[HN Gopher] Ask HN: Can I repurpose a Bluetooth voice remote as ...
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Ask HN: Can I repurpose a Bluetooth voice remote as input device
for a PC?
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?
Author : albert_e
Score : 11 points
Date : 2026-03-08 09:30 UTC (1 days ago)
| noemit wrote:
| 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.
| multisport wrote:
| 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.
| DANmode wrote:
| > MX3 air mouse
|
| This, or similar,
|
| with a hot key for voice input, or a live activation word.
| mikkupikku wrote:
| 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.
| bradyd wrote:
| The PS5 controller (DualSense) has a built in microphone and a
| trackpad.
| vcf wrote:
| 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.
| miek wrote:
| 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.
| ticulatedspline wrote:
| 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...
| jashephe wrote:
| 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.
| nubinetwork wrote:
| You can probably find a nuance powermic 2 for like 50 bucks on
| eBay...
| kotaKat wrote:
| 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.)
| nubinetwork wrote:
| 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.
| kotaKat wrote:
| 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...
| jam wrote:
| 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.
| jam wrote:
| 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.
| jonah wrote:
| Relatedly, I want a bluetooth "skip 30s" button to use while
| listening to podcasts on iPhone. Anyone have a recommendation?
| RobMurray wrote:
| any headphones or speaker with skip buttons. in podcasts it
| skips forward 30 or back 15 seconds. perfect for skipping ads.
| jonah wrote:
| I just want the button, no speakers or headphones though.
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