IR Remotes - Whats being used these days?

  • Howdy Guys,

    Got my elderly parents set up with RPI2 (about to upgrade them to a RPI3 as I just got two 4's) and latest libreelec deployment. They current IR remote they are using is not working well anymore and they need to upgrade to something, which to be honest, needs to be simple to use, no special key mappings required, "Just Works"

    What would you guys suggest? its hard to get the old Windows MCE remotes these days and I noticed that you cannot pair the older Harmony remotes with Kodi?

    Just looking for some suggestions if you have em......

  • The RPi devices have built-in CEC support, so any decent/recent TV set should support it, so just use the TV's own remote, no other remote is required.

  • You can still get the HP branded MCE remotes for about 10 USD (or about 20 USD including an MCE USB receiver) on ebay.

    These are "real" MCE remotes and will work out of the box without needing to configure anything in LibreELEC.

    Be careful when searching for "MCE" remotes, a lot of cheap remotes from asia use that term in their description though they use completely different protocols and receivers which are in general a huge pain to set up - don't buy these.

    Another alternative is to use CEC if it's supported by your TV. In general that works quite well, too, and you don't need a separate remote to control LE.

    so long,

    Hias