5 ms·

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 aro

by 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.

by Urgo 5y ago

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.