09-08-2020, 01:24 PM
Sarcany wrote:
Harmony remotes have not impressed me. The buttons are poorly placed and prone to failure. Most of the remotes crash and need to be rebooted by pulling the battery. The apps for programming them are a mess of confusing and often redundant GUI elements.
That being said, the Harmony Hub is a nice piece of kit, entirely because once it's been programmed and tweaked and tweaked and tweaked it eventually works with an Amazon echo to provide decent voice-controls for the various components of an entertainment center. The remote that it comes with is half-baked, but you don't need it all that often.
I tend to agree. Once I get one working, I try not to mess with it as that usually ends in the remote flying across the room. But out of curiosity, what would you recommend? I've been searching for a good "smart" remote for what seems like decades now and unless you want to go full on 3rd party installed and supported home automation, Harmony is pretty much the only game in town.
On the positive side, I've found that cord-cutting and switching to a media server has drastically cut the need for "one remote to control them all". Now, all I have is a Roku, a receiver, and a TV. What I REALLY want is the ability to switch to "Movie Night" and it not only switches to the appropriate inputs but also changes the lights that I now do as a separate step with Smartthings.