Anyone using Unfolded Circle Remote Two (formerly YIO Remote Two)?

[Travis Ballstadt]

So I've been battling with the Unfolded Circle Remote Two since December.

This is beautiful hardware, very well designed, well made, quality materials, all that. Kudos to the hardware in every way. But the software is very much a work in progress. To be expected from a Kickstarter product, but when I backed the NEEO remote, it was a much more complete product upon delivery.

That said, I'm very confident that the Remote Two has the potential to be the Harmony replacement. Eventually. I'm all about ease of use, and while setting up this remote has proven to be far from easy, it has the potential to integrate deeply with several other items and become the front-end for a very affordable Control-4 level control system.

I've purchased a $99 Home Assistant Green device and have been implementing it into the theater as well. There are several different existing integrations that are allowing two-way communications with my theater devices - meaning the remote will know the current state of each device, versus just sending out an IR command and assuming it worked. This will be huge, in my opinion.

I'm still using the Harmony Elite while I work on integrating a few more items into the Remote Two, but even that is becoming really fun. The Harmony controls via IR, but Home Assistant is monitoring devices and controlling my lighting based on their current state. Once everything is addressable via either the Remote Two or Home Assistant, it should become very powerful.

The other device I'm still waiting on (soooooooon) is the Seymour AV control system, which will be able to connect via IP and receive data directly from the other devices and automate the correct masking setting according to the content being displayed.

So while this setup is leaving me feeling really stupid at times, I'm learning, and when it's set up, it should be very smart and powerful. And much more affordable than the alternatives.

Anyone else with the Unfolded Circle Remote Two yet? Who wants to collaborate in this project?

 

[Todd Anderson]

What exactly (which devices) are you controlling with the circle two?

 

[nikto34]

So I've been battling with the Unfolded Circle Remote Two since December.

This is beautiful hardware, very well designed, well made, quality materials, all that. Kudos to the hardware in every way. But the software is very much a work in progress. To be expected from a Kickstarter product, but when I backed the NEEO remote, it was a much more complete product upon delivery.

That said, I'm very confident that the Remote Two has the potential to be the Harmony replacement. Eventually. I'm all about ease of use, and while setting up this remote has proven to be far from easy, it has the potential to integrate deeply with several other items and become the front-end for a very affordable Control-4 level control system.

I've purchased a $99 Home Assistant Green device and have been implementing it into the theater as well. There are several different existing integrations that are allowing two-way communications with my theater devices - meaning the remote will know the current state of each device, versus just sending out an IR command and assuming it worked. This will be huge, in my opinion.

I'm still using the Harmony Elite while I work on integrating a few more items into the Remote Two, but even that is becoming really fun. The Harmony controls via IR, but Home Assistant is monitoring devices and controlling my lighting based on their current state. Once everything is addressable via either the Remote Two or Home Assistant, it should become very powerful.

The other device I'm still waiting on (soooooooon) is the Seymour AV control system, which will be able to connect via IP and receive data directly from the other devices and automate the correct masking setting according to the content being displayed.

So while this setup is leaving me feeling really stupid at times, I'm learning, and when it's set up, it should be very smart and powerful. And much more affordable than the alternatives.

Anyone else with the Unfolded Circle Remote Two yet? Who wants to collaborate in this project?

Just received my Remote Two so have not had much time with it. Planning to incorporate into my HT and Home Assistant implementation.
Agree that it has the potential to be a powerful device. Appears there is a learning curve so looking forward to diving in.
Would be happy to collaborate as able.

 

[Travis Ballstadt]

At this point I'm not using it at all. It's an experimental device.

The simplest way to get it integrated would be to use it as an IR remote, just like the Harmony, and control all the theater components as a universal IR remote. Once we get the Lumagen IR codes implemented into the database I'll be able to do that.

But because of the Remote Two integration with Home Assistant, it can get really smart and start controlling everything via IP, which is more reliable and allows for two-way comms, so the Remote will know that the AppleTV is in sleep mode and the Anthem processor is powered on and set to Input 4 and the Kaleidescape is playing a movie, and it can adjust everything accordingly. If I'm watching a movie on Kaleidescape, it knows what movie and what the playback position is and can display the position and movie artwork on the remote's OLED screen. Same with the AppleTV.

It also will allow for deep integration with specific apps on the AppleTV. So I can go further with automation. With the Harmony you can create an activity for AppleTV that will power up the required items and select the right input. With this setup, I'll be able to create an automation that will do all that, but can go further. I could create an automation to watch live TV that would power everything up, select the AppleTV, launch the PLEX app and bring up the live TV guide. Or an automation that would power it all up, select the AppleTV, open the ESPN app and activate the live stream of ESPN.

I can tell it if the active content playback category is Live Sports the lighting might stay on at 10%, versus other content where it's completely off. If I'm in the Apple Music app on the AppleTV, the lighting during playback could automatically cycle through the colors available in my light strips at 30%. Or I could set that scene only if the music being played is by artist Pink Floyd and it's after 11pm. The 2-way comms make lots of customization possible, based on artist, genre, etc.

Because of the Home Assistant integration with Kaleidescape, it's able to read all of the triggers Kaleidescape sends out including current playback aspect ratio (to set masking) and content position (to slowly bring lights up when credits roll, etc). I have it set currently so if we start playing back a movie in the theater, the lighting upstairs is all set to a minimum, but if we hit pause, walkways upstairs get additional lighting in case we're running upstairs for more popcorn. When the movie ends, the stairway lights come on.

Also these lighting scenes outside of the theater are only activated between sunset and sunrise. If we're downstairs watching during the day, the theater lighting still automates but the upstairs settings ignore commands until sunset.

Home Assistant really is the brain behind all of it. It's very powerful, but it's also very DIY, so there's a lot of research involved. But once I get things set, it should be pretty nice.

 

[Mike Schramm]

I had not heard of this until I saw this thread. Went to their website to check it out and MAN is that thing pretty! I am very interested in this. Thanks for the heads up!

 

[nikto34]

I had not heard of this until I saw this thread. Went to their website to check it out and MAN is that thing pretty! I am very interested in this. Thanks for the heads up!

It is very sleek and well built. Feels great in the hand and has a nice OLED screen.

 

[VJM]

Yeah, looks really nice!

 

[Travis Ballstadt]

Was home sick today and couldn’t sleep anymore so I got decided to completely start over with the remote and reconfigured some things in my Home Assistant installation and made some real progress. I am able to now use it for controlling my theater, except the need to turn the Lumagen on and off with its remote, since the Remote Two still doesn’t have the ability to learn the Lumagen remote commands. I’m told by the devs that Lumagen has reached out and provided them with a smaller set of commands that they will be including in an upcoming firmware update. Hopefully soon.

As I’ve stated the hardware is REALLY nice. The software is unfinished and documentation is non-existent. After weeks of piecing together nuggets of info from their multiple community channels I was able to get things configured for my theater activities.

All lighting and control automation is done via Home Assistant, with heavy lifting on the Kaleidescape HA integration.

 

[dlasater]

I "reserved" a position to purchase one of these on December 8th of last year, but have still not received notification that one is available to purchase. I also cannot find any information on the status of product development. I setup a Home Assistant system for the sole purpose of the integration potential with this remote. I hope I hear something soon!

 

[Sonnie]

So to clarify, the Remote Two is not able to learn the IR codes on your Lumagen?

I like the idea that it uses Bluetooth and IR, as it seems more and more products are becoming Bluetooth only with no IR.

This product appears to be in the beta version at this point and only available to developers, which is how I assume you were able to get one?

 

[Travis Ballstadt]

@dlasater i reserved mine the day after the kickstarter closed a couple years ago or more. The development team has been off the radar for the most part trying to catch up, they did release a solid new firmware this week and have stated they will announce status of additional remotes availability soon.

@Sonnie the Lumagen uses a very old set of IR codes that require a different timing, they didn’t initially work with the Harmony either but Lumagen has worked with the devs to get a set of codes that will work, just waiting to be implemented. It’s not only Lumagen, the R2 only learns the most recent timing standard for IR.

It’s very much beta. It will eventually not require Home Assistant (supposedly) but HA makes it exponentially more powerful and for $100 was a no-brainer for me. The Harmony does IR, but the R2 does full integration with devices allowing 2-way communication, which allows so much more.

For 90% of users right now, the glaring omission is documentation for how to program. I’m planning to put together a video soon and hopefully fill some of that gap.

 

[Travis Ballstadt]

The too long, didn’t read version of the above post is that with the R2, IR is a fallback for devices without an IP integration, more like Control4 than Harmony.

I use IR for a handful of commands on the Kaleidescape, and that’s it. Everything else is controlled via IP, except for the Lumagen which at this point is controlled via its own remote.

 

[Travis Ballstadt]

Here we go…quick and dirty video about the Remote Two!

 

[Travis Ballstadt]

New FW update this morning that includes Lumagen Radiance Pro IR codes in the database. Installing now, this is a great step. I still want to eliminate IR from the system, but this is positive for me.

Scratch that. The IR codes are not working in the Remote Two.

 

[Sonnie]

Bummer!

I hope I can get one soon, but then again, if they are in beta, they may not be making any more until they get farther along.

 

[Travis Ballstadt]

Bummer!

I hope I can get one soon, but then again, if they are in beta, they may not be making any more until they get farther along.

They are supposed to be announcing a hardware availability timeline sometime “soon”. Hard telling what they mean by soon, though, because that was what they said over a month ago.

 

[Travis Ballstadt]

Update on this, thanks to the brain power of another Lumagen owner using Home Assistant, I now have the Lumagen integrated into HA and the Harmony remote is collecting dust. The Remote Two is now fully capable of controlling my system.

I swapped out a couple light strips from Govee to Hue because they’re closer to 100% reliable in terms of not “missing” commands because the controller fell asleep. Everything has been rock solid and the remote is great.

 

[dlasater]

Update on this, thanks to the brain power of another Lumagen owner using Home Assistant, I now have the Lumagen integrated into HA and the Harmony remote is collecting dust. The Remote Two is now fully capable of controlling my system.

I swapped out a couple light strips from Govee to Hue because they’re closer to 100% reliable in terms of not “missing” commands because the controller fell asleep. Everything has been rock solid and the remote is great.

Any plan to do a "how to" video on programming recommendations for the Remote Two (beyond the high-level stuff in your previous video)? Seems like you have it figured out!

 

[Travis Ballstadt]

Any plan to do a "how to" video on programming recommendations for the Remote Two (beyond the high-level stuff in your previous video)? Seems like you have it figured out!

I am planning on another video, though I have it working so well right now I hate to mess with it too much.

I want to do more of a scripted, planned video rather than my basic stream of consciousness thoughts like the earlier video. Just have to figure out the best way to do that.

 

[Travis Ballstadt]

According to a post from Marton on the Unfolded Circle Discord this morning:

"We're preparing remotes now for shipping. Hopefully by end of the week or early next week emails will go out."

 

[VJM]

I am planning on another video, though I have it working so well right now I hate to mess with it too much.

I want to do more of a scripted, planned video rather than my basic stream of consciousness thoughts like the earlier video. Just have to figure out the best way to do that.

Looking forward to your updated video!