Control PC from a BlackBerry

One day, I spent a few hours to build an HTPC (Home Theater Personal Computer) and everything worked perfectly, until I realized that I didn't have a remote control for the HTPC. I thought about all these options:

• Wireless keyboard & mouse - too big
• Remote control for the TV card - it can only control the card, not the whole PC

I did some google search and I found this application, but it isn't what I wanted.

I finally found my ideal remote device - A BlackBerry 8800! It has a full keyboard and a trackball perfect for using as a mouse. So I wrote a little application, which contains two parts:

1. An application runs on the BlackBerry device and sends all the key typing and trackball movements to the PC
2. A .Net application runs on the PC and translates all the typing and trackball movements into Windows input

This remote control solution is perfect for your HTPC or doing presentations. Image you can walk freely while doing your presentation, changing slides and input text remotely.

Features:

1. Full keyboard remote input support
2. Mouse movement suport, including mouse wheel mode

Application requirements:

1. PC and BlackBerry device must have Bluetooth
2. BlackBerry device should have a trackball. I haven't tested it on the touch screen versions.
3. PC is running XP or Vista with .Net 2.0 runtime installed (If you don't know what .Net is, the setup.exe will guide you to install it)

To use it, download the following parts:

1. Remote Control PC software - Unzip and run setup.exe
2. Remote Control BlackBerry software - Unzip and use BlackBerry Desktop application loader to open bluetooth.alx
3. Read the How to use BlackBerry Remote Control post