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Using Your Android Phone as a Remote Control

Lead Hacker — Tue, 15 Feb 2011 07:45:42 +0000

What I initially set out to do was find a program for my G2 that would allow me to use it as a Bluetooth trackpad and keyboard with the Mac mini I have hooked up to my television. I use it as a media PC, but it’s also a general purpose system. Every now and again it’s convenient to be able to control it using a full keyboard and mouse.

I haven’t yet run across the right tool to get my phone to work as a Bluetooth HID device for my computer. But there are some decent VNC clients that do interesting things. I’ve started using AndroidVNC as my default. I wish I could turn off the screen on the device completely. As is I turn the color depth all the way down. Because I’m sitting in front of the computer I can watch the pointer onscreen, transferring the video data over my G2 just cases it to lag.

The essential part to making it work well is to go into the settings and swap the pointer mode to trackpad. That way you can use the touchscreen on the device as a trackpad instead of having to pan around and touch directly (or use the tiny directional trackpad). You still need a VNC server on your PC, but I’m running one anyway so it’s not much of an issue for me. Still, would be nice to be able to use the Bluetooth HID version for other cases. Surprised at the lack of Bluetooth based Android hackery.

Long Press on the Home Key

Lead Hacker — Fri, 29 May 2009 18:58:15 +0000

Intuitive to Nokia users, but I don’t think folks coming from other platforms have picked it up. If you press and hold the home key you get a list of recent apps, which makes switching around a lot easier if you’re bouncing back and forth. Here’s what the app list looks like when it comes up:

Launcher Dock

Lead Hacker — Thu, 28 May 2009 16:02:28 +0000

Another widget I’m running now that I have Cupcake installed is “Launcher Dock”. It’s a 1×1 widget that holds launchers for up to 8 apps. I put some of my less frequently launched (but still relatively frequently used) apps in there so that I can have all their icons on the main screen. This is a shot of my main screen with a configured Launcher Dock by the bottom right corner, just above the San Mateo weather widget:

When you tap the widget once it brings up a selector with launchers for each of the apps you’ve added plus an icon to start the widget configuration interface. Here’s what mine looks like after tapping on the widget:

And what the configuration interface looks like if you tap on that center icon:

I think it’s a pretty slick widget. Great way to increase launcher density if you have a few widgets taking up some space. And it looks pretty good there on the home screen.