High End Touch Screen Remote - The perfect IPAD app? (1 Viewer)

Member buggs (Scott) has a really good idea about using the iPad as a touch remote similar to a Crestron unit.

You can read about it here

http://www.hometheaterforum.com/forum/thread/299610/high-end-touch-screen-remote-the-perfect-ipad-app

Great idea.

Parker

You can do this with an iPhone already, I'm sure the usual suspects are coming up with iPad versions. Not all that much interesting to me, I've never gotten into the whole home automation thing. Seems an awful lot of headache and expense plus adding complexity to something that's pretty easy to do with physical switches. But I get why others are into it, but to me it's kinda meh.

This makes more sense than "iPhone as Universal Remote", which was obviously an idea created by bachelors

Even so: how do you make the family's browser / game system / book reader also a dedicated remote control? "Hey! Stop that game of Plants vs Zombies so I can change channel!"

But I guess given that people already pay $500+ for a high-end remote, they'd pay $500 for an iPad dedicated to controlling the home theater.

Originally Posted by DaveF

This makes more sense than "iPhone as Universal Remote", which was obviously an idea created by bachelors

Even so: how do you make the family's browser / game system / book reader also a dedicated remote control? "Hey! Stop that game of Plants vs Zombies so I can change channel!"

But I guess given that people already pay $500+ for a high-end remote, they'd pay $500 for an iPad dedicated to controlling the home theater.

Click to expand...

Actually it works very well in our house -- my original first gen. iPhone is our HT remote (the screen sleep/lock timer is set to "never" so the remote is always there to skip the commercials)/cooking timer (no fear about getting sauce on the 3GS)/alarm clock (the much maligned low volume speaker is perfect for waking you up pleasantly).

The iPad will be a better generalized HTPC/Mac remote due to the superiority of the bigger screen for screen sharing a.k.a. remote desktop. Definitely the iPhone/iPad combo can (and should) displace the universal remote industry.

So I'm thinking of where the iPhone is acutally used as a phone Not the situation where a family has spare, unused iPhones needing a purpose in life.

But I completely disagree that these devices can and should displace other universal remotes. I believe strongly in physical buttons. Having a volume and channel buttons I can use without looking at the remote is impossible with any wholly touch-screen device.

There is a Control4 App that looks amazing on the Ipad... You get your entire GUI right on the iPad... You can download it for free and check it out in demo mode... I hear activation is $300!! Ouch....

The cool thing about this is with the IP to IR you could pretty much do what the Control 4 and Crestron do for a lot less money.

Originally Posted by DaveF
But I completely disagree that these devices can and should displace other universal remotes. I believe strongly in physical buttons. Having a volume and channel buttons I can use without looking at the remote is impossible with any wholly touch-screen device.

Click to expand...

Dave, you are still waiting to get your first iPhone -- right? Trust me, once you do you will quickly change your mind about the need for physical buttons. The iPhone does have physical volume buttons, and certainly remote software *can* use them, but on screen ones are just better.

You still need a control4 receiver box....

iPhone IR remote out:

http://www.businessinsider.com/apple-allows-you-to-turn-your-iphone-into-a-credit-card-terminal-2010-5

http://www.l5remote.com/


Also available:

http://www.newkinetix.com/

and

http://newpotatotech.com/FLPR/flpr.html

and

(not yet out)

https://thinkflood.com/products/redeye-mini/what-is-redeye-mini/

Originally Posted by Ted Todorov
But I completely disagree that these devices can and should displace other universal remotes. I believe strongly in physical buttons. Having a volume and channel buttons I can use without looking at the remote is impossible with any wholly touch-screen device.

Click to expand...

Dave, you are still waiting to get your first iPhone -- right? Trust me, once you do you will quickly change your mind about the need for physical buttons. The iPhone does have physical volume buttons, and certainly remote software *can* use them, but on screen ones are just better. [/QUOTE]

Got my iPhone. Still love physical buttons on special-purpose devices. Replacing my Harmony One with my iPhone would be disastrous. Even for iPod functionality, I'm so glad to have discovered the hard-button feature of the iPhone headphones.


But that's not why I'm here. An interesting uni-remote solution previewed at Engadget for the iPhone. But presumably an iPad version could come along.

http://www.engadget.com/2010/12/08/peel-turns-your-iphone-into-a-universal-remote-using-a-wirele/