Remote 3, my first impressions

General
1

Hi there,

I’ve just received the Remote3 as a backer reward this Monday. Like many, I own the Logitech Harmony and for known reasons have been looking for an alternative. The intended use is to control my Hifi and AV, no home automation. And I’ve not much experience with all the available integrations yet, I mainly own legacy IR and Bluetooth devices.

What I like about the Remote3 (v2.7.0):

  • Nice packaging and solid feel
  • Quick interface
  • Learning new IR codes works well, much better than with the Harmony
    • This helped me to add my Naim NAT05 and Linn DSM
  • Activities are much faster and finer controllable than the Harmony

Where I still struggle:

  • My dock will not connect to my WiFi (while the remote does), it can’t even see any WiFi networks
  • The remote takes some seconds to wake up and find the dock. When listening to music, sometimes a quick access to the volume buttons is necessary.
  • My Bluetooth devices won’t pair (PS3 slim, Dreambox Combo.) My guess is that these devices don’t support Bluetooth LE. I was able to pair an iPhone, so in principle Bluetooth works.
  • Some LG TV apps need a long pressed OK, which the remote currently does not produce

These are just my first impressions after a week. Apart from the Bluetooth thing, I’m hopeful that I will get the other problems sorted soon.

2

Some tips:

I connected my dock with a cable and configured WiFi with the web configurator.

Activate keep WiFi connect in settings, energy saving. Activate prevent sleep in activities. Caution eats some battery so put in dock when not used.

Bluetooth has more possibilities if just works is enabled in settings, development, preview features. For Dreambox exists an integration for IP control.

For long press the long press option must not be used. For LG TV exists also an integration.

Ralf

3

Thank you very much for your help. Still took me some time to figure out the Dreambox integration.

“Keep WiFi connect” does help in most cases, although occasionally the remote still can’t connect to the dock (with a red warning sign on the remote).

I still wasn’t able to connect my Bluetooth devices (Dreambox One and PS3). So it’s probably the Bluetooth LE. For the PS3 there does not seem to be a workaround. Since I use it only for DVDs and BluRays I simply bought a cheap Panasonic BluRay player.

Where I really struggled was the IP integration of the Dreambox: For some time I’ve tried to add the Dreambox integration to the remote and always received a “Something failed (Connection refused)” or so, tried all kinds of users and passwords. Finally it turned out that I had to deactivate some settings in the Dreambox itself:

In Menu→Einstellungen→Netzwerk→Webinterface (I only have the German menu terms) I had to deactivate HTTP/HTTPS authentication and the settings “Anti-Hijack” and “Token”. Then the Dreambox integration was successful.