Ask HN: Can I repurpose a Bluetooth voice remote as input device for a PC?

Posted by albert_e 2 days ago

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I am exploring ways to work with my PC that doesnt involve always sitting at a desk and typing with hands like a cave man.

Testing out using Wispr Flow and similar voice inputs -- seems to work fine for some use cases.

I also place the laptop on a treadmill sometimes and try to to get some research / browsing / work done. Mouse (trackball) and typing are the current weakest link.

are there decent handheld input gadgets that allow simple trackpad / click / scroll up&down / next&previous type of navigation and a push-to-talk voice input? I am looking at cheap remotes for FireTV stick and other streaming boxes that seem to have voice input -- anyway one could hack one of those to do our bidding and pair with a PC?

Comments

Comment by miek 1 day ago

Windows 11 has a "voice access" application that is amazing, seemingly hidden, and much better than the other built-in Win voice svcs. Voice Access is fully local, poorly documented, and the advanced settings menu is hidden.

*Quick guide to save you time:

-you can say "scroll to top/bottom", "click ok", "open Firefox", etc.

-it will always be typing when you talk unless it a) hears a command, b) you say "command mode", which will listen only for commands, or c) you mute:

-"mute" puts mic to sleep so you don't accidentally type when speaking ("unmute" to unmute)

-say "what can I say" to open advanced menu, allowing you to setup custom voice commands ("open projects folder", "open xyz website", etc.). Works well!

-full voice control of mouse is possible but a little slow. "Open grid" splits screen into a numbered 3x3 grid. You pick a number, it creates a new 3x3 grid in side the box you chose, and repeat until you can tell it to click.

The other thing I tried on Android is Futo voice input via F-droid + an app that turns you phone into a bluetooth keyboard (so as I spoke, it "typed" on the target device). The keyboard app is "Bluetooth Keyboard & Mouse"). It worked smoothly sometimes and other times not.

Comment by snypher 1 day ago

This is great. I really want to close a window with a 'open grid 333333'!

Comment by jashephe 1 day ago

It sounds like you want a dictation mic. Philips’s SpeechMike and OM System’s (formerly Olympus) RecMic are big in the healthcare space. My SpeechMike is wireless with a USB dongle and has something akin to a trackpoint for mouse movement, and buttons that can be programmed to send keystrokes.

Dictation mics are not cheap, unfortunately, but you may be able to get used ones for much less.

Comment by nubinetwork 1 day ago

You can probably find a nuance powermic 2 for like 50 bucks on eBay...

Comment by kotaKat 1 day ago

They go for closer to $100-150 for a ‘good’ working one, sadly. (They’re also the object of my nightmares, having supported them professionally.)

Comment by nubinetwork 1 day ago

Me too, we switched to the mobile app because we got tired of doctors throwing them onto the floor... they're not bad hardware, people just treat them like trash because we got rid of our voicemail based dictation system.

Comment by kotaKat 1 day ago

There's two camps of users I noticed: the users that absolutely adore Dragon, and the users that absolutely adore the voicemail dictation department.

Annoyingly, the users that absolutely adore Dragon were the ones that kept throwing them on the floor, because Dragon's implementation was such hot garbage that it kept nuking our doctors' profiles right out of the water.

I'm now going to scream thinking about all the calls I also fielded for the voicemail system having 'poor quality' depending on where you were calling in from...

Comment by multisport 1 day ago

Yes, but its gonna be weird. I've done very tangentially related work with game controllers, and my suspicion is you're gonna have to try a few (dozen?) before you find one that even sends reasonable commands. I can imagine a FireTV stick sending game controller inputs. I have no idea, but that's the type of thing that might go wrong.

A MX3 air mouse might be the exact thing you want though.

Comment by DANmode 1 day ago

> MX3 air mouse

This, or similar,

with a hot key for voice input, or a live activation word.

Comment by jam 1 day ago

A few months ago I put together a library that lets you use a Nintendo Switch JoyCon 1 (the JoyCon 2s can't connect to bluetooth) or a Playstation VR controller to a Mac in order to control the mouse, use a radial menu, etc: https://github.com/jturnshek/JamCon

I map one of the keys to voice input push-to-talk for handy: https://handy.computer/

This involved reverse engineering and writing new drivers for both (with no existing reference for the PSVR). It's all in that library, so if that sounds interesting to you, you can probably get Claude/Codex/whatever to convert it to a Windows app pretty quickly.

I haven't been maintaining this tool actively, but maybe it's useful to someone.

Comment by jam 1 day ago

As followup to this... I tried half a dozen air mice, and they were all awful. The TV-remote style mice all send pre-defined keyboard presses that can not be modified or intercepted.

That's why I went with the single-hand game controllers instead. I'm looking forward to the new Steam Frame VR controllers, because they will probably be the best option once they're out.

Comment by ticulatedspline 1 day ago

They make trackball clickers[1] (often with a laser since they're for presentations), and other single handed devices, a search for "finger mouse" surfaces a few different devices

I don't know if any of them have PTT with microphone but you should be able to pair the clicker with a regular bluetooth headset, while the headset may be on all the time you might be able to use something like joy-2-key and a macro/hotkey utility to map the button press to mic mute.

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Wireless-Handheld-Finger-Trackball-Po...

Comment by mikkupikku 1 day ago

Maybe some of the modern game controllers could fit, I know some of them have mic jacks but I don't know if any have built microphones. They fit the bill for handheld trackpad/etc with plenty of buttons at least.

Comment by vcf 1 day ago

I wanted exactly that for my Mac and ended up with a working version with the help of Claude in about one day (my first swift app!) It took a couple more days of working with it and asking claude to add any feature I felt I was missing and now i’m pretty happy with it. I still use my airpods or the laptop mic as primary audio input, but I have one button mapped to super whisper for speech to text input (first button I mapped). I can control the mouse and scroll with the joysticks, but my primary use case is to navigate tmux/claude sessions in the terminal. It works great with workmux. For the rest, I mostly map buttons to my existing raycast shortcuts.

It will sure beat the old laser pointer the next time I have to present or teach.

I could make the repo public if anyone is interested.

Comment by bradyd 1 day ago

The PS5 controller (DualSense) has a built in microphone and a trackpad.

Comment by noemit 2 days ago

I was looking into this when I got sick and couldn't type anymore. There are some corporate presentation tools that have directional buttons and also mics. I think Microsoft presenter is one? In the end i just ended up using my phone.

Comment by jonah 1 day ago

Relatedly, I want a bluetooth "skip 30s" button to use while listening to podcasts on iPhone. Anyone have a recommendation?

Comment by RobMurray 1 day ago

any headphones or speaker with skip buttons. in podcasts it skips forward 30 or back 15 seconds. perfect for skipping ads.

Comment by jonah 1 day ago

I just want the button, no speakers or headphones though.

Comment by snypher 1 day ago

There's "Bluetooth Media Button Remote Control" on Amazon, the wrist style is nice if you're in a workout or something but probably too nerdy for sitting on the couch :)

There's also something similar, 'puck' designed to mount to your car steering wheel.