I've got a a bell expressvu 5100 (similar to the Dish 501) It has a search button which takes you to an on screen keyboard - at which point you could use your arrow keys to type a name of a program to search for. What I would like to do with my pronto pro is use the keyboard in the files section to type what program I want to search for. The numbers on the remote have three letters under each one (like on a telephone) is there any way to do this?

have you looked at files for the 501/5100 maybe someone has created it already.


if it does not work that way with the original remote, then the Pronto cannot do that.


you could make each letter on the Pronto a macro that starts from a certain point and goes to the letter. Then it sends the letter and returns to the starting point.

I am a bit confused by your original statement.
You said the letters are currently programmed by moving an arrow around the keyboard on screen but then you talked about a number pad with 3 letters per digit on the remote.

Is the numberpad an alternative method on the original remote or is it just the method you are looking to change to?

If it is then latter then anthony is spot on the only way you could do it is to have an individual key for each letter and program it so that when you hit it,it jumps to a known start point on the screen then adds he correct number of up, down, left, right moves to navigate to that letter then it sends enter.

there is one more method, but it is a lot more messy (and the reason I did not mention it earlier) and that consists of creating a keyboard for every letter of the alphabet, so that when you press A then all the positions are relative to the A key....

Yes the number pad is an alternative to using the arrows to scroll through the onscreen keyboard layout. I will try to the other method mentioned and let you know how it works....

thanks

In that case there is a much easier way
presumably on the original remote 2 = abc
so one press is 'a' two presses is 'b'and 3 presses is 'c' etc
all you have to do to convert to a full querty keyboard is to download the keyboard that you have seen and asign the buttons as follows
key a = 2
key b = 2,2
key c = 2,2,2
key d = 3
key e = 3,3
etc etc with the other keys.

depending on the resonse time of your system it may actually need to be
a = 2
b = 2,delay,2
c = 2,delay,2,delay,2

this is because The pronto will be capable of sending the sequence much faster than you could hit the 2 button 3 times so without the pauses the system might not be able to respond fast enough or ignore some of the signals thinking you had just held the key down to long accidently.

If you do it this way you definitley want to think about using aliasing to program the keys and possibly for the pause as well. It will save time and memory.

When I first posted this thread, someone emailed me a working ccf of this, well I am now hoping the same person or anyone else who has built this function can email it to me. thanks