I've got some drawings of something that integrates a media navigation / contextual info screen w/ physical buttons and a couple encoders but I just don't have the time as of late to go cobble it together.Ī Samsung TV universal remote (because I have no Samsung products that can be controlled by IR whatsoever) + an IR receiver made out of a cheap Chinese Sparkfun Pro Micro clone (with ATMEGA32U4 microcontroller for native USB interface) with custom software I wrote by myself that relies on the Arduino IRremote library for IR decoding and the HID Project library to make the board be seen as both a USB HID and a USB Media device.

There's also SmartKnob if you can get the motor I have a feeling the real answer is cannibalize a Tuya zigbee knob or wait for my ESP32 with Zigbee to arrive. My dream device is a Surface Dial with Zigbee. Much like Kal, I've been using some knobs as well. The hardware is quite nice though, at the very least it may start handling the IR / RS232 and essentially 'taking' commands from my existing command and control infrastructure.

I've been cautiously poking around with old Crestron stuff but I'm not sure if it's worth the hassle, especially since the leg work I need to do on the interface / programming side isn't *that* different from what I already have done.

This is how I often interact with MC in the theater room. I use a really nice milled aluminum remote and a custom tablet interface. I clicked 'expensive hardware' but it's rather a hardware / software solution that I built for myself.

Jriver remote android