[DanielRutter1]

Hey guys.

Wasn't sure where to put this, regarding remote control devices. Figured it was "hardware"... but if an admin could move it to the proper place, that'd be appreciated.

I recently purchased this remote control off eBay to use with XBMC, as well as Foobar and VLC. I'd like to map the "Hotkey" buttons (second row on the remote control picture in the link) so I can launch these programs straight off the remote but have no idea how to do it. The instructions that came with the remote are horribly translated to English, and therefor useless.

If anyone could help, I'd be eternally grateful!

[artrafael]

The problem with the A, B, C, D buttons on that remote is that each button sends 3 separates sets of shortcut key presses, as shown in the table on the instruction sheet. That can cause some undesirable results. Since the remote has so few physical buttons, they overlapped multiple functions on some buttons and you have to use the Numlock key to switch from one mode to another. For example, the directional arrows keys are also numeric keys. Worse than that, it's a crappy remote. The range is very poor -- beyond 5 or 6 feet, the signal is unreliable. The mousepad only moves the mouse cursor in the four cardinal directions, so if you need to move in a diagonal direction, you have to stair-step your way there.

But, if you really want to use it, you should be able to map XBMC functions to those buttons via a custom keyboard.xml (wiki) file placed in your userdata (wiki)/keymaps/ directory. That table in the instruction sheet tells you what keystrokes are sent by each of the hotkey buttons (e.g., "A" sends Ctrl-Alt-A, Ctrl-Alt-1, Ctrl-Alt-F1). You would then map a given key combination (e.g., Ctrl-Alt-A) to a given XBMC action/function in your keyboard.xml (wiki). However, I seem to recall that some key mappings didn't work properly... don't remember exactly since this was several years ago and I ditched the remote. Good luck.