About

The second generation Apple® Remote has an elegant and very slim aluminum enclosure. Compared to its predecessor, it features an improved, ergonomic design and an additional button. The remote supports low battery detection and sends its ID (in the range of 0-255) along with every button press. This ID can be used for pairing with most receivers that support the Apple® Remote. Remote Buddy offers additional functionality for multiple Apple® Remotes when used with the Apple® Built-In IR Receiver. A detailed review of the aluminum Apple® Remote can be found in our blog.

Factsheet

About

The white Apple® Remote is ergonomically designed and a pleasure to use. It supports low battery detection and sends its ID (in the range of 0-255) along with every button press. This ID can be used for pairing with most receivers that support the Apple® Remote. Remote Buddy offers additional functionality for multiple Apple® Remotes when used with the Apple® Built-In IR Receiver. The white Apple® Remote has been discontinued in late 2009. It was superseded by the new aluminum Apple® Remote.

Factsheet

You can control Remote Buddy with your iPhone using a companion app.

You can control Remote Buddy with your iPod touch using a companion app.

You can control Remote Buddy with your iPad using a companion app.

You can control Remote Buddy through your Apple TV® using a companion app.

You can control Remote Buddy with your Apple Watch using a companion app. Requires watchOS 1-4. Not available for watchOS 5 and later.

Using EyeTV remote controls with Remote Buddy

Since version 2.5.1 of EyeTV and Version 1.8 of Remote Buddy, both applications cooperate to give users of EyeTV's remote control full access to Remote Buddy's functionality.

Software and Hardware-Requirements

You need a compatible EyeTV receiver and remote control. Button presses received by EyeTV receivers are decoded by EyeTV and handled by Remote Buddy. Therefore EyeTV and Remote Buddy need to be running at the same time.

Setup

No setup is needed. When both EyeTV and Remote Buddy are running at the same time, the first press of a button on a supported remote control (and received via a compatible EyeTV receiver) automatically adds it to Remote Buddy. You'll have to press a button on the remote again when you start EyeTV again the next time.

The six most important buttons

All core functions of Remote Buddy can be accessed with a set of just 6 buttons. The following table shows you which buttons on your remote control are this core set. Pressing the "Menu" button takes you to Remote Buddy's menu. Please note that by default, you have to perform a long press of the "Menu" button to access Remote Buddy's menu when EyeTV is the currently active application. You can change the mapping of buttons for EyeTV on your remote control in Remote Buddy's preferences at Mapping > EyeTV.

The remote controls are ordered from left to right, corresponding to the illustration on the left.

Troubleshooting

Please make sure EyeTV and Remote Buddy are running at the same time. If your remote does not turn up in Remote Buddy after pressing a button on your remote, either your version of EyeTV and/or Remote Buddy is not up-to-date, your receiver does not support this feature or your remote control and the EyeTV receiver's IR receiver do not have a direct line of sight.

Factsheet

About

The Griffin AirClick USB Remote is based on RF technology, quite small and lighweight. To allow access to more than 5 actions, Remote Buddy adds the ability to map additional actions for specific combinations of buttons. The buttons of the remote are arranged for easy access to play/pause, volume control, backward and forward. Due to their position, however, we can't recommend this remote for navigation in menus.

Factsheet

About

The Keyspan IR Remote is part of several remote-receiver-bundles of the Keyspan-by-Tripp Lite range of products.

Factsheet

About

The Keyspan RF Remote For Front Row is sold together with the necessary Keyspan RF Receiver ER-RF1 in a remote-receiver-bundle.

Factsheet

About

The Harmony® Smart Control is a universal remote bundle from Logitech®. At the heart of the bundle is the Harmony® Hub, which can control other devices via infrared (IR), Bluetooth® and WiFi. The hub itself then can be controlled by smartphones and the included RF remote.

Remote Buddy can be connected to the Harmony® Hub via Bluetooth® and then provides access to all 100+ applications it supports.

Best of (almost) all worlds

The Harmony® Smart Control is the best remote you can get if you want to use Remote Buddy in a home entertainment context. Since it connects to Remote Buddy on your Mac® via Bluetooth®, the connection is rock solid, button presses are received almost instantly and no line of sight or external USB IR receiver is needed. The included, leightweight RF remote feels comfortable in the hand and Logitech® claims that a single CR2032 coin battery should usually last a full year or longer.

So, in a nutshell, this is what you get: the reliability and low latency of a Bluetooth® connection combined with the long battery life of a proprietary RF remote and the flexibility of a universal remote that can control all sort ofs devices.

Limitations

In our tests, the Harmony® Hub would not work if it wasn't connected to a WiFi network with Internet access - and it could only remember access information for the WiFi network it is currently connected to. This makes it unsuitable for mobile use.

For this remote, Remote Buddy also requires macOS 10.9.3 or later. Older macOS releases may work as well but - for this remote - are not officially supported.

Setup made easy

In order to make setting up the Harmony® Smart Control as easy as possible for you, we provide a pictured How-To that guides you through the complete setup process:

HowTo: Set up the Logitech Harmony Smart Control with Remote Buddy and control 100+ Mac apps with it

Factsheet

About

The Wii™ Remote maybe is the most stunning remote control you can currently get your hands on. Bluetooth®-based, it offers high responsiveness and reliability. Its built-in motion and IR sensors enable the IR mouse mode also supported by Remote Buddy.

Infrared (IR) Mouse Mode

Remote Buddy can use the IR camera built into the front of the Wii™ Remote to implement a virtual mouse that can be moved by pointing the Wii™ Remote itself to a different position. The IR Mouse Mode works by tracking the position of IR light sources - usually supplied by a Wireless Wii™ Sensor Bar located on top or below the display use with the Mac®. A Wireless Wii™ Sensor Bar is physically required for using the IR Mouse Mode. If, however, you just want to use the buttons of the Wii™ Remote with Remote Buddy, you do not need a Wireless Wii™ Sensor Bar.

The Wii™ Sensor Bar (and why it's name can be misleading)

The Wii™ Sensor Bar emits the IR light required by the IR camera ("sensor") inside the Wii™ Remote itself. The Sensor Bar - unlike its name suggests - does not contain any receiver or sensors at all. It consists of a simple row of IR light sources (and thus the physically exact opposite of a sensor). These IR light sources are seen by the IR camera located at the front of the Wii™ Remote. Their location is then sent to Remote Buddy via Bluetooth®. Remote Buddy uses this data to track the location of the IR light sources. From this, it calculates the position of the Wii™ Remote and places the mouse cursor at the respective position on your screen.

Battery life

It's important to keep in mind that the Wii™ Remote was designed as a game controller. It's filled with high tech and has to maintain a Blueooth® connection when in use. All of this of course consumes power, so that, depending on which hardware features you use, battery life of the remote can greatly vary and is generally not comparable with that of other remote controls. Remote Buddy's Bluetooth® power saving options can help you increase battery life (slightly or significantly - depending on your use pattern). They can be found at Prefs > Hardware > Bluetooth® receiver.

Important notice regarding the Wii™ Remote Plus

Currently, Remote Buddy only supports the regular Wii™ Remote. The Wii™ Remote Plus is currently not supported, because this model doesn't work properly with the macOS Bluetooth Stack. These issues need to be addressed by Apple® first.

Factsheet

About

The SiK™ Rex™ imitates an Apple® Remote (white) and fits into an ExpressCard slot. The SiK™ Rex™, unlike the Apple® Remote, has a fixed ID and does not support pairing by itself. It can, however, be paired manually with Apple® Built-In IR Receivers using Remote Buddy's Multiple Remote Support.

Factsheet

About

The Sony® PS3 BD Remote Control has a low price point, is widely available, offers over 50 buttons that can be mapped freely with Remote Buddy and uses Bluetooth® technology - which is built into almost all more recent Mac® models.

How to maximize battery life

To maximize the time between recharging/exchanging your batteries, be sure to make use of the power saving options in Remote Buddy exactly as recommended for the Sony® PS3 BD Remote in the Remote Buddy FAQ.

Factsheet

About

The Apple® Built-In IR Receiver is a built-in infrared receiver that is limited - in hardware - to receiving signals of just the Apple® Remote (white, Aluminum) and programmable remotes that can immitate it precisely. Other remotes can't be used with it.

Remote Buddy Exclusive: End-To-End Event Routing Optimization

Unlike other products, Remote Buddy builds upon its own, highly optimized driver architecture. This allows it to employ realtime end-to-end event routing optimization, which keeps the time it takes to react to a button press to a minimum.

Example: "Rewind" is the only action mapped to the "Left"-button. No second action is mapped to the Hold-state of the "Left"-button.

Remote Buddy's optimization will start triggering the rewind as soon as you press the button. In the same scenario, other software will leave you waiting for at least about 0.25 seconds before it starts reacting to the button press.

Remote Buddy's support for multiple Apple® Remotes

Each Apple® Remote has one of 256 different IDs. This ID is sent along with every button press by the Apple® Remote. When you enable Multiple Remote Support in Remote Buddy, it makes use of this information and enables you to pair more than one Apple® Remote with your Mac®, map different actions to the buttons of each Apple® Remote or groups of Apple® Remotes.

Availability

Only these Mac® models come with a built-in Apple® IR receiver:

Add an IR receiver to your Mac®

Does your Mac® lack an IR receiver? Using Remote Buddy, you can still add an Apple® Remote to your Mac®. What you'll need for that is one of the receivers listed under "Required Receiver" in the Factsheet of the Apple® Remote (Aluminum) and - of course - the Apple® Remote itself and Remote Buddy. The End-To-End Event Routing Optimization is available for all remotes and receivers supported by Remote Buddy. The extended functionality of the Multiple Remotes Support in Remote Buddy is limited to the Apple® Built-In IR Receiver.

Factsheet

About

A Bluetooth® Adapter can either be a built-in component of your Mac® or added as a USB dongle lateron. To find out, whether your Mac® has a Bluetooth® Adapter, launch /Applications/Utilities/System Profiler.app, select Hardware > USB on the left and check for the existance of a Bluetooth® USB Host Controller. Your System Preferences are an additional indicator: after launching System Preferences.app, you usually shouldn't see a Bluetooth® icon under "Hardware" unless your system actually has a Bluetooth® Adapter.

If your Mac® does not have a Bluetooth® Adapter, you can add one with a rather inexpensive Bluetooth® USB dongle.

Factsheet

About

When Microsoft® created the Windows® XP Media Center Edition (MCE), they also introduced the eHome standard for IR receivers. Receivers following this standard can deliver the raw IR stream received by the sensor. Remote Buddy supports the eHome receivers listed below and makes use of the raw IR stream to enable the use of Apple® Remotes with the receivers. We found the Philips® OVU4110 (pictured on the left) and OVU4120 (looks almost identical) to maybe be the most beautiful external IR receivers we've come across so far.

Compatibility matrix

Philips® receivers are also often sold in branded versions. These will usually have a label on the bottom with the same model number printed on it. For example, the Microsoft®-branded receiver we've come across was labeled as OVU4003.

Factsheet

More information

Please see EyeTV Bundled Remotes for more information on EyeTV Remote support in Remote Buddy.

Compatibility matrix

* The Apple® Remote (Aluminium) can be used. With this receiver type, the seperate Select- and Play/Pause-buttons can't be mapped independantly, though.

Factsheet

About

The Griffin AirClick USB Bundle includes this Griffin AirClick USB Dongle as well as the Griffin AirClick USB Remote.

Factsheet

About

The Keyspan IR Bundles (sold as Keyspan (AirPort®) Express Remote and Keyspan Remote for iTunes) consists of a Keyspan IR receiver and a Keyspan IR Remote. Remote Buddy uses its own drivers and does not depend on or use Keyspan's drivers.

Compatibility matrix

Factsheet

About

The Keyspan RF Remote For Front Row Bundle consists of a Keyspan RF Receiver ER-RF1 and the Keyspan RF Remote For Front Row.

Factsheet

About

Your Mac® can be connected to a Wireless LAN (WLAN) through a variety of different ways. It can be through a built-in WLAN Adapter (marketed by Apple® as "AirPort®") or a WLAN USB Dongle.

Network Requirements

To use Remote Buddy's companion apps over a Wireless LAN connection, the Wireless LAN must meet these requirements:

1. All devices (your Mac® and your remote - the latter is usually an iPhone™/iPod® Touch) are connected to and logged into the same Wireless LAN.
2. All devices on this Wireless LAN can communicate directly with one another without limitation (no local network firewall).
3. All devices have to be on the same IP subnet. Two devices share the same subnet, if their IPs are identical in their first three numbers. For example two clients with the IPs 10.0.5.1 and 10.0.5.2 are in the same subnet, whereas clients with the IP 10.0.5.1 and 192.168.0.1 are not. You can find the IP(s) of your Mac® at Remote Buddy > Preferences > Mobile Access. You can find the IP of an iPhone™/iPod® Touch at Settings > Wi-Fi > "White arrow in blue circle next to your selected network" > IP Address.
4. The Wireless LAN has to work reliable. It may not drop packets. While, to some degree the error correction in the TCP/IP protocol stack should be able to deal with these, packet drops at the very least cause high latencies and reactions to your touches will feel laggy. Excessive packet drops will cause connections to break down or requests to get lost.

Factsheet

What is Bluetooth®?

Bluetooth® is a complex, bi-directional, wireless communication standard using radio waves as carrier medium.

Usage

Bluetooth® remotes need to be paired using Remote Buddy's built-in Setup Wizard before they can be used. Bluetooth® knows Class 1, 2 and 3 devices that mainly differ in the range in which they can be used. Under optimal conditions, the maximum range is 100 meters for Class 1, 50 meters for Class 2 and 10 meters for Class 3. Devices belonging to different classes are interoperable, but the maximum range is then limited by the device offering the smallest range.

Notes

Bluetooth® uses the same 2.4 GHz band as Wireless LANs using the 802.11b (11 MBit/s), 802.11g (54 MBit/s) and (in part) 802.11n (300 MBit/s) standard and can therefore have a negative impact on the quality and stability of such networks when used simultaneously. No interference can occur with Wireless LANs operating in the 5 GHz range (802.11a and 802.11n when configured accordingly).

Technical data

What is Infrared?

Infrared (IR) signifies a range of the light spectrum that's invisible to the human eye. Products using IR technology use light in the IR range as carrier medium.

Usage

As the IR technology essentially just uses light, it can't be used through walls. A direct line of sight needs to exist between IR remotes and their targeted IR receivers. The maximum possible distance between receiver and remote depends on the strength of the signal and the quality of the receiver and is usually a few meters.

Notes

Exposure of IR receivers to sunlight (which also includes light in the IR range) and heat (which essentially is just another, more popular word for IR light) can have a negative impact on the reception of the IR signal and should be avoided.

What is Radio Frequency?

Radio Frequency (RF) technology employs radio waves as carrier medium - usually using a protocol specific to the respective vendor and device.

Usage

Usually, no setup is required for remotes and receivers using RF technology. Some offer the option to pair remote and receiver to one another. The range depends on the respective models in use. RF based remotes do not need a direct line of sight.

What is Wireless LAN?

Wireless LAN (WLAN - also known by the marketing names AirPort® or Wi-Fi®) is a complex, bi-directional, wireless communication standard using radio waves as carrier medium.

Usage

Wireless LANs work with a base station (usually a router) and clients that are wirelessly connected to it. The most commonly used protocol stack used over Wireless LANs is TCP/IP - the protocol powering the Internet. Wireless LANs can have their own name and be protected with a password. In the most simple (and most common) scenario, the access point is configured correctly (see Network Requirements for what is meant in this context) and all devices (for example a Mac® and an iPhone™) are connected wirelessly to it.

Notes

Often, WLAN routers keep computers connected to their Ethernet port in a network separate of their wireless network. Some of these routers even block any communication between the two networks. If you have problems establishing a connection between your Mac® (connected to the router via Ethernet in this example) and a WLAN device (f.ex. an iPhone™ connected to the router via WLAN), this may be the root of the problem. The network connection stability and reliability of WLAN is significantly dependant on these factors: interoperability between WLAN adapters (mainly determined by the quality of the operating system drivers for WLAN hardware) and base station, WLANs in the neighbourhood using the same WLAN channel, devices that emit radiation in the same RF band (f.ex. microwaves, Bluetooth® devices).

Technical data