LG Smart TV with "Magic Remote" (bluetooth)

soonerlater · June 25, 2020, 8:13pm

I just purchased an LG model 55UM7300PUA tv. This tv (and most of their smart tvs sold in the last year or so) comes with a “Magic Remote.” I believe that it does not use IR (infrared) at all. I believe that all communication between the remote and the tv is via bluetooth.

I would like to reconfigure my Home Remote installation to be able to control the tv, so that everyone in the family will have a remote. You can buy (and pair) multiple LG Magic Remotes, but they are not cheap. There’s a free LG tv control app available for Android (and probably iOS too) which you can use to control the tv. But, of course, I want to write a custom Home Remote remote to control the tv.

With no IR codes to learn or replicate, I don’t know where to start. I searched the old and new Home Remote forums, but couldn’t find anything on point. Searching for “magic” found nothing. Searching for “LG” isn’t allowed (too short).

Has anyone found a way to control the new LG smart tvs (the ones which use the Magic Remote) using Home Remote?

bill · June 25, 2020, 8:30pm

All new LG smart TVs use the webOS platform. Official support was added for webOS TVs earlier this year. Update your apps & Designer to version 3.3.0. It’s in the new device menu.

To do the update, you’ll probably have to uninstall your current version of the Designer.

soonerlater · July 7, 2020, 6:08pm

Maybe I don’t yet understand the new (new to me, anyway) ver. 3.3 Designer, but when I install the “Lg WebOS TV” device (as shown in Bill’s post above), it only has these commands:

AudioMute
AudioVolume
MediaControl
MediaInputSource
Switch
TvChannel

How do you give a power-on (or power-off) command? Are we supposed to select “Switch” and then provide some arguments?

bill · July 7, 2020, 7:18pm

Those are the Capabilities for the device. Some of those capabilities have several commands. Don’t forget about all of the commands associated to the MediaControl capability. It will have almost all of the commands available on the physical remote including menu navigation.

Correct. To send a power on or off command you’ll set the @Device.Switch attribute to either On or Off. Just like what’s being done in the default TileTemplate for that device, TVTile.xaml. You can also use the @Device.MediaCommand attribute & set the Value parameter to either PowerOn or PowerOff. The power button in the default DetailsTemplate, TVDetails.xaml, is actually sending a PowerToggle command through @Device.MediaCommand.

If you haven’t already done so, be sure to check out Brian & John’s YouTube videos.