This is such an amazing project, I wish my wife’s acceptable limits on spending were quite a bit higher, but alas, I married a woman who doesn’t like to spend money. Lol
I just found this. Love your work. You are brilliant to do this in your free time. My friends call me a genius because of my tinkering - but I always feel guilty when I come on these sites and seeing what actually clever people are capable of.
I started out reading the whole thread , but towards the end I admit I started skimming. I’d definitely be interested in one. I think the smart home community is growing and this is smsomething you could sell as a fully baked product with all the work you put it.
I’d limit the physical buttons and not worry about incorporating every commenters wish - because that’s exactly what often kills good ideas and projects. Feature creep. When I’m writing software or building something - I keep thinking “oh and this feature would be nice” and soon the complexity (and cost in your case) and possible points of failure have increased dramatically. Any buttons can be implemented on the screen right? With haptic feedback (a la a cellphone) so people are familiar with it from the outset. I saw at one point above you’d come up to 11 physical buttons incorporating everyone’s wishes. And then saying maybe you could add a second PCB and a another micro-controller. That just doubles the pcb cost. I think the limit of what people would spend on something like this is up around $200 and not $500. Once it gets into cellphone territory- well then I’d buy an old cell phone…
Look at the capacitive buttons from Adafruit. There’s a dial and a slide. It could be incorporated underneath the housing in the lower part and the esp8266 handles them natively. Or a controller chip Can be added for cheap- I know because the breakout dev boards are available from China in the sub $1 range.
The difference between an excellent idea and a profitable product is what you have to sacrifice and still make it look and work great. If you can sell a few hundred (and I think you can) injection molding of plastic becomes practical. Much cheaper than custom cnc. Much nicer than 3D print.
Will be following this with great interest.
I wouldn’t.
I’ll be using it in a home cinema set up some times. Have you ever tried to use touch controls in the dark?
Physical buttons rule in this case.
@altimmons Thank you! You’ve missed some things, but I’ll give you a summary as I think maybe it would be interesting for others as well.
So the remote ended up with 13 buttons. After testing I realised that @tom_l is right and it’s much easier to use physical buttons. I have been using this remote in the past 2 years and when I watch a movie I just reach out to the remote and press the volume button. It’s muscle memory now and way better than a touchscreen 
I got a lot of feedback here in the forums and on other channels for the remote. At some point I decided to freeze the feature set and focus on getting a kit ready for the people who are interested in building one. Meanwhile the software development was ongoing and with the help of some very smart people it’s quite functional and stable at this point. Not a lot of devices supported yet, but working towards adding more and more. Also creating support for other home automation hubs.
Latest addition was adding IR learning and sending capabilities to the dock. And I consider this the last thing that changed in the design/features/etc.
Now I am in the process of figuring out a price for the remote, you say $200, but that is impossible to achieve with low quantities.
This is still a DIY project, think about it like a developer kit (that you can also use). I would love to create a ready-made product at some point, but until that happens, I would like to get a kit to those who are interested.
Thanks @ronschaeffer!
Amazing!
I’ve been searching for this for years.
This looks fantastic, I’ll get one as soon as it’s available
I for one would love a kit.
Following!
Thanks
Hi guys,
It has been a while since, I posted here, but for those who are still interested in building a remote, I have some good news The Kickstarter campaign to get the kit out is around the corner. Possibly going live next week. I have posted some info about it here: https://community.yio-remote.com/t/upcoming-kickstarter-campaign/400/9
If you have any questions, please let me know!
Cheers,
Marton
To all who are still interested in a kit, the Kickstarter pre-launch page is live! I’d suggest to sign up not to miss the launch next week!
I’d really like to see this project adapted for an in-wall touch interface—similar to HA Switchplate but way better interface. Or an 8” tablet. You have a great eye for UI design.
Thank you @JM123! We are working on making it available on as many platforms as possible. I am using a bit modified version on a 7" Raspberry Pi touchscreen mounted on my wall 
Glad you like the design!
it could be intererting if they adapt it
or send us a device to do it
because the product seem interesting but the ui … not that much
also the website seem to miss a lot of stuff if you don’t speak german
I would love to set up a wall mounted unit (in addition to wanting that sweet remote) – can you share any details on that variant?
@ralfaro that’s an older version of the software, hardcoded to my needs. If you set up an environment to cross compile the app to run on a Pi3, it should work. Unfortunately, I don’t have the time to work on multiple version of the app and I would like to focus on the remote.
Np, I totally understand… The source to build would be the Qt app: https://github.com/YIO-Remote/remote-software?
@ralfaro We made a guide on how to do it: https://github.com/YIO-Remote/documentation/wiki/development
But if you want to try it on your computer, it’s quite easy:
- Install Qt Creator
- Clone these repos:
remote-software,integrations.libraryandintegration.home-assistantif you’d like to use it with home assistant. - Build the
integration.home-assistantproject first, then build theremote-softwareproject and run it.
There’s an example config.json on github, you can use that and modify it according to your needs.
Let me know if you have any questions!
Completely missed the Kickstarter. Are planning to sell the kits later?