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Limited Remote for Seniors?

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My father has dementia and can't work a remote control any longer.  Does anyone know of a remote control that works with Roku where I can set the tv to turn on just to Fox News?  I have Hulu Live TV.

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atc98092
Community Streaming Expert

Re: Limited Remote for Seniors?

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The regular Roku remote is as simple as they come. There's no way to have a Roku turn on and open a specific channel without requiring any user input. 

All Roku players, other than the Roku Stick, can be used with a universal IR (infrared) remote, and there are programmable remotes that can have macros to auto-run things. However, the most common were the Logitech Harmony line, and Logitech has discontinued them. 

Dan

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13 REPLIES 13
atc98092
Community Streaming Expert

Re: Limited Remote for Seniors?

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The regular Roku remote is as simple as they come. There's no way to have a Roku turn on and open a specific channel without requiring any user input. 

All Roku players, other than the Roku Stick, can be used with a universal IR (infrared) remote, and there are programmable remotes that can have macros to auto-run things. However, the most common were the Logitech Harmony line, and Logitech has discontinued them. 

Dan

Roku Community Streaming Expert

Help others find this answer and click "Accept as Solution."
If you appreciate my answer, maybe give me a Kudo.

I am not a Roku employee, just another user.
MilesT
Roku Guru

Re: Limited Remote for Seniors?

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Some of the more advanced Oneforall remotes support Roku and can learn keypress sequences. 7935 for example. But these may not be simple enough.

NB IR replacement remotes won't work with Streaming stick models.

Maybe just record a few hours of Fox News onto a USB stick once a week and put that into TV instead on autorun mode? They probably won't know the difference :-).

(Seriously, I know from personal experience dementia is a crushing illness, but sometimes dark humour is needed.  Sad that their go-to comfort space is Fox News.  Maybe find some favourite music on video instead to ring the changes?)

Worth reading anti-monopolist blogger Matt Stoller post on Logitech Harmony.

Not a Roku employee
MemoryLaneTV
Channel Surfer

Re: Limited Remote for Seniors?

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A real problem indeed for people living with dementia and Alzheimer's disease. 

We have set up Memory Lane TV (a streaming platform for people living with dementia with plot free programing) on our Roku and tried to replace the netflix shortcut button but that does not work 😞  When you have dementia, you need a simpler solution. How do we program a simple button that turns on an app on the roku? 

Most importantly, is there a way to control the roku away from home via a phone? IR system does not work but it seems that we should be able to control the roku even when NOT on the same wifi if we are log in. it would be a functionality that almost 6 million Americans who have dementia. need!!! 

Any other idea on how to remotely access and navigate an app on the Roku from a different location? 

Thank you all 

 

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atc98092
Community Streaming Expert

Re: Limited Remote for Seniors?

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@MemoryLaneTV wrote:

We have set up Memory Lane TV (a streaming platform for people living with dementia with plot free programing) on our Roku and tried to replace the netflix shortcut button but that does not work 😞  When you have dementia, you need a simpler solution. How do we program a simple button that turns on an app on the roku? 

Most importantly, is there a way to control the roku away from home via a phone? IR system does not work but it seems that we should be able to control the roku even when NOT on the same wifi if we are log in. it would be a functionality that almost 6 million Americans who have dementia. need!!! 


No, you cannot control a Roku with the app if you are not connected to the same home network. And you cannot reprogram the buttons on most Roku remotes. There are user programmable buttons on the Voice Remote Pro, but those buttons aren't any more prominent than the other preprogrammed buttons. But they might work for you.

Another option that would work for most Roku players (not a Roku Stick) is a universal IR remote that has large, programmable buttons. Roku Stick players don't support IR, but all other Roku players do. 

Dan

Roku Community Streaming Expert

Help others find this answer and click "Accept as Solution."
If you appreciate my answer, maybe give me a Kudo.

I am not a Roku employee, just another user.
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MemoryLaneTV
Channel Surfer

Re: Limited Remote for Seniors?

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Thank you for your answer. 

As mentioned, I undesratnd that you can not control the roku if you are not on the same wifi, that IS the predicament I wrote about as this is really a big let down for our community. 

And I also understand that you can NOT reprogram the button, another huge problem for us. I do have a voice remote pro and it is not great. I would want to have a dedicated remote just for us, easily programable. 

What about controlling the app from away, who can develop this for us? Or who at Roku would we talk to to developp that functionality? Thank you 

 

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atc98092
Community Streaming Expert

Re: Limited Remote for Seniors?

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@MemoryLaneTV wrote:

What about controlling the app from away, who can develop this for us? Or who at Roku would we talk to to develop that functionality? Thank you 


I doubt that would ever happen. It would be enormous work on the programming side, and still require some specific changes to the Internet connection of your home router to allow the control signal to passthrough. It is not something that could be done easily. 

Dan

Roku Community Streaming Expert

Help others find this answer and click "Accept as Solution."
If you appreciate my answer, maybe give me a Kudo.

I am not a Roku employee, just another user.
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Strega2
Roku Guru

Re: Limited Remote for Seniors?

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I think you should make a deal with Roku to: Get a code assigned to your channel, and get a bunch of remotes made that are preprogrammed/prelabeled to your channel.  My guess from having things contract-manufactured in China is that you can probably start with as few as a thousand in your first order and still get a reasonable price.  You could even take this further and have a custom box (sort of like NowTV did) that uses your own server and/or supplies your own bells and whistles.  For example, you could give facilities the ability to post their daily schedules on it and make announcements and reminders, possibly turn down the volume at night etc. Heck you might even add some kind of occupancy sensor to it so they could get an idea of when the last time someone was seen in their room.

Your organization would probably need a certain sense of gravitas/scale to make this kind of deal (custom boxes) to work, and I have no idea if you have that, but I suspect that custom remotes would be pretty easy for anyone to get made.

Banned but back. Because why not?
RFT135
Channel Surfer

Re: Limited Remote for Seniors?

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One of the difficulties you would encounter in having a custom made remote is that the end user may want a channel that does not have its own app.  Therefore, it requires specific keystrokes to access through a multi-channel streaming service.  Even if the correct sequence were programmed for one streaming service, it wouldn't work on another (ie. Hulu, YoutubeTV, Sling . . .).  And even if it were programmed for the correct service, Roku might make a change rendering the remote unusable.  As evidence, their recent addition of the "On Now" set of "channels" made some programming I had done on a programmable remote no longer function correctly.  I was able to reprogram for my needs, but it was annoying and a hard-coded device would end up being useless.

Being a Senior myself (79), I can see the day that I might wish for something simpler than what I'm able to navigate today.  Pushed updates can be a great thing, but sometimes they get in the way of functionality.

MemoryLaneTV
Channel Surfer

Re: Limited Remote for Seniors?

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Thank you very helpful...And discouraging...

I wish Roku woudl take in acount aging population and really invest in simplifying access to certain content. 

If anyone here has an idea or a solution, please let me know, I am the producer of a channel called Memory Lane TV (watchmemorylane.com) and I am looking for a simple way for my users to access content. 

 

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