Seriously try one of the air remotes. It’s like a gyroscopic remote and it works way better than I ever thought it would for controlling a mouse cursor. They’re very cheap too, the one I have cost 30bucks, it can sense if you have it on the keyboard side or the media side facing up and disables the other sides buttons, deactivatable backlight on the buttons, and rechargeable battery, although it lasts for weeks without charging.
I’ve been also doing this kind of thing for a few months and just want to suggest you look for one with the full media player buttons like this since that works directly in Kodi, so if you’re using a PC/Mini-PC with Kodi on as a media player, as long as you don’t exit Kodi with this you pretty much have typical experience you do with a smart-TV or an Android TV media box with dedicated remote.
That said, I don’t recommend this specific model since the buttons are requiring stronger pressing to work already and I’ve only had it for a few months - the idea is great but this specific device is a low quality implementation.
That said, I started with a wireless keyboard and mouse and still have them connected to it but in a corner, for the few times I have to do stuff with that PC outside Kodi, since the mini-keyboard on the back of my air-mouse and the air-mouse functionality itself are more awkward to use than an actual keyboard and mouse.
I don’t really have any intention on using any of those programs to emulate regular TV watching once I have the mini pc and projector running. Not because I can’t set it up because I’ve done it before but I’ve found that regular Firefox with unblock is good enough for me. I know what I wanna watch and I know where to go to stream it for free.
Thanks for the suggestion, I’ll definitely check out the media player button. I’m still doing research on what would work best for my use case.