Tablet remotes show locked status – easy fix

We’ve run into a situation a couple of times now where the display for the MuVIT remote on the tablet displayed locked and was not usable. This was confusing the first couple of times since everything had been working perfectly up to that point. A lot of fiddling with the remotes to get it to operate but no joy. Then suddenly, inexplicably it would start working.

I had been working with one of the users on this problem when we sort of blundered into the solution, and like many things it was both simple made sense once you realized what was going on. It turns out that the Unified Remote software needs to phone home at some point. I hadn’t noticed this because my tablet was connecting to the internet one way or another fairly regularly.

I suggested to the user that perhaps try reloading the UR app to see if it had somehow been corrupted. He disconnected from the MuVIT local network and connected to his normal wireless. The status changed from locked to active within a few moments and we confirmed proper operation.

So simple fix if you find your tablet indicating a locked status is to just allow it to connect to the internet and phone home. Overall this looks to be an uncommon problem but easy fixes are the best fixes.