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Like many others on AVS, I need a wife-friendly remote system to control our home entertainment gear.
She's selectively techno-adverse in that on one hand, she hand codes php (and html and javascript) for Wordpress and custom websites, yet she can't seem to comprehend which button on a remote is the play button, and which is the pause. That is, she doesn't get the universal symbols (square is stop, single triangle to the right is play), and she doesn't want to learn.
In our last house, I had a Pronto for the family room that she was good at using. It was nice in that I could swap out gear, and quickly reprogram the remote so that everything operated as it did before so she never had any learning curve on new gear. That remote lasted a few years, until she dropped it one too many times.
In our old media room, I had a Harmony 676 running a Buffalo IR repeater system controlling all of our gear that was hidden away, including a PS3 as Blu Ray player via the Harmony PS3 interface. It was also rock-solid; however, my wife wouldn't even turn the gear on by herself, insisting that either I do it, or if I was not at home, she'd call our son into the room to start the gear. Now, turning on the gear to watch a movie was a one-button push; however, she was afraid of having to hold the remote pointed at the screen, waiting for the green light to turn off, signaling the macro was complete.
She also complained frequently to me about the struggle she had in watching a movie. "There's all these choices," she'd exclaim, "and I don't know where to go." This confused me for the longest time, as again, it was a one-button press to turn on the gear. Then one day I figured out what she meant—she was talking about DVD menus—each DVD had it's own menu, which was different from every other DVD. I've since solved the DVD menu problem by ripping all my DVDs, Blu Rays and HD-DVDs to MKV, and using Kodi to run it all. This has improved things in our new house somewhat.
I'm currently building a theater in our new house (130" 2.35 AT screen, 7.2.4 Atmos, tiered seating) with a billiard room and bar outside (tv, 5.1 sound), finishing the gear in our great room (tv, 2.1 stereo sound), and running speakers to our deck and patio. All rooms will be run from a centrally-located rack; wire is still being run/fished.
A few nights ago, I watched my wife grow frustrated trying to find the stop button on the 676 (which is currently controlling our great room), and I realized that she needs something with just a few buttons. The fewer the better. She needs a remote like the attached thumbnail. But it has to run everything. She presses the on button, and the remote sends one quick code and only one code, where a controller then runs a macro that turns everything on.
Initially, my plan was to use iRule with GlobalCache devices, with a tablet dedicated to each room running iRule. However, I realized that iRule on tablets will never work—she'll never be able to handle a device that lacks physical buttons (the dearly departed Pronto had hard buttons in addition to the touch screen).
So, now I'm thinking of jp1 limited-button remotes (like the attached thumb) with a GlobalCache GC-100-18R, using a Raspberry Pi running Girder (or I'm leaning toward rolling my own software) to do the processing.
Thoughts? Suggestions? Or should I just plow ahead as a canary in a coal mine for everyone else and report my trials and tribulations here as either a warning to others, or a path to (hopefully) glorious WAF?
tl/dr - Technophobe wife needs a Jitterbug remote system; can my convoluted plan of IR to software like girder on Raspberry Pi, interfaced to GlobalCache and back to IR and Serial work?
She's selectively techno-adverse in that on one hand, she hand codes php (and html and javascript) for Wordpress and custom websites, yet she can't seem to comprehend which button on a remote is the play button, and which is the pause. That is, she doesn't get the universal symbols (square is stop, single triangle to the right is play), and she doesn't want to learn.
In our last house, I had a Pronto for the family room that she was good at using. It was nice in that I could swap out gear, and quickly reprogram the remote so that everything operated as it did before so she never had any learning curve on new gear. That remote lasted a few years, until she dropped it one too many times.
In our old media room, I had a Harmony 676 running a Buffalo IR repeater system controlling all of our gear that was hidden away, including a PS3 as Blu Ray player via the Harmony PS3 interface. It was also rock-solid; however, my wife wouldn't even turn the gear on by herself, insisting that either I do it, or if I was not at home, she'd call our son into the room to start the gear. Now, turning on the gear to watch a movie was a one-button push; however, she was afraid of having to hold the remote pointed at the screen, waiting for the green light to turn off, signaling the macro was complete.
She also complained frequently to me about the struggle she had in watching a movie. "There's all these choices," she'd exclaim, "and I don't know where to go." This confused me for the longest time, as again, it was a one-button press to turn on the gear. Then one day I figured out what she meant—she was talking about DVD menus—each DVD had it's own menu, which was different from every other DVD. I've since solved the DVD menu problem by ripping all my DVDs, Blu Rays and HD-DVDs to MKV, and using Kodi to run it all. This has improved things in our new house somewhat.
I'm currently building a theater in our new house (130" 2.35 AT screen, 7.2.4 Atmos, tiered seating) with a billiard room and bar outside (tv, 5.1 sound), finishing the gear in our great room (tv, 2.1 stereo sound), and running speakers to our deck and patio. All rooms will be run from a centrally-located rack; wire is still being run/fished.
A few nights ago, I watched my wife grow frustrated trying to find the stop button on the 676 (which is currently controlling our great room), and I realized that she needs something with just a few buttons. The fewer the better. She needs a remote like the attached thumbnail. But it has to run everything. She presses the on button, and the remote sends one quick code and only one code, where a controller then runs a macro that turns everything on.
Initially, my plan was to use iRule with GlobalCache devices, with a tablet dedicated to each room running iRule. However, I realized that iRule on tablets will never work—she'll never be able to handle a device that lacks physical buttons (the dearly departed Pronto had hard buttons in addition to the touch screen).
So, now I'm thinking of jp1 limited-button remotes (like the attached thumb) with a GlobalCache GC-100-18R, using a Raspberry Pi running Girder (or I'm leaning toward rolling my own software) to do the processing.
Thoughts? Suggestions? Or should I just plow ahead as a canary in a coal mine for everyone else and report my trials and tribulations here as either a warning to others, or a path to (hopefully) glorious WAF?
tl/dr - Technophobe wife needs a Jitterbug remote system; can my convoluted plan of IR to software like girder on Raspberry Pi, interfaced to GlobalCache and back to IR and Serial work?
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