Use remote control on monitor via HDMI and libcec

[barak]

This is just an idea.

The libcec library senses remote control button pushes on a TV connected to the computer via HDMI, using the CEC protocol. Perhaps PDFPC could use libcec to allow the presentation to be controlled by a TV remote control. E.g., channel up/down could move pages, play/pause could start/stop videos, right/left/up/down/select things could move around between slides on the preview console and choose one.

The kodi multimedia app does this, and it's pretty cool.

[fnevgeny]

Frankly, I don't understand how it's supposed to work. If you press a key on the remote that the TV understands, it will react accordingly (e.g., switch the channels). Why should it pass the command through HDMI for another device?

[barak]

That's precisely what the CEC protocol does: the device connected to the TV via HDMI tells the TV to send some remote control signals down the HDMI cable instead of acting on them directly. So for example channel changing can be done by a media box connected to the TV, instead of by the TV itself.

Apparently virtually all modern TVs support CEC, albeit often under some other name, and you often have to enable it in the settings. https://www.howtogeek.com/207186/how-to-enable-hdmi-cec-on-your-tv-and-why-you-should/

The library that provides this functionality on Debian is libcec. I'm not sure if all HDMI output ports on computers support it.