With the release of Roomie Remote v3.0 and rumours of some special new hardware we took the opportunity to speak to founder will cost about the future of his amazing app that turns your smartphone into a powerful universal remote.

Hi Will, for somebody that’s never seen Roomie before, can you explain the concept and advantages in a few sentences?

It’s the coffee table remote problem. Initially, it was fixed by getting a bigger and even more complicated hardbutton remote. These days, everyone has smartphones everywhere that make clicker remotes look like pocket calculators from the 80s. I

t’s like 1990s palm OS versus the iPhone. We’re now solidly in the era when what constitutes a “remote” can no longer be done by anything other than a smartphone.

 

Do you believe devoted universal remotes will go the method of the Dodo as IP control, smartphones and tablets take over?

Just like infrared disappearing as a manage method, it will take a long time before clickers disappear, most likely a decade, but indeed that’s inevitable. In the 3 years Roomie has been on the market, a main focus from the begin has been IP manage and the market has moved so much considering that we started that it is now the headline feature for a few of the greatest players – CEDIA a few weeks ago had IP manage around Sony’s booth as the top-line feature. almost everything new these days has IP manage – except Samsung TVs! Sony, Sharp, Panasonic, quite much everyone now includes IP manage by default.

The key to this concern is what is the special value of a devoted hardbutton remote? We’re at the point now where the only special value it could bring is a low price, and typically the reverse is still the case today. There are so many things one just cannot do from a clicker. Meanwhile, smartphones are abundant, and even a utilized smartphone from a couple years ago is a substantially better choice than a standard hardbutton. In the end, this shift over the past years has always been about two-way manage and replacing redundant gadgets (clickers) with gadgets that are omnipresent (smartphones or tablets) – the old hardbuttons just can’t compete on either front with the manufacturing scale of Apple, better screens, quicker CPUs, better response, gestures, and the variety of advantages from two method control.

Who wishes to look at a 1 or 2 inch screen or typically no screen in any way to navigate a guide or find content to enjoy which is where everything is going? That whole concept is incompatible with a clicker. then going any bigger than that they would just be a nuisance to maintain when the iPad and smartphone are already ideal there.

Roomie Remote gesture Controls

The last piece here is that some people believe in the “tactile feel” issue of a button. This was a affordable argument awhile ago. Roomie now has such terrific gesture manage that it is no longer valid. gesture manage is a considerable improvement upon and improvement over the tactile benefit. Don’t believe of generic iphone gestures, rethink the issue of how to manage home movie theater by gestures. That’s what Roomie introduced. once people comprehend and see that, it’s like a light turns on and they can never go back. They recognize there is something fundamentally better than fixed hardbuttons.

 

Unlike many other wise remote systems, Roomie can be completely programmed from the hold iOS device. has this been the most difficult elements of producing Roomie?

Everything before and even after us is either a no-customization system like Harmony, or a deep programming system like Control4 where you’re hiring experts and unlicensed people can’t touch your system. We sit ideal in the middle, the wonderful spot. You can configure 95% of system design in Roomie, ideal in the app, in a brief fraction of the time that would have been needed with a more complex system, and with many enhancements over a no-customization system.

Earlier this year, we introduced a programming element not inside the app. If you want to go all the method and design a remote panel pixel for pixel, we now supply that and we utilize the world’s finest individual interface editor to enable that rather than trying to re-invent the wheel. We wished to offer the versatility for those incredibly high end installs, but the truth is that 99% of individuals truly appreciate the simplicity and versatility of everything being ideal there in the app. No more walking downstairs bring your remotes and hooking everything as much as USB.

Yet, even with harmony and many other systems, they still depend on this idea that you have to go back to your computer to redesign your system for even the easiest of changes. replaced your Blu-ray Player? better chalk up an hour or maybe a week waiting on an installer depending upon your system to switch that out. With Roomie, it’s like 4 taps in seconds to do that and you didn’t get up from the couch.preserving and furthering the simplicity of that has always been one of Roomie’s main goals.

 

 

Can you tell us about the interesting new hardware you are developing with global Cache and when it will be available?

We’ve just introduced Roomie Blaster adapters that are a new rendition of the original iTach flex products. We work extremely closely with global Caché on these. one of the advantages of these new designs is that there is no membership needed for infrared control. They just work out of the box with the base level Roomie app. The Power over Ethernet edition is coming extremely soon together with the Relay and Sensor cable also to ensure that will complete the product line shift which has been going on considering that mid-2013. everything is available now except those two products which we expect late this month.

We also are working on hardware that serves a different purpose. Roomie Agent, currently available for OS X, is going to be running on a extremely little Ethernet linked box sometime in early 2015. a few of the new features of Roomie agent 2.0 just introduced include the ability to enjoy comments triggers. You can now hit a button on your Lutron keypad, your Lutron lights turn on and your enjoy TV activity turns on in Roomie.

In the context of where we’re going, we believe that is example of how “hardbutton” remotes survive. They turn into fixed keypad-like controls for a room, and Roomie is integrated with them. Roomie Agent, whether on software application today or hardware tomorrow, is the central brain that allows these things to talk to every other.

Roomie Remote v3.0 appears like a terrific new update, bringing support for Apple TV, and Nest for example. What systems are you checking out to integrate into Roomie next?

Apple TV was a substantial effort and special breakthrough for us. We’re likely to do some deeper work associated to that. because Roomie is iOS based, Apple TV is represented in a substantial portion of our installs, much more than average. We believe we must do everything we can potentially do to make that a terrific individual experience.

One reason we don’t normally pre-announce major new gadgets is that they do often need something special. For instance we spent 28 months working on the TiVo support. It was working in March 2012, but it took up until June 2014 to release it because you can’t just toss that type of thing into the genuine world. working with TiVo, we’d had to get everything authorized and go with a lot of additional work. We’re intending to add Virgin UK there in the future beyond the basic manage we already provide. There are rather a few things in different stages of development. Ignoring whether these will ever be in the product by means of IP control, I am personally a fan of trying to get Amazon terminate TV and Playstation 4 IP control. Both have special challenges, so we’ll see. In the case of PS4, it looks about as hard as Apple TV.

 

Some manufactures still seem reluctant to release official APIs for their products (Sonos for example). have you found this attitude softening or are safety worries stoping them?

Sonos is the classic example here, but at this point it is water under the bridge because everyone has just reverse engineered it so they have a de facto API. What Sonos does not have though is a full API. nobody does for example Deezer streaming because every single one of those other services that Sonos pushes out is a one-off and they don’t do anything in terms of APIs to make them accessible. Roomie is method ahead on this front in that we can tune any Sonos service that we’ve seen before, but supplying a genuine guide for every of them is something we hope Sonos at some point moves towards with a genuine API. With so much adoption, I suspect the tide is actually in our favor there. even Nest eventually caved and went all the way. That was no little effort Nest put out this Summer. They could have done something with a hundredth the amount of work that everyone would have been quite happy about. Instead, they took it seriously, believed about the safety issues, and supplied a option they can build on. They’re an example to all those that come later. We’re thankful we waited and did it the official method and now we’re one of the first out of the gate with that.

In general, broadly, attitudes towards opening up APIs are blooming like flowers. everywhere we look, APIs are opening up, even the people you believed would stay locked down are coming around. There is a lot in the works here.

What’s the decision on Apple’s HomeKit? will Roomie be able to integrate with the Cupertino framework?

We’re fans of HomeKit the Concept. The truth is that HomeKit the Timeline [turned out to be] more of a 2015 thing. This is a designer feature at the moment. I believe it will be at least 2015 before anybody has a obvious set of gadgets that are integrated. I spent 20 years before Roomie producing encryption technologies and safe telephony, mostly PGP, and even I have never heard of a few of the crypto that Apple put into HomeKit. It is a extremely large and heavily locked down facilities that will need a long time to bake and the hardware partners will need time to get this put together given the extremely high bar needed for integration on their side. We believe we will be a leader on that front as it evolves. Meanwhile, we talk directly to a lot of those gadgets today, and look forward to any that it can add to the stable.

 

We hear Sanus founder Jim Wohlford has become a investor in Roomie. You must have big plans – where will you be in the next 5 years?

The wonderful area for us and the new brand we’re introducing for integrators, basic Control, is in-between the entry level stuff like harmony and the high-end expensive products. Roomie is focused on diy and direct to consumer, and that will stay the case. basic is pertaining to retail near you. broadening outside the app Store, and supplying integrator-specific features like remote access and management.

I turned down all investment uses for 3 directly years because I’d been on that road before and understood it was not the ideal time. After meeting Jim (Sanus founder) and Ken at CEDIA 2013, we spent many months going over how the future will play out and it ended up being remove that the time had arrived. A startup like Roomie needs to mature on its own for a while as it did. A lot of startups believe the first thing you need to do is take a bunch of money. Actually, the first thing you do is build a terrific product that people want and fall in like with. then you figure out exactly what additional funding would actually do to help move the product to the next level.

 

Will there ever be an Android or Windows Phone version of Roomie?

We are working on it now. It’s a substantial effort. We hope to release something in 2015. Roomie is an app that made no sacrifice, ever, when it pertains to being an iOS certain app. Every chance we could, we took the iOS path which is one reason why Roomie feels like such a well-behaved, nuanced, and stunning iOS app where a lot of work goes into individual interface design. Porting to Android is not just a matter of converting some code. You need to rethink the aspects for a different environment to catch the exact same level of attention to detail while also trying to share the brains of the product – method as well typically we see apps that essentially have diverged into 2 separate products on iOS and Android. We’re looking forward to it.

We are not working on Windows Phone at present. When Android is additionally along, we’ll be in a better setting to consider another platform.

Thanks for taking to the time to speak to us Will, where can people find and follow Roomie?

Hope to see everyone at roomieremote.com. We’ve just updated all our demo and tutorial videos for 3.0. thanks so much for the time!

roomieremote.com  :  Roomie Remote evaluation  :  Global Caché iTach IP2IR Review

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