@marton, the radio silence on GitHub, Discord, and here on multiple significant bugs that are not being acknowledged, responded to, or actioned is reaching the point of extreme frustration.
I know this was a kickstarter project and in terms of the software roadmap, I am extremely patient … I don’t expect miracles and I do expect delays.
What isn’t acceptable is not addressing bugs that make the remote functionally unusable, such as having to reboot every time I want to watch Apple TV, or having to switch activities twice to use AndroidTV. That means that my family can’t use these and they are effectively very expensive hobby toys, not effective remotes.
At least some updates on the reported bugs and when we might expect resolution would be helpful.
I think as a group we have to accept a few realities about UC Remote 2. 1) The UC R2 is a kickstarter project from a small group of founders | developers, 4-6 people with an idea, vision and technical skills. 2) while, I don’t know for sure, the founding group of developers are full time employed somewhere else, and UC R2 is a ‘passion project’ for them. Meaning they work on the bugs and new features in their spare time (nights, weekends, days off). 3) Due to the business model being a hardware sales only (~$600K USD, $500 each times about 1200 units), they will likely never go commercial with full-time employees until they go to a subscription business model with reoccurring revenue in addition to hardware sales. Therefore, the support model that is in place today is likely the best we are going to get. Meaning, the UC team does not have the time or capacity to response to all of the questions across all the different forums. They likely read all the feature requests and bugs issues, add them to the tracker, prioritize based on their time and capabilities. They rely of the ‘self-help’ model of users helping users to answer initial and repeat questions that distracts them for doing the work of updating the software and new releases. 4) this project is for ‘tinkers’ who have the time, patients, passion, technical capabilities to learn from others and fill in the gaps in the documentation. Therefore, future buyers, should self-select if they are up to the challenge. 5) I think the founder have put together a pretty good piece of hardware, no withstanding the IR strength and the battery life. I think the UX | UI for the software is not user friendly and not intuitive. They could take some time to study how to simplify the user experience for an ‘Apple’ like experience. 6) The product has targeted a global customer base with a variety of needs an use cases, which also drive the ‘Design Thinking’. It appears the software is very much tied to “Home Assistant”, using many of the same terminology.
So, what are the answers to these realities? First, we as a community have to self-organize in a way to improve and keep the documentation up to date as we learn more about how to get the R2 online and usable so that we can improve the user experience. Second, given the realities, what are the expectations for support we as the user can request that is supportable by the founders. For instances, can we organize a smaller passionate user group, ~2-4 people, who can communicate with the founders and help communicate to the wider community in sufficient details for other users to fully understand how to get your R2 online and operating to it’s max capabilities. This way the founders can focus their time and energy on doing the value-added work. This is one idea, but I’m sure we as a group can create other ideas to help.
Would like to hear other thoughts and Ideas to add to what I said.
To a point I agree, but they continue to work on roadmap features as opposed to addressing critical bugs. That is not what I paid >$1000 for (2 units).
Not interested in an “Apple” like (or for that matter a Harmony like experience). I am a sophisticated user (as are a large number o us). Get it working bug-free and this community (and Discord) can provide assistance to less sophisticated users (and have been).
What is completely unacceptable, and why I am frankly pissed off, is that UC has been completely radio silent for weeks at a time about bugs. They don’t respond on Discord, they don’t respond here, they don’t respond on GitHub. No one from UC has responded to a bug report on GitHub since January 21. My expectations are not unreasonable:
I want bugs acknowledged
I want bugs being addressed (largely ahead of roadmap features)
I want periodic responsiveness from UC
UC wants to be more than just 1200 units on Kickstarter, they want to be a viable business. That only happens with us singing their praises in places like Reddit, AVS, etc. That won’t happen without the above (and in fact, the opposite will happen … warnings for people to stay away).
What would help tremendously, IMO, would be one central, official UC controlled site–could be this forum, could be the UC Web site–for reporting bugs and issues, requesting features, giving feedback and getting updates. You shouldn’t also need to have an account on Git Hub, Discord, etc.
Otherwise, I agree that a small but enthusiastic group of hardware and software developers doesn’t have a lot of bandwidth to devote to support. But centralizing what support there is would be very helpful.
I agree your expectations are not unreasonable. The question is can we as a group be constructive in a way that is helpful, or is it all on the founders? If the founders can acknowledge the shortcomings and open up a dialogue for improvements to meet reasonable expectations, then that’s a starting point.
I agree a centralize depository for all things UC R2 is a great place to start. I also think if they had one person who could liaison and be responsive to the community, that would be great. Even if this person did not have all the answers, but could communicate which bugs are on the list, which are in work and scheduled for the next release, which are not on the list or some type of voting system would be a start. Maybe even a weekly or at a minimum, a monthly (same date every month) update is a reasonable expectation. Again, even if they missed a bug fix delivery date. I would like to see monthly bug fixes and feature updates. For example, every 1st of the month release an update that include bug fixes of what ever they can get fixed and tested in the last 30 days. Every 30 days, like clock work a new firmware release would earn trust with the community.
They already have milestone on GitHub for the current month where they sort issue that they plan to solve or release that month. GitHub seems to be the preferred platform by the team on which Markus Z in particular often replies. However, i also suspect that everyone in the team apart from Marton have other jobs and that is why there is sometimes the aforementioned radio silence. In my opinion, Marton would have to find a solution. This could be done, for example, by moderators, which exist in many forums and chats. But the question is also whether you don’t want to give uninvolved people too much insight into your internal planning. As far as I know, there is also a beta tester group. They also know about certain features earlier, even if they are usually announced in the corresponding issues at the same time.
I am also not sure why they promote other channels where they only seem to respond randomly and very rarely. Specially in this form there is almost no reaction from any team members.
I agree. I’m bitterly disappointed by the state of development that does not seem to address basic functional issues such as constant dock disconnects and a lack of more than one instance of an integration such as Android TV.
It was my impression that the whole idea behind the R2 was that it was open-source so that bugs could be fixed and features added and improved upon. What happened to that plan?
About the dock disconnects. I’m wondering it it’s mDSN not working correctly in users networks. This is easy to fix, set the docks to their IP in settings. Never had any of my two docks disconnecting.
Months ago, I recalled the Neeo debacle and was told that everything was different here, better - unfortunately, I have since been proven right. I’ve had the remote control for half a year, I can’t use it because there are no proper instructions, promised functions have been months behind the announced date, the release schedule is only adjusted but not worked through - it’s a debacle what’s going on here, or unfortunately not going on.
To be fair, they do appear to be working on things. The core-api was updated today with media player improvements which I assume is a pre-cursor to an updated firmware release and both Marton and Markus have posted on GItHub in the past couple of days.
However, you would think that a thread like this would at least get acknowledged and that some insight into how they plan to be responsive in the future would be provided. Sporadic updates on GitHub issues threads aren’t good enough.
The frustration with the lack of communication could be understandable, but its not really different from any other corporation, especially not the big ones that would have the funds and manpower to have a whole department respond to customers, yet they don’t or just respond with boilerplate responses.
On the other hand, it kind of baffles me how some in these threads say that their R2 is gathering dust. I’ve had mine working since I received it in January. It does more than the Harmony Elite I had, and I have had 0 need to pull out any other remote in that time. My use case is a full HT setup (processor, bluray, cable box, Apple TV, PS5, TV), lights and I use the Roon integration for music.
The potential is much bigger though, and I hope that more integrations will be made available. Someone mentioned their disappointment in the “Open” aspect of the R2. It’s precisely the Open aspect that makes it not progress as some would like.
It seems that most people that joined the Kickstarter don’t have the knowledge to develop integrations. And neither do I; I just used basic IP control through Home Assistant to get everything working. I’m still trying to wrap my head around the Home Assistant custom media player to get it working at a higher level with my gear.
So if your R2 gathers dust and is “unusable”, maybe sell it to someone that can do something with it.
I’m hopeful more of the R2s will get into the hands of users that have the skillset to create integrations, while the Unfolded team works on bug fixing and new capabilities.
For the time being, I’ll keep on happily using the R2 and thank the small Unfolded team for all firmware updates and the other users that add to the R2 capabilities. I rather they work on the software and publish regular updates than appease people in forums.
Can you share some of your best practices on how you set up your system? A example with specifics would be great.
You are using Home Assistant(HA), is this best practice? Did you try to get your system up and running without HA? If HA is best practice, then this should be in the Guide, but it is not. Owners have to figure this out through the forums or on their own with trial and error which drives the frustration. I personally could not get the Apple TV integration to work until I found one nugget on this forum. We should be able to get the product up and running as you did on the first try by the process being intuitive or by reading the manual.
I agree that many of us don’t have the technical knowledge to get the system up and running. Many had different expectation, expectations of a ‘user friendly’ remote without some many idiosyncrasies.
Thanks for your contributions, we all appreciate the work and your comments.
Hi,
not only core api but also integrations Android TV, Denon and Hass along with the Remote-UI was changed last week. Cannot take to long anymore I think.
Certainly, I’ll try to make an easy to follow pdf document on how I set up my R2. It might not be the most elegant solution, but it works well. I just need a day or two.