Delete' on a normal remote.

Unfortunately I can no longer find a Wi-Fi keyboard that doesn't come with a poor version of power saving.  What this means is that if you haven't used the remote in the past few minutes it needs a button press first to wake it up.

Roy

@Saven

Have a look at this brilliantly simple solution from @barnpiece:-

https://community.youview.com/youview/discussion/comment/19007414/#Comment_19007414

barnpiece

Thank you - glad you like my solution.

Roy

barnpiece said:

Thank you - glad you like my solution.

@barnpiece

And specially looked for and dug out of the archives to give credit where credit is due 🥳👏🏆🥇🇬🇧

Peskdale61

If you're happy to buy some extra hardware... then I have a setup you might like.

Buy a FLIRC usb dongle (https://flirc.tv/more/flirc-usb ), and a TalkTalk YV remote (or anything other than a BT or Humax one).

The FLIRC dongle can be programmed to accept IR signals from a remote, and then send keyboard commands to whatever it is plugged into.

Setup the FLIRC to accept commands from the remote you bought, and then output appropriate keyboard commands as per the accessibility guide (https://support.youview.com/youview-box/accessibility/use-a-keyboard-as-a-remote/ ).

Then, it's just a matter of plugging the FLIRC into the side USB of your second BT box, and taping something over the box's original IR sensor.

EDIT: Fixed links - thanks @Roy for spotting

Links to buy FLIRC in UK:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B01NBRBWS6
https://thepihut.com/products/flirc-usb-dongle-for-the-raspberry-pi

jimb

Peskdale61 said:

If you're happy to buy some extra hardware... then I have a setup you might like.

Buy a FLIRC usb dongle (https://flirc.tv/more/flirc-usb), and a TalkTalk YV remote (or anything other than a BT or Humax one).

The FLIRC dongle can be programmed to accept IR signals from a remote, and then send keyboard commands to whatever it is plugged into.

Setup the FLIRC to accept commands from the remote you bought, and then output appropriate keyboard commands as per the accessibility guide (https://support.youview.com/youview-box/accessibility/use-a-keyboard-as-a-remote/).

Then, it's just a matter of plugging the FLIRC into the side USB of your second BT box, and taping something over the box's original IR sensor.

Wow - that's impressive @Peskdale61

Roy

The link 404’ed because the closing ) had been accidentally included. 

Now fixed by @Peskdale61 in his post above.

And well worth a read.....

Peskdale61

Thanks @Roy - fixed.

I should also mention that this method could technically work with a Humax Freeview/Freesat remote as well, so long as you changed the remote to one of the different IR code sets.