I struggled with that until I figured out that the numeric buttons are really a progressive search. You must wait until each button’s search results are posted — else you risk skipped digits. This means that the required wait time between digits is somewhat dependent on the current program lineup. If a bunch of stations need to be displayed after a digit, you must wait longer before entering the next digit. An additional annoyance is that a cable box update or change of box might upset the timing. When I use a native remote I typically press too fast and digits are skipped. The only solution in a control program is to insert delays between digits.

If your control platform supports the feature, you can make the delay symbolic and change a single variable to adjust the timing. Another, messier approach would be to define ten digit macros and each of these macros includes a delay. In this case you call digit macros from the channel buttons. If you need to adjust the timing, you only need to deal with the ten digit macros.

Ideally your control platform supports functions and you can pass the station channel number as a string. The channel function can deal with delays and speed ups, such as inserting ‘enter’ after three digit channels, rather than waiting for a timeout.