In the first part of this tutorial we will find out in which cases it might be useful to control the PC with a remote control at all. Also the principle technics of remote controlling will be discussed.

Why should I control the PC remotely at all

The classical example of use is the media PC, which is placed in the living room next to the TV. Of course you don´t wanna sit on the sofa with a wireless keyboard, when watching a movie. A wireless mouse is no real solution either. A remote control would be best for sure to comfortably control the media PC. But the media PC is not the only situation where a remote control might be useful. The PC in the home office can be used as a MP3 player perfectly, with a remote control it´s as comfortable as a standalone CD player for example. Another topic are presentations. Digital photos can be presented in a very nice way, if you connect your laptop to your TV and switch to the next photo with a remote control.

On the market there are a number of wireless remote controls for PCs available. But this is not the best solution in many cases, because a lot of users prefer universal remote controls. Universal remote controls replace the original controls of all kind of devices. Instead of using 4 or 5 controls, which loom up on the table and which want to be handled, one can use a single universal remote control which controls the receiver as well as the TV and even the media PC. There are many different types of universal controls available from different manufacturers in all price ranges. Even the cheapest ones from ALDI (~7-8 US$) fullfil their task quite well often.

ALDI remote control		High class model by Sony

The website www.remotecentral.com is specialized in this topic by the way. There is another point: Wireless PC controls do not necessarily fullfil the demands you might have concerning quality and design. Often these devices come in cheap plastic look and are clumsy. It´s probably impossible to find sophisticated models in the market.

The Sconi solves the problem, because with it you can use any infrared remote control for your PC. It doesn´t matter if it is a universal RC or a RC of an old device you don´t use anymore. And if you are looking for a new remote control there is a big assortment, from a credit card sized one to a real fully-grown 'world commander'. :-)

The principle technic of remote control

Actually a mouse emulation trough remote control would be sufficient to control the PC resp. certain programs. But that wouldn´t be very comfortable of course. If you are watching a movie and want to pause the playback or change the volume you don´t want to do that with the mouse cursor. But how could that be done otherwise? For some users it´s totally obvious, but many are not aware of the possibility to control almost every program more or less completely by keyboard commands. So you don´t have to use the mouse if you want to start playback, you can just press 'p' on the keyboard. Even Windows offers a number of keyboard commands. With 'Win + E' you can open the Explorer, with 'ALT - F4' you can close the active program.

This principle, controlling applications by keyboard commands, is used by Sconi Center: it simulates keyboard action, just as a user had done it. So far so good, but how can I choose which program receives the keyboard command? That´s simple, only one program can receive keyboard commands at one time, that´s the foreground program, to be more exact, the foreground window. You can recognize it by the dark blue title bar, in contrast to the light blue title bar of the other applications. So, to control a specific program, it has to be activated first. This can done by Sconi Center automatically, or by preserving a button on the remote control which does this job via the task manager, like if you press 'ALT - TAB' to change between the running programs.

There are some keyobard commands by the way, which doesn´t require the program to be in foreground. These are called hotkeys. If you use TVTool you will know them, TVTool uses the hotkeys CTRL - F1 and CTRL - F2 to switch between TV-mode and monitor mode for example. Hotkeys have one big drawback though, only one program can use a specific hotkey at a time, in contrast to normal keyboard commands, which can be used by different programs individually.

Keyboard commands of Media Player

Now you might ask, how can one know which keys have which function in a specific program. This can mostly be seen in the help file. Some programs also offer a command list through the user interface, which can even be edited. This is true for Zoomplayer for example. If you press F1 an extensive list will be presented. And finally the keyboard commands can be seen in the menus within the program. When you click on the playback menu entry of Media Player, the corresponding keyboard commands are listed in the menu. 'CTRL-P ' starts the playback, or 'CTRL-SHIFT-F' is fast forward. Usually it´s no big deal to find out the keyboard commands for a specific program.

Keyboard commands of ZoomPlayer

The functions of Sconi Center are not limited to keyboard commands of course. A lot of features, like changing volume level, shutting down the PC or mouse emulation, is realized by functions built in Sconi Center which can be selected directly by drop down lists.

In the next part of the tutorial we will create our first commands in Sconi Center. For this purpose we will create a group with fundamental functions. This includes mouse emulation as well as other important tasks as mentioned before, like shutting down the PC or changing volume level.

Go on to the 2. part!