Since a week I’m using a vero 2 with the standard remote from osmc. And I would like to share my experience, becouse I think the next shipment with remotes can use a little update.
For example, as mentioned at the forum, there is no volume up and down button on the remote. I’ve solved it to use the up and down arrows, but it’s far from ideal since it doesn’t function while I’m in a menu browsing for my next video. There also is no mute button… would be an appreciated feature.
Secondly, I’m used to use the tab button on my keyboard to go from the menu back to the video and vice versa. I’ve thought about what button to use for it… but there is no spare one anymore…
And last but not least, a power button on the remote. Maybe a bit more complicated than the first two ideas, but I thought it would be very (VERY) usefull to be able to turn it on and off from the couch, just like my tv.
I’m very happy with OSMC on my Vero 2, and just motivated to make it better!
Thanks for your comments. We are always looking to improve our products.
As you have found, it’s possible to configure volume control by remapping two existing buttons. We believe that the arrow keys can be used during playback to handle this. What I don’t want to do is add unnecessary buttons and bulk the remote. Almost all of our users are using passthrough, which means that adding volume buttons would be unused and cumbersome. I can understand this may be different for audio, but we have a solution for this in the works.
The Vero 2 doesn’t support ‘powering off’, so we don’t see the purpose in having this button. As Vero 2 doesn’t handle ACPI, you’d be able to put it in to a low power state, but you’d have to get up to turn it back on again, so this doesn’t make a lot of sense to us.
I think two presses on the arrow will do the job.
Conversely, your Vero 2 will consume very little power when idle, so this hasn’t been a priority for us. We did implement a faux standby mode a few months ago as a test, but it confused some users that tested it, and the saving in electricity was minimal (< £1/year on UK electric).
The good news is that we do have software improvements in the work for the OSMC remote, so you’ll be enjoying some improvements early in the New Year and they will be available for all of our remote users.
I have added you to the list so you will be the first to try our remote improvements and give feedback. It’s always good to get some feedback, even if you cannot act on it immediately, because it gives us some ideas for the future.
I mean directional arrow, rather than the back arrow.
I realised that sounds like I’m going on a killing spree…
The current issue is there is a lot we can do with the remote (long press, changing buttons in certain menus), but getting people to agree is a bit tricky. So maybe we should just make it more customisable on the whole. As always, I’m open to suggestions.
I’ve done something with my remote (probably dropped in a wrong angle or something like that) what made the top come off a bit… what made me think to change the buttons themselves. I tried to open it a bit more, and saw that all the buttons are one piece… so impossible to change the order. When I wanted to put everything back, I saw that I broke the little barbs that’s holding the two pieces of the remote together. So I went out on the internet to look for alternatives, since I’m not totally satisfied with the current version.
And how a bad thing can turn in something real constructive! I found a couple of different varieties from the same remote:
It could be an inspiration for future models.
Kind regards,
TJ
P.S.: After this search I understand you are limited by this amount of buttons on the remote. I thought that the remote was custom made for OSMC. It changed my view and my stand of point in this discussion.
As per international regulations on shipping devices containing batteries, the remote controller will sustain a ~1.3M drop without significant damage.
When discussing changing the role of buttons, I was referring to achieving this in software rather than hardware and only making their behaviour more appropriate under certain scenarios.
We manufacture the OSMC remote ourselves and the current design is built (PCB and rubber) as one unit. To accommodate otherwise would be a waste of material and incur further costs. This makes sense for production purposes. However it does not mean we are limited by the amount of buttons and does not mean we cannot change the layout or order in the future. We simply do not want to overcrowd the remote with unnecessary buttons. The fact is that the current design makes sense for almost all users so far. However, if we can find a better layout (which we would test with users first), we would change the remote design. Currently we have not found such a layout and we feel that almost all improvements can be handled in software.
I am open to discussing on how to improve the remotes. The other solutions you have posted look OK, but we are already aware of them. You will have to keep in mind that you would be on your own supporting them yourself, including support for certain presses under each menu. The majority of our customers want something that just works out of the box and stays working (with a solid guarantee). We have seen users of the ‘August’ model you have linked to experiencing line of sight issues and problems with some of the buttons. It’s cheaper, but it’s certainly not going to be better when buttons don’t work as expected.
The QNap model is similar, but IR based, so you will need to fit a GPIO receiver on the pins and configure this manually.
The OSMC Remote is selling very well and reviews are universally positive. However I was saddened to see that you are not satisfied with the product. If you can work with me, we can potentially work on improving the remote so that everyone can enjoy it.
We have a fair few surprises in the works for current remote owners. We can’t say the same for other models you may find on the market.
Thank you for explaining everything a bit further! Don’t understand me wrong… I don’t have any intentions of buying another remote and if I was, I would combine it with the upcoming order from a friend of mine who wants the Vero 2 aswell after he has seen how smooth it works.
Damaging the remote is fully my mistake, and no offence against the quality.
I fully understand this. I like to try things out. Sometimes I succeed, sometimes I fail. I try to look a bit further than just the tip of my nose. This time I tried to turn my failure in to an opportunity, I failed in that, but at least I learned something about the device I didn’t know before. So it turned out be a learning experience… Don’t underestimate the value of that
Love to keep thinking about improvements… Open source means also sharing thoughts about how we can make things better right?
Thanks for the prompt response. No offence is taken. We are always trying to improve things and if people have suggestions it’s always worth seeing if they can be incorporated so everyone can benefit. Sometimes, not everyone may benefit, but it is possible to make an adjustment for the requesting user.
Okay. Thank you for your honesty. It’s always worth checking to make sure!
The only thing I have changed so far is making the arrows the volume buttons.
I’ve tried many times to make the “stop” button with the “play/pauze” function, and the “play/pauze” button with the “tab” button like I have on my keyboard since it looks very much like the osmc logo. But I didn’t succeed.
I’ve made a drawing of the remote control, and tried to put everything I want it to do under a button… but kodi is just too comprehensive for the beautiful simplicity of the osmc remote.
I really believe that the osmc remote has a lack of “clutter” buttons. Some extra buttons to make the most out of kodi!
Well, to keep the topic alive, I’ve made a wishlist of the buttons I think I need to navigate the quickest way around in addition of what’s allready on it:
volume off course! (up, down and mute)
quick navigation to live tv, picture, video and audio add-ons
Subtitles on/off
Page up/down
numbers 1-9 with alphabet underneath, or, since I can understand that gives to much buttons on the front… it would be absolutely awesome to have a qwerty keyboard on the back.
and a button for a quick switch between menu and full screen like the tab button on your keyboard.
I look forward to see some more input from the community… what do the OSMC RC users think about it?
All three of these can be achieved with the remote with some remapping. Obviously numerical keys can’t be; but that is not in high demand for some users.
How is this different to pressing Home or Back when playing something?
I’m very curious how you are going to put those functions in the remote, without loosing the main buttons on the remote we have right now.
The whole thing about that “tab” button is that you can switch from some point in the menu to full screen, and when you go back to the menu, you are still in the same place! so I can put the next show or movie I want to see right under one button as soon as the show is over. It’s the key I use about 20 times average during one show!
Please can you explain what you mean with a video?
Unless I’m missing something obvious (demonstrations always handy), there should be situations where button roles can change depending on the active screen.
I’ll try…
I’m watching a missed episode. During de boring moments I’m allready looking for the next show I want to see. At that time I’m listening to what’s happening, and need to be back in the fullscreen mode in 1 key press. From the video back to the menu I can use the “back” button, that’s not the problem. The problem lies in switching with one press from the menu back to the video/tv show/movie.
No offense intended, but I think indeed you miss something obvious. All the buttons are in need while navigate thru the menu… so there need to be a real creative solution to re-order them in such a way to create a spare button.
As it is explained in the Forum Kodi all keys that are transmitted via RF are sending normal keycodes and therefore are useable. For the keys transmitted via IR as explained also in the forum you would need to have the remote learn the codes from another remote that is already supported out of the box by Kodi/OSMC.
Nope, Home brings me to he home screen, and back brings me one step back in the menu.
For example, I’ve started a show to watch and it starts playing. There is alway’s an intro before the actual program starts. I can skip it or use that minute to select the next show I want to see. So I’ve selected the episode I want to see after the allready running show. When I press back, I’m back one step in the menu (like it should) and when I press home, I’m send back to the main menu (like it should aswell). There is no button to go back to the fullscreen playing video.
Indeed, the subtitles are only needed in the full screen mode.
That’s the whole purpose of this thread, making OSMC better for everybody!
To be clear about this… I don’t consider myself as a power user. I would consider myself more an average user who want’s kodi to be as simple as possible!
My point is that when the remote is too simple for a comprehensive media center like kodi, it makes it complicated!
Yeah, that’s where I got lost, with the RF and IR difference.
I think I’ll wait until may… when I get some holiday money (the time of the year I give myself something extra ) to give it a try. It looks promising, but the sad thing from buying elsewhere is you don’t get any support for your product in combination with OSMC kodi.
But we still need to make the osmc remote better, it’s allready sold to lot’s of people, everybody who buy a vero 2 get’s the remote with it. So it should be good.
That brings me by a whole other idea… OSMC should be good for everyone. It claims that the Vero 2 is 50% faster than a raspberry pi 3, so “power users” will choose for the vero2 over the Raspberry pi. That means that the OSMC store can serve a larger market by giving the user a choice between more than one remote.
My point in this is that I prefer OSMC to make money with it than Amazone. I’m a total fan of the concept!
Makes me thinking about getting more of those power users to the store… a wireless keyboard with mouse pad included… all opportunities to make more money to invest in the project!
) to give it a try. It looks promising, but the sad thing from buying elsewhere is you don’t get any support for your product in combination with OSMC kodi.