The Harmony/Sofabaton argument

General
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@Vinterbird @Sawtaytoes I started this as a response to your comments in the “I’m at the end of my patience thread” but thought I would make a it a stand-alone thread as this comparison is coming up all the time.

Over the years, I’ve used Harmony products (including the Elite with a Harmony Hub), multiple Pronto remotes, multiple URC remotes (including the legendary MX-980, but also the MX-880, MX-990, and MX-5000), and a collection of other PC-programmable or app-programmable remotes such as Xsight/Nevo JP1 remotes. My comments are from that experience base, not just a Harmony user.

I agree to a point that the Harmony and Sofabaton products “just work”, except when they don’t (such as Sofabaton with any X1 based STB).

Some differences are preference … I hate the Harmony Elite ergonomics. Terrible design and marginally unusable. That said, the R2 is not particularly strong for ergo, but the R3 is a substantial improvement.

The primary difference is that Harmony Hub products are primarily IR with BT for some devices (Apple TV, Android TV). There is no IP control. This goes far beyond Home Assistant integration, but is the foundation for two way communication from devices. Harmony remotes cannot “read’ information from devices. R2/R3 can … that’s why you seeing custom integrations support direct selection of sound modes, picture modes, inputs, etc. That’s why you can have media player entities that show you the content that’s playing. That’s why UC is promising direct media browsing from the remote coming shortly. None of that is possible on a Harmony product.

To illustrate the difference: Harmony can turn Hue lights on or off. R2/R3 can turn on specific Hue scenes (eg. Candelight or Relax) and tell you what the scene is and the brightness level that you can then adjust. An R2/R3 can tell you the volume level when you increase/decrease on the remote. Harmony can’t. While Sofabaton has some rudimentary IP control (either through Home Assistant’s Emulated Roku or MQTT integrations) it is not true two-way IP and doesn’t come close to what the R2/R3 can do.

All that is without considering the power of UC macros or combined command sequences vs. Harmony/Sofabaton.

Your perspective that the product should just work like a Harmony and these features should be bonus or add-on misses the entire point of this product … it is not a Harmony replacement, it is CI level remote made available to end consumers. No one else is really doing that anymore (URC used to but stopped under pressure from their CI licensees).

There is an investment of time in learning the product … hours probably. If you invest the time and purge yourself of the idea that this should work like a Harmony, you’ll wind up with a much better user experience in the end. If you’re not willing to invest that time, go with a Sofabaton (unless you’re a Comcast/Cox/Rogers/Videotron/Sky/Foxtel/Xumo customer because it won’t properly control your STB).

Do not get me wrong, UC mismarketed this device by inference and left you believing that you were buying a Harmony replacement. Be angry at them for calling it

easy to use

and statements like

Unfolded OS comes with beautifully designed user interfaces tailored for various device types, including lights, shades, and more

or

If you have ever used a smart phone, using the user interface of the remote will feel familiar

or

It’s easy to add a new device, being infrared, Bluetooth or something on your network. The remote will look for compatible external integrations as well and show it to you in an aggregated list of all available options.

I am not defending UC for the borderline deceptive marketing. These are software/hardware people whose approach to the customer is entirely dependent on their personalities (I have good experience with the Head of Software for example but one of the others on their “about” page is just a POS). But, as a product goes, this is special and if UC doesn’t succeed, there will be no CI level remotes in the consumer space.

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Don’t you understand that this comparison keeps coming up because that’s exactly what people are looking for, and it’s precisely what UC is advertising?

No matter how hard you try to convince the people here, it won’t solve anything, and UC won’t change its marketing strategy because that doesn’t generate enough revenue.

So at least don’t worry about that. UC will certainly survive, and if money gets tight, they’ll simply launch the Remote 4 on Kickstarter.

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While I agree that there is far more to the Remote3 then “just” being an universal remote, and the two-way communication is cool (I had a real “this is great” experience when I saw my AVRs sound level reflected on the Remote3’s display when changing the volume), at the end of the day there is a Play / Pause button the remote.

And I do not believe that the majority of people who bought this remote to walk around their home using BT Beacons to let it know where it is, and change Home Assistant settings in the kitchen and then walking into the living room to turn down the lights. All of that is cool, but to me it is secondary (at best) to what I saw as the remotes main point: Controlling the home theater

(and I know that people buy it for different reasons, I am just shocked at how poorly it is as home theater remote at times)

I do not hate the remote, and my comparison to the Harmony was mainly that I think Logitech had it right by putting all the brains the Dock and not in the remote. Ergonomics is a different discussion entirely.

I just find it intensely annoying that this happens:

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When all I wanted was to pause an episode of Bluey, and it’s difficult to explain to the rest of the household that they should just be patient, wait a second or two (or maybe reboot the remote) because the Harmony just worked. No questions asked. You pressed the pause button, it paused stuff. You could even do it without having to lift up and wake the remote.

You could even forget to charge the Harmony at the end of the day, and have it be ready in the morning.

But as you point out, the Remote3 can do a ton of different things. I just saw it mainly as a home theater remote, and not some whole-house-remote because I think there are vastly better options for that stuff.

I just wished it worked better in the context of the home theater, but if it works for everyone else then I am happy it’s finding a place in the world, and serving a niche.

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These error messages after waking up can be avoided by changing some settings as explained in the other thread. Otherwise it might be a specific problem with your network or device and not a general problem every user has with the remote. This is a very big misunderstanding I see in other threads. People only see messages on the remote, don’t understand why the appear and don’t want to invest time to dig deeper to get to the real cause. For these people the remote is not the right device as its much more complex than simple IR. Or they need to spend more money to buy CI solutions like Control4, RTI to get them configured by a dealer.

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“For these people the remote is not the right device as its much more complex….” So you’re saying the stupid end user has only himself to blame for buying that piece of …—which is still far from being ready for the market?

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No, as already pointed out the marketing was not optimal. But I also wouldn’t say that the remote is so complex these customers are never able to understand the configuration. It just needs more time to understand the logic behind it. In the age of apps and AI where lees people want to read a manual anymore or spend time in forums like this it’s hard to market such a product that relies on heavy user configuration. I also think at some point there will be a setup wizard like for the Harmony but it seems this is not UCs priority at the moment. They want to attract developers to publish integrations and use their unique features like media browsing. That’s the base they first need. Maybe also the reason why you can’t yet buy the remote in stock

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No, the user is not to blame, UC is (to a point) for not making it clear that the learning curve on this is not insignificant. Once you learn, however, it’s simply in another league from Harmony or Sofabaton. At the end of the day, configured properly, it’s not only more powerful, it’s far more intuitive. You just have to invest the time to get there.

I am in no way defending UC for the marketing, lack of support, and almost non-existent user guidance. In fact, if someone else was making a product in this space that was remotely price competitive, I’d bail on UC because of my experience with the company, not the remote. The truth is that the product itself is pretty fricking awesome and no one else is making anything close.

That leaves you two choices: give up and sell (and buy a Sofabaton … unless of course you’re on an X1 platform) or invest the time learning this remote. The devs developing custom integrations ( albaintor, @JackPowell , @M.a.S.e, @theodicean , @jayjsea , EddyMcNut, @kennymc.c and others ) are fantastic at helping out and supporting their work and generally being all around good at helping out primarily in Discord. Other users like Ralph Biedermann are also really helpful.

I consider Harmony remotes to be just good enough. I’ve owned so many products that were much better than any Harmony product … each had a learning curve (whether it was CCP for URC, or Remote Master for XSight/Nevo, or ProntoEdit/ProntoEditNG/ProntoScript for Philips). The UC learning curve isn’t more difficult than any of those and they pre-date Copilot/Gemini/Claude which can actually help you resolve some of your issues.

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In my humble opinion the issue is about the marketing. This product is not made for the “General Consumer” and in many countries may be open to challenge under Consumer Protection laws (Fit for purpose?) except it was / is only sold through Kickstarter which implies consumers have accepted the associated risk. It’s a “Technical Enthusiast” product requiring some technical knowledge not evident in the wider population. Once you start asking people to understand concepts like docker containers, home automation, integrations etc etc you have lost “mum” and “dad” users who just want an intuitive interface that guarantees a successful and reliable setup outcome. This is not, and in my view, will never be a device for the masses. I have adopted a KISS approach (Keep It Simple Stupid) and got it stable to control my media devices reliably by also following the “If It Ain’t Broken Don’t Fix It” methodology.

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I appreciate your willingness to engage with this. But I’ve done everything recommended by the UC-team on here, short of altering the “keep awake while activity is running” option, which turning that on seems like a death sentence to the battery.

And the error doesn’t happen more then 1/10 times, but that is still enough to cause an underlying frustration with the product, and a feeling that I can’t fully rely on it to work every day.

And yes, as you say it is more then a simple IR controlled remote. But at the end of the day, it looked to me like they were selling a home theater / media remote and in my book they aren’t delivering completely on that front at the time. At least there’s a bunch of buttons on it that indicate it can pause, play and forward stuff - typical media things. I don’t really use forward when controlling my lights in Home Assistant.

I do hope it gets there with firm-/software updates in the future, as I do wanna keep the thing since that is easier then selling it. I just want to be able to trust it works 10 out of 10 times and not worry about whether the remote is fully drained in the morning should I forget to put it in the charger the night before.

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If it only happens from time to time it might be a problem with the device, integration, network or a command timing issue. This need more debugging with logs from the remote and infos about your setup, activites and integrations. You should create an issue on GitHub where more developers are active.
In comparison with IR IP can be more complex to debug but in the end offers way more possibilities liked menioned by others before. UC basically consists of just three people and it’s impossible to account for every possible scenario, let alone test them all—if that’s even feasible given the variety of hardware and software.
Developers need constructive feedback, rather than simple “it doesn’t work” reports.

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@Vinterbird , further to @kennymc.c ‘s post, logs are easy to download and I would recommend uploading them to either the Integrations channel in Discord or GitHub or both for follow up. When it happens, go to the Web Configurator, Development and you’ll see a logs function. You can isolate the logs to the affected service (in your case, “AndroidTV Integration”) in the dropdown, select your most recent boot ID, and limit the log to 500 entries to keep it manageable. It’s then an uploadable text file.

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This is a remote first and foremost

Rant/

If they’re advertising it as a Harmony replacement, then I will buy it as a Harmony replacement and judge that way.

If it’s a crappy Harmony remote, say: “this is a crappy Harmony remote. It can’t do basic simple tasks.” And I will say “well then, they need to fix it, and here’s how.”

I’m not gonna make up an excuse that they advertised it wrong or that the customer isn’t the right person for the product. Most people who bought the Remote 3 are techies with home theaters. There’s no “it’s too complicated” for us.

I bought 3 remotes. They all need to do the basic Home Theater functions consistently well, or I won’t be happy.

Connectivity Issues

The biggest elephant in the room is the one everyone keeps talking about: connectivity issues.

No matter how tech-savvy you are, frequent connectivity issues aren’t something you can fix as an end user. The company needs to fix this for us.

:police_car_light: Both Harmony and Remote 3 are Wi-Fi!

It’s not IP Control

It’s not IR (infrared) versus IP (Internet protocol) Control because Remote 3 supports IR too.

Some devices don’t have IR like my Nvidia Shield, and the remote that came with it always works.

I connect my Shield to both Harmony and Remote 3. Sadly, Remote 3 consistently loses connection at least once a day if not more; Harmony does not.

Harmony does loose connection either to the Hub or the Network but that happens a few times a year, not a day. HUGE difference. Failing nearly 400 times a year versus 7 makes an impact!

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General Quotes and Replies

Constructive Feedback

Then have them add a “Send log to dev team” anytime a connection issue occurs. Why is this my responsibility? They’re the ones selling a device that doesn’t work consistently, and it’s not like I’ll be fixing it.

I can at least click a button to send them some logs, but the rest is on Unfolded Circle. I’m a customer; I don’t work for Unfolded Circle. Ultimately, it’s on them to fix their product.

Harmony vs Remote 3 Control

I agree, these features do differentiate Remote 3 from Harmony. Great to have new features, they just need to work consistently.

A better User Interface for Beginners

All we need is a Wizard or some 3rd party configurator app to give me a Harmony-like experience that does all the heavy-lifting for me. Behind the scenes, it could still be the same UI we have today.

Once it can do the basics of configuring a home theater, then I can go into “Advanced” mode and do anything else I wanna handle. All we need is a UI Shim. Lots of software has this.

Home Theater first, smart home second

Yes! I use other things for my smart home.

2-way feedback on screen

I like this too; although, I’m not looking at the screen 99% of the time :laughing:.

I wish it would match the actual value though. The remote shows 0-100, but my receiver shows -80dB to 16.5dB. I dunno what “52” means. For me, 0dB is reference, so I don’t ever wanna go higher.

Same. It takes more than a few seconds to reconnect. I was waiting 5 minutes yesterday twice.

My access point is 4-9’ away (depending on seating position), it has line-of-sight, and I’m on 5GHz. There’s not much more I can do to improve it.

Harmony uses the same Wi-Fi AP, so there should be no excuse for the Remote 3.

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@Sawtaytoes one thing on the volume display. Depending on the brand of AVR and who wrote the integration, you may be able to select “absolute” or “relative” volume. Relative gives you dB but may not be compatible with the R3 volume slider.

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Darn. I only have these options:

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But thanks to you, I found the “Volume step” setting. I went ahead and made that 0.5 since that’s what it does via IR.

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100%. Besides that fact that the entire setup is completely unusable for me because Remote3 can’t reliably connect to Dock3, these two issues are the reason why I stick with Harmony Hub/Elite even when my UC setup is working. Way better physical ergonomics and way better reliability and speed with the brains in an always on/connected hard wired to power hub.

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Look at the post above yours. There it’s explained how to save logs. It’s not complicated.
Even if you use IR with the Dock this needs a stable IP connection to the Dock. You can also use the remotes internal IR emitter but that first needs to be activated under settings/preview features and be set as the output in each ir remote entity.

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This doesn’t make sense to me.

The big issue with Remote 3 is the Wi-Fi connection. Seems to be the cause of all issues because you connect to both the Dock for IR and devices using Wi-Fi:

  • IR control not working? Wi-Fi issue.
  • IP control not working? Wi-Fi issue.

If Wi-Fi gets fixed, I think the device would be solid! It’s the biggest issue causing 99% of problems.

Harmony Hub is not better

Harmony has the Hub do all the work, but the remote still has to connect to it. That’s another point of failure, and the Hub is also Wi-Fi. Having double wireless (hub and remote) means either one can go wrong, and that makes it hard to troubleshoot.

Double wireless also adds lag. It’s very noticeable. Then again, you can go months without having issues on Harmony, so even though it’s a worse experience on paper.

Remote 3’s Wi-Fi is bad

Putting this in perspective: both Harmony and Remote 3 use Wi-Fi. It doesn’t matter if the remote or hub is the brains; both rely on a Wi-Fi connection.

What’s baffling to me is the Remote 3 disconnects from Wi-Fi frequently where the Harmony Hub does not.

Another thing to note: the Harmony Elite remote has a Direct Wi-Fi or Bluetooth connection to the Hub. This is different from using the Wi-Fi from your access point and might result in a more reliable connection.

It’s possible we’re covering the Wi-Fi antenna with our hands or maybe the act of moving around the remote causes Wi-Fi issues. But… If that were the case, then why aren’t our phones affected in the same way? Is the Remote 3 just poorly designed?

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Keep mind that not everyone has problems with the WiFi connection. So it’s most likely a combination of what router is being used and how crowded the environment is. Testing all possible combinations beforehand would cost a lot of money.
The WiFi chip firmware is closed source so UC can’t update it so frequently and relies on the manufacturer.

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I don’t want to give the impression that I’m a Neeo fan. I’ve rarely been taken for a ride in my life quite like I was by Raphael Oberholzer, who probably made a fortune selling the company and left all the buyers high and dry.

But how does the Neeo Remote manages to make the battery last a week and responds instantly to every button press? Is it just because all the functionality is done inside the brain?