Send Long Press to Roku?

So I'm having the most success with Roku at the moment, but one thing I haven't figured out how to replicate (and looking at the Roku ECP documentation I fear it's not possible) is sending long press, specifically for enter.  A number of Roku apps/channels (YouTube/AppleTV notably) support long press on enter to bring up a menu of extra options for a selection.  This is very handy, and I've come to use it quite a lot, but I've not found a way to replicate this with SmartRemote.  Is this possible or potentially something that could be added?

stanger89 wrote:

So I'm having the most success with Roku at the moment, but one thing I haven't figured out how to replicate (and looking at the Roku ECP documentation I fear it's not possible) is sending long press, specifically for enter.  A number of Roku apps/channels (YouTube/AppleTV notably) support long press on enter to bring up a menu of extra options for a selection.  This is very handy, and I've come to use it quite a lot, but I've not found a way to replicate this with SmartRemote.  Is this possible or potentially something that could be added?

the SmartRemote long press is independent of a Roku's long press on their remote control.
Go into myDesigner, click on "Roku.html"  Click on project settings.  Click on Buttons.  You will see a column for short and a column for long presses per button.  So, look at the "Channel Up" command.  You should see a macro with the commands to send repeating UP commands for short and also more presses for a Long press.  Use that as example of how to program Long press buttons, as well as how to create a repeating macro with pauses inbetween.

Just keep in mind that the long press doesn't fire until after you release the key. I keep forgetting that and end up holding the key for much longer than is needed. It would be really nice if it fired off the command as soon as the long press time finished and didn't require you to release the key. It doesn't really work with things like volume or scrolling through large lists because it won't do anything until you release the key and then it will only do it for the number of loops that are hardcoded. It would also be nice if the smart remote had a "hold" option or something that would keep firing off the command while it was being pressed.

Yeah, I'd seen that there was a separate setting for a held key, and how that was handled on the volume. Also good to see I was interpreting the Volume "code" correctly. I did try to setup the select on the Roku the same way, but it didn't seem to work. I'll have to dig some more on that though.

Though I did look and I "assume" myServer is using the Roku ECP interface?
developer.roku.com/docs/developer-progra...ernal-control-api.md

I didn't see anything in there that would indicate it could support long press.  On the flip side I did see some comments in the Roku developer chats about supporting long press from apps so maybe there's a different way?

I don't have a roku but when I looked at the EPC interface doc they talk about having specific key down and key up events. So maybe those could simulate the long press. Not sure that's built into the driver though.

Ah, good catch, I think in my brain I just read those as the down/up keys, but yeah, that looks quite promising.  I'll have to look at what's exposed in the Roku driver, if there's some workaround I can do.  Though I think it might be good if there was a way in SmartRemote/myServer to configure a button to send those rather than waiting.  It would be better than nothing if I could long press on the SmartRemote and have it fire a "macro" to simulate a long press on the Roku, but it would be better (long term) if it could be configured to send the down/up events directly.