Using an Amazon Firestick for Pilot

Seven steps to take a brand-new Fire Stick from the box to a live, paired signage screen.

  • Product: Pilot Player
  • Device: Amazon Fire TV Stick (4K)
  • Time: ~10 minutes

Before you start

  • Fire Stick plugged in and powered on
  • Wi-Fi network name and password
  • The Fire TV remote
  • A login to the Pilot dashboard, on another device

Step 1 – Connect the stick to Wi-Fi

From the Fire TV home screen, open Settings – the gear icon at the far right of the top menu.

Settings → Network → your Wi-Fi network

Enter the password on the on-screen keyboard and select Connect. Wait for it to say “Connected” before moving on.

Step 2 – Open Silk Browser

Silk is Fire TV’s built-in browser – it’s what the screen will run in, so there’s nothing extra to install.

HOME → Apps → find and open Silk Browser

Not pinned to your row of apps? Use the search icon on the home screen and type “Silk.”

Step 3 – Go to the player address

Select the address bar at the top of Silk, and type the player URL using the remote’s on-screen keyboard:

https://pilot.axiondisplays.com/player.html

Press Go on the keyboard, or the remote’s Select button. The screen will show a setup message – that’s expected, you’ll pair it in Step 5.

Step 4 – Set the browser zoom to 50%

Fire TV’s Silk browser sometimes auto-zooms its own pages, which stretches the ticker bar and blurs images. It’s a one-time fix, not something that will recur once it’s set.

MENU on the remote, with Silk open → Settings

Look under Accessibility for an entry called Zoom, Page Zoom, or Text and Page Scaling (naming varies by Fire OS version) and set it to 50%.

Step 5 – Pair it with your Pilot account

Back on the TV, the player screen shows an 8-character pairing code, formatted like:

A1B2-C3D4

On your computer or phone, log into the Pilot dashboard and go to Manage Screens. Find the screen you’re setting up (or add a new one), then select Pair Screen and type in the code exactly as shown on the TV.

The TV switches to live content within a few seconds of pairing.

Step 6 – Make it Full Screen

Once the live content is playing, use the Fire TV remote to select the Full Screen button on the player so the signage fills the entire TV display and hides the browser menus.

Step 7 – Stop the Fire Stick from sleeping

Fire TV dims and can go to sleep after a period of inactivity – fine for a normal TV, not for a screen meant to run all day.

Settings → Display & Sounds → Screensaver → Start Time: Never

The screen is now live, paired, full screen, and set to stay on.

Troubleshooting

If the screen still looks zoomed in: A reboot alone won’t fix it – Fire TV’s browser keeps its own cache across reboots. Go into Settings → Applications → Manage Installed Applications → Silk Browser, and use Clear cache and Clear data, then reopen Silk and re-check the zoom setting from Step 4.

How to Turn Off “Still Watching”?

  1. Go to the Settings (gear icon) on your Fire TV home screen.
  2. Select Preferences.
  3. Click on Data Usage Monitoring.
  4. Locate the Still Watching option and turn it Off.
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