Best Bluetooth Remote for OSMC / Raspberry Pi 3

General Discussion
1

Hello,

I searched these forums and didn’t see any consolidated list of recommendations for a bluetooth remote. I’m looking to buy a bluetooth remote to control the media center since it won’t require any adaptors for the pi 3. Any recommendations out there?

2

Why does it need to be Bluetooth?

If you want good compatibility, consider the official remote.

Bluetooth itself, at this time, is fairly power sapping, even with BT LE. We have worked on this a little (using standby in BlueZ), but there are still some strange reports about BT not resuming on reboot properly. There will also be delays in getting the remote to work after a period of inactivity due to repairing. As none of our developers use a BT remote regularly, we can’t recommend any one remote at this time.

Sam

3

That is a good point. It doesn’t. I just didn’t want to use a USB port to hook up a receiver. I appreciate your response, I may just go with the official one.

I was leaning towards this, but it sounds like it may not work:

https://www.playstation.com/en-us/explore/accessories/universal-media-remote-for-playstation-4/

4

That looks terribly bulky.

I’m sure you can get it to work, but you’ll fight with getting the buttons to work; pairing; pairing on reboot; etc. Bluetooth remotes do work, but usually only if they’re made for the specific device you are running them with, i.e. Amazon Fire Remote works great with the device itself, but not so well on OSMC.

The official remote does indeed take up a USB port. But there’s not much we can do about that :confused:

5

If you reconsider the BT remote for a RF remote, see below

I’m using a Minix A2 lite for more than a month now. I guess Logitech etc may be better but so far for the price I paid (<25€) it has all what I want. Some key remapping is necessary but works straight out of the box for all major functions. The keyboard is working as expected, range is above 10m. I cannot tell you anything about the battery life but reviews are good.

6
  1. If you have CEC on your tv, then you can use your tv remote.
  2. If not i would recommend the official OSMC remote
  3. Or buy a RF remote with USB receiver.

Also with RF your choice of remotes is way more then Bluetooth.

Here i use Flirc with the harmony one remote and Yatse on my Phone!