7 ms·

Sevenhugs exits the universal remote business

46 points by jsjohnst 5y ago

jdlshore 5y ago
This is the first I’ve heard of them. Can somebody explain what makes these remotes newsworthy, and why they’ll stop functioning in a year?
- dv_dt 5y ago
  Dunno, but if they’re hardware it’s pretty bad form to shut them off without at least a push that would leave them functional but unsupported.
Urgo 5y ago
I was a backer of their kickstarter in 2016. I remember the pitch. It made me feel like the remote was going to be out of the Jetsons or something. You walk around your house, point it at something and it knows what it is and you can instantly control it. The actual product though sorta like that didn't really work out that well. First it wasn't really whole house it was more room based.. and since all my TV equipment was all in one place the point at it and it knows which item it is trick didn't really work as hoped.. not to mention when watching TV you don't really want to have to think about where you are pointing the remote.. and then yeah just using a touch screen instead of buttons was awkward. Long story short, I still actually do have the remote plugged in.. but haven't used it since I set it up several years ago. It's sad that they're shutting down. I really did want to like their product. But if everyone had the same experience as me I can't say I'm super surprised.
- rjzzleep 5y ago
  The xiaomi phones still have IR blasters. I can see the appeal of the photos on the sevenhugs website. But it's kind of an ambitious niche product. Looks like something that's not really sustainable by itself without acquisition. I feel like there's really only a few ways to handle this. Buy devices from the same vendor. Buy devices with another value proposition such as Amazon Alexa. A universal standard with industry backing, but those also usually end up with bigger enterprises putting a lot of unusable stuff in the standard. Or treat it as non standardized and put an IR blaster on top, but then why do I need a physical remote. (I realize the spotify thing looks quite beautiful)
- jsjohnst 5y ago
  > But if everyone had the same experience as me I can't say I'm super surprised. Article submitted here: Your experience as written could be nearly a word for word summary of my own. Enough so that I’m not going to duplicate content and just say read what you read.
neolog 5y ago
> Logitech Just Killed the Universal Remote Control Industry https://mattstoller.substack.com/p/why-logitech-just-killed-the-universal https://mattstoller.substack.com/p/why-logitech-just-killed-...
- formerly_proven 5y ago
  The whole "universal remote" thing seems like laziness to me, because e.g. Pioneer did this very well in their home theatre systems - the AV receiver obviously is the centerpiece of the system, so why would you need more than the touch-screen remote for that?
  - neolog 5y ago
    My receiver doesn't know how to turn on the TV.
    - PostThisTooFast 5y ago
      It doesn't have CEC? Not that CEC isn't hampered by shitty implementations...
    - aulin 5y ago
      you sure? anynet+/hdmi-cec has been around since quite some time, most people just don't know about it as it's usually poorly documented and buried in not so user-friendly config menus.
      - neolog 5y ago
        TIL
      - kumarharsh 5y ago
        Yup, XBox does this too.
      - jsjohnst 5y ago
        > anynet+/hdmi-cec Sometimes it doesn’t work due to manufacturer bugs. I have a TV that has a bug in their implementation on a specific series of theirs where it won’t turn on/off the TV, but volume does work via HDMI. From doing extensive research I’m not alone.
ping_pong 5y ago
Why should the remote stop functioning just because the company doesn't exist? That's a bunch of BS in my opinion. Remind me to never support anything from these founders in the future.
- ohazi 5y ago
  I agree that it's bullshit, but a boycott is not going to accomplish anything. To many devices work like this (phone home else brick), and too few people care enough to allow this failure mode to influence their behavior. Most people just want the shiny thing.
  - ping_pong 5y ago
    A boycott perfectly accomplishes this. I don't want to purchase devices that arbitrarily shut down. It protects me from spending money on bad devices and from people that create devices and companies with bad practices.
    - londons_explore 5y ago
      Someone needs to make a "yelp for business owners" where you can review previous businesses all the directors have been involved in, and if they treated customers and suppliers in a decent way. Even a tiny bit of attaching moral standards to individuals in the business will have a big effect - people will leave a company if they see something immoral happening, so as not to hurt their own employability.
      - alichapman 5y ago
        This sounds like LinkedIn without all the fake positivity
  - londons_explore 5y ago
    Don't care. Responsible business owners will take basic steps to ensure customers of the business are not screwed over when the business folds. That could consist of opensourcing the code, handing the servers over to someone else to run, making the product have a fallback mode where it runs without a server, etc.
cameldrv 5y ago
This article says that there is this huge value in the IR code database, but what's to stop a new entrant from just buying a harmony remote and paying someone to go through all of the possible devices and recording the IR codes? IANAL, but I don't think that this would be covered by copyright.
- stingraycharles 5y ago
  Sounds like it would be the equivalent of scraping a database, which would, in fact, be subject to copyright law. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Database_right https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Database_right
  - szundi 5y ago
    Bigger part of the world does not really care, sadly.
  - yc12340 5y ago
    Your comment grossly misrepresents intent and application of copyright law. Creating a collecting of facts does not constitute breach of law under any existing legislation I know.
  - NavinF 5y ago
    Thankfully databases don't have copyright protection in the US
- makomk 5y ago
  Pretty sure they aggressively limit how many IR codes can be downloaded by one customer.
neilv 5y ago
One way that an, er, cloud-encumbered IoT product might be able to shut down with some class... is to open-source everything necessary for "the community" to do sustaining engineering and evolution of the product. It's still not good to break something after you sold it, but at least open sourcing has a good chance of keeping the product useful, like people expected when they bought it. (Barriers to this include not having rights to open source all the IP necessary, and creditors wanting you to fire-sale some of the IP, rather than open source it. Those barriers are easier to avoid proactively.)
- PostThisTooFast 5y ago
  Best not to buy shitty products like this and the Logitech Harmony, which tether your entire household of locally-accessible devices to the Internet so they can sell your data and ram ads down your throat... and then become useless when the vendor inevitably shuts down their support.
- bottled_poe 5y ago
  I know I’ll get downvoted, but.. perhaps the consumer should have considered an open alternative in the first place. Consumer mentality should change, as well.
  - dsr_ 5y ago
    People need to be bitten, and they need to be aware that an alternative exists. The first half of that happens all the time. In my experience, it's the second half that's missing.
    - syshum 5y ago
      People want convenience, nothing else matters. All that will happen is the small new comers to the market will be avoided and people will simply put their "trust" in big names like Amazon, Google, and Apple. Events like this ensure that more and more IoT/ home automation will actually end up being LESS open and more consolidated into the big 3 locked down echosystems. Those of use that I not want to use Alexa, Google home, Or Apple HomeKit will be screwed.
firefoxd 5y ago
Ah yes. Then a remote will find its way in the electronic rack in TJ Maxx a few years from now [1]. An excited customer like me will find it, buy it, only to forget it in a closet for a few months. Until the return policy expires. Then the excited customer will stumble upon it excited to try it out... [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22083759 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22083759
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
Ice_cream_suit 5y ago
So this is the founder: "“When starting Sevenhugs in 2013, we realized the tremendous potential of UWB technology in consumer products and formed the belief that UWB would eventually be embedded everywhere, in our smartphones, smart home devices, and our cars”, said Simon Tchedikian (Sevenhugs’ CEO & Founder)" Perhaps he could be contacted and asked what his plans are on opensourcing.
- rasz 5y ago
  You can talk to the hand, he is a "Business Angel" now. clearly selling closed defective by design products worked great for him.
anon321321323 5y ago
So why are they exiting? bad product? poor placement in market? any details?
gogopuppygogo 5y ago
Does anyone actually have a good universal remote they can recommend short of shelling out for Control4/AMX/Crestron?
- tweetle_beetle 5y ago
  The bizarrely named Sofabaton U1 is a good halfway house in my opinion. It lacks some polish, but is good enough in every respect and much better value than Logitech equivalents. It's a bit annoying to have to use an app to update it - there's probably some crap in it, but it's only needed for mapping buttons and can then be uninstalled.
ForHackernews 5y ago
Why does a remote control need to be internet-connected? I've had great experiences with remotes from: https://www.oneforall.com/universal-remotes#/ https://www.oneforall.com/universal-remotes#/ None of them need to talk to a server to function.
- slightwinder 5y ago
  They need internet for updates, backups, and worldwide control. But not sure who really need the wirldwide control really. I have a logitech harmony, and it's a really useful tool. But the cloud-connection is really a double edged problem, especially with poor internet.
dusted 5y ago
and this is why we don't buy anything that needs cloud to function
rasz 5y ago
>you can continue to enjoy what you've always enjoyed about your Smart remote until June 1st of 2022 is this Onion?
ghostDancer 5y ago
I remember using a program in WindowsCE/PocketPC in an Axim that you could program the IR codes to control "any" thing, like the TV , Stereo , ... . Of course used it to turn off TVs at bars.Temptation too big.

46 points by jsjohnst 5y ago

This is the first I’ve heard of them. Can somebody explain what makes these remotes newsworthy, and why they’ll stop functioning in a year?

dv_dt 5y ago
Dunno, but if they’re hardware it’s pretty bad form to shut them off without at least a push that would leave them functional but unsupported.

Urgo 5y ago

I was a backer of their kickstarter in 2016. I remember the pitch. It made me feel like the remote was going to be out of the Jetsons or something. You walk around your house, point it at something and it knows what it is and you can instantly control it. The actual product though sorta like that didn't really work out that well. First it wasn't really whole house it was more room based.. and since all my TV equipment was all in one place the point at it and it knows which item it is trick didn't really work as hoped.. not to mention when watching TV you don't really want to have to think about where you are pointing the remote.. and then yeah just using a touch screen instead of buttons was awkward. Long story short, I still actually do have the remote plugged in.. but haven't used it since I set it up several years ago. It's sad that they're shutting down. I really did want to like their product. But if everyone had the same experience as me I can't say I'm super surprised.

rjzzleep 5y ago
The xiaomi phones still have IR blasters. I can see the appeal of the photos on the sevenhugs website. But it's kind of an ambitious niche product. Looks like something that's not really sustainable by itself without acquisition. I feel like there's really only a few ways to handle this. Buy devices from the same vendor. Buy devices with another value proposition such as Amazon Alexa. A universal standard with industry backing, but those also usually end up with bigger enterprises putting a lot of unusable stuff in the standard. Or treat it as non standardized and put an IR blaster on top, but then why do I need a physical remote. (I realize the spotify thing looks quite beautiful)
jsjohnst 5y ago
> But if everyone had the same experience as me I can't say I'm super surprised. Article submitted here: Your experience as written could be nearly a word for word summary of my own. Enough so that I’m not going to duplicate content and just say read what you read.

neolog 5y ago

> Logitech Just Killed the Universal Remote Control Industry https://mattstoller.substack.com/p/why-logitech-just-killed-the-universal https://mattstoller.substack.com/p/why-logitech-just-killed-...

formerly_proven 5y ago
The whole "universal remote" thing seems like laziness to me, because e.g. Pioneer did this very well in their home theatre systems - the AV receiver obviously is the centerpiece of the system, so why would you need more than the touch-screen remote for that?
- neolog 5y ago
  My receiver doesn't know how to turn on the TV.
  - PostThisTooFast 5y ago
    It doesn't have CEC? Not that CEC isn't hampered by shitty implementations...
  - aulin 5y ago
    you sure? anynet+/hdmi-cec has been around since quite some time, most people just don't know about it as it's usually poorly documented and buried in not so user-friendly config menus.
    - neolog 5y ago
      TIL
    - kumarharsh 5y ago
      Yup, XBox does this too.
    - jsjohnst 5y ago
      > anynet+/hdmi-cec Sometimes it doesn’t work due to manufacturer bugs. I have a TV that has a bug in their implementation on a specific series of theirs where it won’t turn on/off the TV, but volume does work via HDMI. From doing extensive research I’m not alone.

ping_pong 5y ago

Why should the remote stop functioning just because the company doesn't exist? That's a bunch of BS in my opinion. Remind me to never support anything from these founders in the future.

ohazi 5y ago
I agree that it's bullshit, but a boycott is not going to accomplish anything. To many devices work like this (phone home else brick), and too few people care enough to allow this failure mode to influence their behavior. Most people just want the shiny thing.
- ping_pong 5y ago
  A boycott perfectly accomplishes this. I don't want to purchase devices that arbitrarily shut down. It protects me from spending money on bad devices and from people that create devices and companies with bad practices.
  - londons_explore 5y ago
    Someone needs to make a "yelp for business owners" where you can review previous businesses all the directors have been involved in, and if they treated customers and suppliers in a decent way. Even a tiny bit of attaching moral standards to individuals in the business will have a big effect - people will leave a company if they see something immoral happening, so as not to hurt their own employability.
    - alichapman 5y ago
      This sounds like LinkedIn without all the fake positivity
- londons_explore 5y ago
  Don't care. Responsible business owners will take basic steps to ensure customers of the business are not screwed over when the business folds. That could consist of opensourcing the code, handing the servers over to someone else to run, making the product have a fallback mode where it runs without a server, etc.

cameldrv 5y ago

This article says that there is this huge value in the IR code database, but what's to stop a new entrant from just buying a harmony remote and paying someone to go through all of the possible devices and recording the IR codes? IANAL, but I don't think that this would be covered by copyright.

stingraycharles 5y ago
Sounds like it would be the equivalent of scraping a database, which would, in fact, be subject to copyright law. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Database_right https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Database_right
- szundi 5y ago
  Bigger part of the world does not really care, sadly.
- yc12340 5y ago
  Your comment grossly misrepresents intent and application of copyright law. Creating a collecting of facts does not constitute breach of law under any existing legislation I know.
- NavinF 5y ago
  Thankfully databases don't have copyright protection in the US
makomk 5y ago
Pretty sure they aggressively limit how many IR codes can be downloaded by one customer.

neilv 5y ago

One way that an, er, cloud-encumbered IoT product might be able to shut down with some class... is to open-source everything necessary for "the community" to do sustaining engineering and evolution of the product. It's still not good to break something after you sold it, but at least open sourcing has a good chance of keeping the product useful, like people expected when they bought it. (Barriers to this include not having rights to open source all the IP necessary, and creditors wanting you to fire-sale some of the IP, rather than open source it. Those barriers are easier to avoid proactively.)

PostThisTooFast 5y ago
Best not to buy shitty products like this and the Logitech Harmony, which tether your entire household of locally-accessible devices to the Internet so they can sell your data and ram ads down your throat... and then become useless when the vendor inevitably shuts down their support.
bottled_poe 5y ago
I know I’ll get downvoted, but.. perhaps the consumer should have considered an open alternative in the first place. Consumer mentality should change, as well.
- dsr_ 5y ago
  People need to be bitten, and they need to be aware that an alternative exists. The first half of that happens all the time. In my experience, it's the second half that's missing.
  - syshum 5y ago
    People want convenience, nothing else matters. All that will happen is the small new comers to the market will be avoided and people will simply put their "trust" in big names like Amazon, Google, and Apple. Events like this ensure that more and more IoT/ home automation will actually end up being LESS open and more consolidated into the big 3 locked down echosystems. Those of use that I not want to use Alexa, Google home, Or Apple HomeKit will be screwed.

firefoxd 5y ago

Ah yes. Then a remote will find its way in the electronic rack in TJ Maxx a few years from now [1]. An excited customer like me will find it, buy it, only to forget it in a closet for a few months. Until the return policy expires. Then the excited customer will stumble upon it excited to try it out... [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22083759 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22083759

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

Ice_cream_suit 5y ago

So this is the founder: "“When starting Sevenhugs in 2013, we realized the tremendous potential of UWB technology in consumer products and formed the belief that UWB would eventually be embedded everywhere, in our smartphones, smart home devices, and our cars”, said Simon Tchedikian (Sevenhugs’ CEO & Founder)" Perhaps he could be contacted and asked what his plans are on opensourcing.

rasz 5y ago
You can talk to the hand, he is a "Business Angel" now. clearly selling closed defective by design products worked great for him.

anon321321323 5y ago

So why are they exiting? bad product? poor placement in market? any details?

gogopuppygogo 5y ago

Does anyone actually have a good universal remote they can recommend short of shelling out for Control4/AMX/Crestron?

tweetle_beetle 5y ago
The bizarrely named Sofabaton U1 is a good halfway house in my opinion. It lacks some polish, but is good enough in every respect and much better value than Logitech equivalents. It's a bit annoying to have to use an app to update it - there's probably some crap in it, but it's only needed for mapping buttons and can then be uninstalled.

ForHackernews 5y ago

Why does a remote control need to be internet-connected? I've had great experiences with remotes from: https://www.oneforall.com/universal-remotes#/ https://www.oneforall.com/universal-remotes#/ None of them need to talk to a server to function.

slightwinder 5y ago
They need internet for updates, backups, and worldwide control. But not sure who really need the wirldwide control really. I have a logitech harmony, and it's a really useful tool. But the cloud-connection is really a double edged problem, especially with poor internet.

dusted 5y ago

and this is why we don't buy anything that needs cloud to function

rasz 5y ago

>you can continue to enjoy what you've always enjoyed about your Smart remote until June 1st of 2022 is this Onion?

ghostDancer 5y ago

I remember using a program in WindowsCE/PocketPC in an Axim that you could program the IR codes to control "any" thing, like the TV , Stereo , ... . Of course used it to turn off TVs at bars.Temptation too big.