The Raspberry Pi Media Centre is working well!
The Networking Division is extremely happy with it. He had a bithday this week so the Junior Lamas (Lamettes?) bought him a remote keyboard and mouse.
Its a bit bigger than a mobile phone and takes up much less space that a full keyboard and mouse. It is wirelessly connected to the Pi via a USB dongle and has sufficient range that he can use it accross the kitchen while he is cooking my tea!
The spec according to Amazon is
2.4 GHz Mini Wireless Media Keyboard with Multi-Touch Gesture
Touchpad Mouse Remote PC HTPC for Windows XP/Vista/7.
OS Compatibility : Windows XP/ Vista / 7 (the manual includes Linux)
Dimension(L x W x H): 125 x 86 x 18 mm
Weight: 106g
Wireless Technology: RF 2.4GHz ISM band
Transfer Distance: 10 meters (depend on user environment)
Frequency Scope: 2479 MHz
It takes 2 AAA batteries.
The manual, however, was less than comprehensive ! According to the manual it was to be installed using the handy CD enclosed, which is fine for a laptop or PC but just not much use on the Raspberry Pi.
The Settings option in RaspBMC gave no further help.
But we found it in Programs.
Selected RaspBMC settings.
Across the top of the window is
Networking Nightly Build System Config IR Remote
Config Config
Selecting IR Remote on the right side of the screen gives a further 3 options.
The bottom one is GPIO IR Remote and on the right it scrolls through a list of different remotes.
We selected TTUSB remote and were good to go.
It has made the Raspberry Pi more portable as we don't have to trail the keyboard, mouse and mat around the house.
