just to see if anyone else has solved this problem?
My 100 yr old father is quickly but gradually losing it, (intermittently completely confused on why where and when) and cannot get his head or his fingers around the TV and BT Youview remote controls. The problem is that he manages to change the source inadvertently and then cannot get back to his desired BT Sport channels.
I have in past had large button remotes (jumbo?), but really need something that can be programmed with a sequence of button pushes from the the 2 different remotes. To provide a true granny button reset capability.
We are in a position where 3 carer visits a day plus regular District Nurse visit are just about keeping him dressed and fed. Intermittent hallucinations combined with periods of complete historic recall and lucidity. He is committed to wanting to stay in his flat and remains particularly lucid when visited by 1 or 2 (young?) palliative care nurses. up until only 2months ago he was capable of going out shopping and cooking, but a fall and 3 weeks of hospital have taken its toll.
Managing him and my brother ( who is local to him) from 700 miles away is taking its toll on me.
We have 24 hr camera cover of the lounge, but remote control of the TV would be good.
Any ideas.
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Two possibilities come to mind...
Firstly, Alexa, or similar. Is it possible that voice control of the TV would help him reset the source more easily?
Secondly, and somewhat more of a challenge for you, what about something like a Broadlink RM Mini 3. It seems to me that you would be able to place this in his home and provided he has WiFi be able to control his TV from your phone, obviously watching from the Webcam to see if you achieved what you wanted.
www.amazon.co.uk/Broadlink-RM-Universal-Controller-Controlled-Black/dp/B01H83A844/ref=sr_1_5
Last edited by: No FM2R on Sat 12 Sep 20 at 16:29
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z
The problem with this , (and several similar devices) is that you cannot integrate the 2 different controllers. Training him with a new device (however simple) is going to be difficult enough. It would be good if we lock the tv into hdmi1 input only on power up.
The controllers that claim to operate several different devices all seem to have small buttons.
i
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NoFM thankyou for that link. That led me on to find the Bigger Brother version (4) which additionally supports learning of remote codes which will be probably needed.
The problem is that many of the advertised big button remotes say they do not support the BT box, even when they are advertised as learning devices.
The idea of watching the TV (in a mirror?) is a good idea.
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Well I'd never seen the Broadcom device before (but I have an old, and was quite expensive) programmable remote.
It looks a good bit of kit, and ideal for what you want. I had typed up a convoluted solution using a PC but then I found them from a UK seller on eBay for less than £11 which would be a lot cheaper - and I now have one is one it's way to me. Bonus, it looks like I can integrate it on my Home Assistant - not yet sure why I would but I do like a challenge :-)
I'll do a quick write up on it once I've got it working if you want.
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>> I'll do a quick write up on it once I've got it working if you
>> want.
Yes please.
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smokie
I will be interested in your write up did you order a 3 or 4? I think i will order one when (if allowed) I am back in the uk.
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I ordered a 4, due towards end of next week
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smokie
I will be particularly interested in your comments on the following aspects,
the ability to program and/or train for a BT Youview Box (Not sure of model - the question is out!)
The ability to turn ON a device - ie if it is Off turn ON, If it is ON no action - the reason that this may be a problem if 'training' is required, is the Toggle action of the normal ON/OFF Button. The problem is the BT TV Box has a Blue Power indicator which is purple when ON. With poor colour vision they are indistinguishable!
setting a sequence of operations for controlling 2 different devices from a single command
eg TV: ON, Source: HDMI1, BTBox:ON, BT Channel: xxx
I will order a 4 on my return to the UK but it will be 10 days or so. It potentially looks like a possible solution.
Thanks
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I have and LG TV, TiVo, LG sound bar, Firestick (may not be infra red though) and an old DVD player but no BT box. So I can test multi-device sequencing and whether it toggles ON/OFF.
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Firestick is not IR. It appears to be Bluetooth, but I guess it is heavily locked down otherwise other compatible chinese copies would have appeared?
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How about a pc on a stick, or a mini pc. You can stick a USB camera on it, an IR dongle, in fact control and see everything over the net.
Now comes the bit of advice you don't want want to hear. Its a bit Brutal.
Dont bother.
Everything you are planning is very short term. And probably a waste of time and actually unappreciated by the recipient. Lock the Tele down to one channel and an on off switch. In truth its probably all he needs and can appreciate.
Sorry. I know, been there done that.
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>> Lock the Tele down to one channel and an on off switch.
>> In truth its probably all he needs and can appreciate.
>>
>> Sorry. I know, been there done that.
>>
I am in a similar situation.
Remote is totally ignored except for "Wots that ?"
I operate the on/off and volume.
Nomal viewing is Sky news, Sky news Sky news, all waking hours except Sunday political morning.
Always somthing new and exciting except for the kids reporters segment and Sturgeon.
I do sometimes switch channels for short periods ( see above) or if there is something pretty/animals.
Today I am trying to avoid the results of the Tour de France cycle stage and F! being announced
prior to me viewing it tonight. ( I have to leave the door wide open )
The problem is that these clever designers have no idea what happens in the real world.
They need to talk to the Alzheimer's experts. I learned a lot on my local course on many aspects and what might be coming.
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>> The problem is that these clever designers have no idea what happens in the real
>> world.
>> They need to talk to the Alzheimer's experts. I learned a lot on my local
>> course on many aspects and what might be coming.
One of the first things we noticed when Mrs B's mother's Alzheimers started was an inability to learn new things. After a nightmare where she was hours late arriving with us from her home in the Potteries, she'd got lost round Birmingham (with hindsight a red light incident on its own as she'd been born there), we bought her a simple mobile phone. She'd simply no concept of what it was or however many times we explained, how to use it. A repeat of our experience 6 months earlier trying to get her to use email on the computer we gave her for her 70th birthday.
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A few years back I had a 90+ M-i-L that had a broken TV sometimes 2 or 3 x per day.
3/4 miles away does not sound a lot but t was soul destroying - sometimes getting back home and the phone rung again!
I investigated many "solutions" but failed to get one that had very few buttons and worked with Virgin box - on/off channels up & down channels + volume.
A son tried locking down an expensive multi- function remote (£150 ish) that sort of worked but had so many buttons it confused her even more.
We tied down the Virgin box with parental controls which solved the billing for "adult movies" & other premium channels BUT we never managed to tie down a solution that solved the button problems and getting lost in menus.
Good luck to the OP.
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"button problems and getting lost in menus"
were probably just the user taking revenge for solving
"the billing for "adult movies"
I know I would :-)
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I've lost count of the times I've had to go over the road to sort the TV for the very elderly lady who lives there. She has a Sky dish but no terrestrial ariel so should only use the main TV remote to turn the set on and off. But she manages to get confused, pick up the wrong one and start stabbing randomly at the buttons till she eventually switches the source button from the Sky box to something else.
Mrs O'Reliant pops over every day to have a chat and a cup of tea with her to sometimes find her sitting there with an electric fire on full blast because she has turned the heating thermostat too low for it to come on and can't understand why it's hasn't. Not getting any younger myself, I find it a worrying peek into a possible future.
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>> can't understand why it's hasn't. Not getting any younger myself, I find it a worrying
>> peek into a possible future.
I couldn't find the kettle - I had put it in the fridge.
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My MiL thought she had 3 x remote controls for the TV
1) TV Remote
2) Virgin Remote
3) Cordless phone which she sometimes try to use for the TV
We took away the cordless phone & replaced it with a BIG button phone which we programmed 4/5 numbers. She sometimes had huge telephone bills so we arranged for Virgin to bar premium numbers, mobile numbers & overseas calls.
When an evening passed, without a Broken TV call, we phoned just to make sure she was OK.
For the last 2/3 years my wife did the trip down every night at 9pm to get her to bed - that was on top of the 40-50 hours of shopping, cleaning, washing, garden, driver to appts etc etc ................
After she died our bank account improved by £400+ per month - expenses petrol, paying for anything & everything - it was only after her death we found out she could have claimed for assistance with many of the bills - widowed 37 years she had spent any savings that might have existed.
After her death there was a hopeful queue of 3 x grandkids for a share of the spoils only to find there was not a lot after £5.7K funeral costs - we blew the entire life policy payments, oak coffin, slap up meal + free drinks in a large hotel to ensure they got SFA.
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we blew the entire life policy payments, oak coffin, slap up meal + free
>> drinks in a large hotel to ensure they got SFA.
>>
Any particular reason?
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We had, and have, a "very strained relationship" with our nieces for many years, less so the nephew - he speaks occasionally.
They had not done very much to support their Gran in later life, a visit & packet of sweets a few times a year. They owed her a lot for her efforts over 10/15 years when both their mum & dad died of C in their 40s.
All Grandchildren got 1/6th of what was left, a few hundred each.
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The device arrived around lunchtime and has taken me ages to get set up onto my WiFi. This has been quite a theme all along for me, and seems especially more difficult now I've upgrade the repeaters to the BT Whole House things. The problem revolves around the devices only being supported on 2.4GHz network and not liking the presence of a 5GHz one. I have an old phone which I use for initial config. It seems once they are configured they will work OK.
So anyway I have just quickly sat and programmed the telly and the TiVo. The telly - they had a list of manufacturers and for Samsung there were 4 button patterns to try, and mine work in the first. I had to Learn programme the TiVo which was pretty easy and sitting in front of the TV all the buttons worked OK from my phone. I imagine the BT box would be similarly easy.
It specifically mentions it supports ROKU which is not dissimilar to a Firestick but I've run out of test time for the day, and I'm out and about tomorrow and much of Friday.
It looks like sequences are fairly easily done. I suspect the on/off toggle will be uncircumventable but I'll look at that later, and provide a better update (incl remote support) when I have a bot more time.
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Thanks for update - I will look on eBay for any cheap ones!
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Well it works remotely quite happily but you can't of course tell the state of the TV or set top box from it. Other than that it would seem to me that it could be a useful device in your situation.
Anything else you specifically want me to test?
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>>but you can't of course tell the state of the TV or set top box from it
However, Sherlock already has a camera in the room so some careful repointing should get around that.
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He can't tell the difference in the LED colours though IIRC.
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Utterly foolproof is probably impossible.
Perhaps having everything, including the TV, STBs and Broadlink all powered from the same socket would be a good idea? Then at least someone could switch the entire system off and back on and thus presumably achieve a known state, however much fiddling had occurred.
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Not sure that ' power up' will restore everything to a known (OFF?) state? Power cuts would then cause you to loose scheduled STB recordings for example.
Must explore whether the TV has a hotel mode or retail mode available from any hidden menu.
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Holy thread revival :-)
I never really did much with the Broadcom but they popped up on the current Amazon sale today. I was intrigued that it is now £28.04 (down from £32) when above I said I paid about £11 for one - which was new.
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I still have one here! Never used in anger. He made it to 100 = just wish the following 3 months had never happened - for all involved.
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Disablement help - No FM2R
