How to Set Up a Senior-Friendly Fire TV Remote

Issue # 22

If your elderly parent loves their Amazon Fire TV but has trouble using the voice commands and small buttons or finding a lost remote, you might want to look into the Amazon Alexa Voice Remote Pro.

It's very similar to other Fire TV remotes in terms of size and weight but packs some essential differences:

·      Buttons light up when the remote is moved

·      Built-in remote finder "Alexa, find my TV remote"

·      Dedicated Bluetooth headphone button

·      Two programmable buttons

Here is a YouTube video of it in action:

Please note that although this remote is compatible with most Fire TVs, Fire TV Sticks, and Fire TV Cubes, some exceptions exist.

While most features benefit seniors, I want to focus on the two programmable buttons. These can be programmed to "speak" any Alexa command your parent might have trouble speaking, such as "Alexa, watch Longmire on Netflix." Their show will be displayed where they left off with a simple button push. They then need to push the play or select button when they are ready to watch it.

The training of these buttons is accomplished by first speaking the command to Alexa and then using a long press of the button to pick that spoken command from a list of last spoken commands.

In this example I first spoke this command to my Fire TV “Alexa, watch Longmire on Netflix” and then used the button to select that spoken command

This technique can be helpful if you can access your parent's remote, but what about if you live far away and they want to change the buttons' programming?

Remote button programming

You can accomplish remote programming by first programming a button to run an Alexa Routine while you are at their house.. This Alexa Routine resides in your parent's Alexa account in the cloud and can be accessed if you have an Alexa app on your phone. Log out of your Alexa Account:

·      Tap "More"

·      Tap "Settings"

·      Tap "Sign Out"

Then log in as your parent. Remember to log back in as yourself later.

To create the Alexa Routine in your parent's account, you can modify this sample Alexa routine to reference your parent's Fire TV

Or, type in the steps below. To simplify the steps required, I left out the "TV power on" and "speaking the command aloud" actions that are in the sample routine.

·      Tap "More"

·      Tap "Routines"

·      Tap “+”

·      Tap "Add an event"

·      Tap "Voice"

·      Enter "remote button one"

·      Tap "next"

·      Tap "Alexa will"

·      Tap "Custom"

·      Enter the spoken command e.g. "Watch House of Cards on Netflix"

·      Tap "Add another action"

·      Tap "Custom"

·      Enter Resume

·      Scroll down to "Hear Alexa from"

·      Select their Fire TV device

·      Tap "Finish"

Now that the "remote button one" Alexa routine is available, try speaking “Alexa, remote button one” to the Fire TV. If that works, hold button number one for a few seconds and select the "remote button one" command.

You could repeat the above steps for "remote button two" to select another show, Alexa-controlled lighting, or a front door camera displayed on the Fire TV.