Re: IR universal remote program for Zoomer

Ken Wallich <starnet!apple!ncd.com!wallich>
Message-id: <9311111804.AA29343@verbosa.ncd.com>
To: zoomer-list-1993@grot.starconn.com
Subject: Re: IR universal remote program for Zoomer 
In-reply-to: Your message of "Wed, 10 Nov 1993 18:40:00 PST."
             <9311101837.ZM3577@piano.grot.starconn.com> 
Date: Thu, 11 Nov 1993 10:04:16 PST
From: Ken Wallich <starnet!apple!ncd.com!wallich>
Status: OR


A couple things on the remote stuff.  I've got this 'universal' remote
that has a LCD screen and a touch sensitive display.  It *does* have a
backlight, but it's only usefull in full darkness, too dim otherwise.
It has the problems mentioned of not being able to easily locate the
volume up and down keys without having some light available, but it is
on the market, and it does work quite well overall.  Its' big selling
point is being able to handle 8 different devices, and having a custom
keyboard appear for each device.  The 'custom' keyboards are actually
quite limited, but it is still kinda cool.

I also have a Core remote, that recently died (which is why I bought
this LCD puppy).  This was the remote control designed by Woz, and it
*did* allow you to program it.  It had loop constructs, and you could
assign multiple actions per key, and chain keys together.  Lots of
possibilities there.  For instance, on my 'reciever' page, I had a
button which would set the volume at 25%.  To do that, it went into a
loop that would reduce the volume to zero, even if it currently was
set to full, then stepped it up to 25%.  You can't do this with any
other 'universal' remote I've ever seen.

You could also have it do all your VCR programming (my new remote can
do one event programming, but it is unable to drive my VCR, which the
core could do with ease), set one button to send the power on/off
signal to each and every component you have (which I also found nifty
cool), and a myriad of other things.

So, to me, the biggest problem would be lack of a backlight.  As a UI
dude, the first thing that pops into my mind is some sort of audio
feedback as to the button you happen to be touching.  Make the active
area big enough (like the pocket Quicken buttons), and provide audible
feedback as to which button your pressing, then you can run your
finger over the screen, and when you get the sound you want, tap that
button, and the function activates.  If that audible tag could be
something like "Channel Up", it would be even cooler, but a simple set
of tones would also suffice.  You'd train yourself pretty quickly
which was which.

If you could also do some more sophisticated IR recognition and tuning
than you can with existing universal remotes, you might even be able
to get it to work with most everything.  This is a big failing with
existing units, since my experience is that they have about a 90%
success rate with different devices.  My Core had 99% (there was one
control on one unit it couldn't activate).

So, despite the limitations, I think it would be potentially a very
valuable application to have, if it were flexible enough, and had a
good sightless UI.