Sevenhugs exits the universal remote business | Hacker News Reader

Sevenhugs exits the universal remote business

support.sevenhugs.com

46 pointsjsjohnst45 comments

One way that an, er, cloud-encumbered IoT product might be able to shut down with some class... is to open-source everything necessary for "the community" to do sustaining engineering and evolution of the product.

It's still not good to break something after you sold it, but at least open sourcing has a good chance of keeping the product useful, like people expected when they bought it.

(Barriers to this include not having rights to open source all the IP necessary, and creditors wanting you to fire-sale some of the IP, rather than open source it. Those barriers are easier to avoid proactively.)

I know I’ll get downvoted, but.. perhaps the consumer should have considered an open alternative in the first place. Consumer mentality should change, as well.

People need to be bitten, and they need to be aware that an alternative exists.

The first half of that happens all the time. In my experience, it's the second half that's missing.

People want convenience, nothing else matters.

All that will happen is the small new comers to the market will be avoided and people will simply put their "trust" in big names like Amazon, Google, and Apple.

Events like this ensure that more and more IoT/ home automation will actually end up being LESS open and more consolidated into the big 3 locked down echosystems.

Those of use that I not want to use Alexa, Google home, Or Apple HomeKit will be screwed.

Why should the remote stop functioning just because the company doesn't exist? That's a bunch of BS in my opinion. Remind me to never support anything from these founders in the future.

I agree that it's bullshit, but a boycott is not going to accomplish anything. To many devices work like this (phone home else brick), and too few people care enough to allow this failure mode to influence their behavior. Most people just want the shiny thing.

A boycott perfectly accomplishes this. I don't want to purchase devices that arbitrarily shut down. It protects me from spending money on bad devices and from people that create devices and companies with bad practices.

Someone needs to make a "yelp for business owners" where you can review previous businesses all the directors have been involved in, and if they treated customers and suppliers in a decent way.

Even a tiny bit of attaching moral standards to individuals in the business will have a big effect - people will leave a company if they see something immoral happening, so as not to hurt their own employability.

This sounds like LinkedIn without all the fake positivity

Don't care. Responsible business owners will take basic steps to ensure customers of the business are not screwed over when the business folds.

That could consist of opensourcing the code, handing the servers over to someone else to run, making the product have a fallback mode where it runs without a server, etc.

I don't buy (or, more accurately, return) any hardware product that doesn't work without someone's remote server.

The only exceptions I grant at the moment are T2/M1 macs - they cannot be factory restored without an internet connection to Apple.

That's the "smart" in "smart remote control" apparently.

Given that it's 2021, I wouldn't be surprised if their tech was that the remote control first connects to their servers to do <something> and you're actually subscribed to a cost plan in order to control your devices.

Cloud encoubmered technology, once the "cloud" servers go down, the device stops.

This is true for about 90% of all IoT "things" on the market, and dont thing your immune if you buy form a "big brand" like Google (who has already done this to products of theirs see Revolv and Nest both)

I was a backer of their kickstarter in 2016. I remember the pitch. It made me feel like the remote was going to be out of the Jetsons or something. You walk around your house, point it at something and it knows what it is and you can instantly control it.

The actual product though sorta like that didn't really work out that well. First it wasn't really whole house it was more room based.. and since all my TV equipment was all in one place the point at it and it knows which item it is trick didn't really work as hoped.. not to mention when watching TV you don't really want to have to think about where you are pointing the remote.. and then yeah just using a touch screen instead of buttons was awkward.

Long story short, I still actually do have the remote plugged in.. but haven't used it since I set it up several years ago.

It's sad that they're shutting down. I really did want to like their product. But if everyone had the same experience as me I can't say I'm super surprised.

The xiaomi phones still have IR blasters. I can see the appeal of the photos on the sevenhugs website. But it's kind of an ambitious niche product. Looks like something that's not really sustainable by itself without acquisition.

I feel like there's really only a few ways to handle this. Buy devices from the same vendor. Buy devices with another value proposition such as Amazon Alexa. A universal standard with industry backing, but those also usually end up with bigger enterprises putting a lot of unusable stuff in the standard. Or treat it as non standardized and put an IR blaster on top, but then why do I need a physical remote. (I realize the spotify thing looks quite beautiful)

> But if everyone had the same experience as me I can't say I'm super surprised.

Article submitted here: Your experience as written could be nearly a word for word summary of my own. Enough so that I’m not going to duplicate content and just say read what you read.

> Logitech Just Killed the Universal Remote Control Industry

https://mattstoller.substack.com/p/why-logitech-just-killed-...

The whole "universal remote" thing seems like laziness to me, because e.g. Pioneer did this very well in their home theatre systems - the AV receiver obviously is the centerpiece of the system, so why would you need more than the touch-screen remote for that?

My receiver doesn't know how to turn on the TV.

you sure? anynet+/hdmi-cec has been around since quite some time, most people just don't know about it as it's usually poorly documented and buried in not so user-friendly config menus.

TIL

Yup, XBox does this too.

> anynet+/hdmi-cec

Sometimes it doesn’t work due to manufacturer bugs. I have a TV that has a bug in their implementation on a specific series of theirs where it won’t turn on/off the TV, but volume does work via HDMI. From doing extensive research I’m not alone.

Most AV equipment these days supports HDMI-CEC, which does allow you to do that kind of thing.

That being said, Sony just released an update to tons of their devices that fixes a bug where this functionality never really worked. The standards are moet certainly there, but getting manufacturers to implement them well can be quite the challenge.

Especially once that you've got used to proprietary bluetooth remotes, having to aim infrared things is so painful..

This seems like a valuable resource for IR Codes (500k apparently):

https://www.commandfusion.com/aboutus

This article says that there is this huge value in the IR code database, but what's to stop a new entrant from just buying a harmony remote and paying someone to go through all of the possible devices and recording the IR codes? IANAL, but I don't think that this would be covered by copyright.

Sounds like it would be the equivalent of scraping a database, which would, in fact, be subject to copyright law.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Database_right

Bigger part of the world does not really care, sadly.

Thankfully databases don't have copyright protection in the US

Pretty sure they aggressively limit how many IR codes can be downloaded by one customer.

Ah yes. Then a remote will find its way in the electronic rack in TJ Maxx a few years from now [1]. An excited customer like me will find it, buy it, only to forget it in a closet for a few months. Until the return policy expires.

Then the excited customer will stumble upon it excited to try it out...

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22083759

So this is the founder:

"“When starting Sevenhugs in 2013, we realized the tremendous potential of UWB technology in consumer products and formed the belief that UWB would eventually be embedded everywhere, in our smartphones, smart home devices, and our cars”, said Simon Tchedikian (Sevenhugs’ CEO & Founder)"

Perhaps he could be contacted and asked what his plans are on opensourcing.

You can talk to the hand, he is a "Business Angel" now. clearly selling closed defective by design products worked great for him.

This is the first I’ve heard of them. Can somebody explain what makes these remotes newsworthy, and why they’ll stop functioning in a year?

Dunno, but if they’re hardware it’s pretty bad form to shut them off without at least a push that would leave them functional but unsupported.

Why does a remote control need to be internet-connected?

I've had great experiences with remotes from: https://www.oneforall.com/universal-remotes#/

None of them need to talk to a server to function.

They need internet for updates, backups, and worldwide control. But not sure who really need the wirldwide control really.

I have a logitech harmony, and it's a really useful tool. But the cloud-connection is really a double edged problem, especially with poor internet.

I remember using a program in WindowsCE/PocketPC in an Axim that you could program the IR codes to control "any" thing, like the TV , Stereo , ... . Of course used it to turn off TVs at bars.Temptation too big.

Does anyone actually have a good universal remote they can recommend short of shelling out for Control4/AMX/Crestron?

The bizarrely named Sofabaton U1 is a good halfway house in my opinion. It lacks some polish, but is good enough in every respect and much better value than Logitech equivalents. It's a bit annoying to have to use an app to update it - there's probably some crap in it, but it's only needed for mapping buttons and can then be uninstalled.

>you can continue to enjoy what you've always enjoyed about your Smart remote until June 1st of 2022

is this Onion?

So why are they exiting? bad product? poor placement in market? any details?

and this is why we don't buy anything that needs cloud to function

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