How do I get a Boxee Remote working?

Question

I purchased a Boxee Remote, which is an RF remote so I don't need to mess with lirc or anything like that.

How do I get it working in Ubuntu for use as a media center remote?

Answer 1

Basic Support

The remote itself is recognized out of the box with no set up, however if you are running 10.10 the X server needs to be patched or it crashes (see below for instructions). Unfortunately there is no support at all for versions earlier than 10.10, which includes older versions of XBMC Live.

If you use 11.04 and later all you need to do is remap the keys:

Remapping the keys

This post on the XBMC forum has information on how to remap the buttons to be more effective.

I set the menu key to ParentDir. I also frequently use the context menu, so I remapped it to the A key on the back.

Create a $home/.xbmc/userdata/keymaps/keyboard.xml with the following:

<keymap>
  <global>
    <keyboard>
      <key id="61467">ParentDir</key>
      <key id="61505">ContextMenu</key>
    </keyboard>
  </global>
</keymap>

Then restart XBMC. I also found it useful to turn off mouse support in XBMC's settings.

Support for 10.10:

There are 10.10 packages for this in this PPA. Instructions on how to use PPAs are here.

Here's the short version:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ken-vandine/boxee
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade

Then either restart X or reboot.