Hi there,

I was wondering if anyone has used Total Remote yet? If so could you please post a review with your intial impressions.

It is looking like the PDAWin 39xx series problem will not be resolved. :-(

There's a guy on the following forum (www.Pocketpcpassion.com) who says he has received it... follow this link and look for user ID "herronj"....

[Link: pocketpcpassion.com]

Shneebs.

p.s. There's also a guy who says he has a copy of the demo, and he's willing to email it to you...

Here's a reply I got when I asked for some more info:

Hello Andy,

Lets see if I can shed a little light on this for you. The Total remote does not support CCF files as they are to limiting for us. WE have and will have many skins for the program. CCF does not support multiple skins like the way our software does. Also Phillips owns the commercial use of the files and we don't want to get sued. You can still share files with our software. You can create macros. There are only about 370 viable CCF file combinations that work on today's popular remotes. That is how many codes we have in our device. You can program Total Remote with the learning mode by directing the remote control unit at the handheld plus there are presets. As people get certain combinations and codes together then we will share them on out website. You can write or import as many menus and buttons as you want for any application or macro. We supply some and as the product matures there will be more. You only limit is your memory. I believe you can have us to 2
to the 43rd power number of codes if I remember correctly. We should have a 3 day trail version available soon but I'm not sure when. I should know by the time thanksgiving is over.

Hope this helps

My main consern with Total Remote is not the lack of skin-CCF support. My consern is, how you will be able to obtain and use descreete IR-hex codes.

Prebuild databases and learning of remotes just isn't enough, when you need that certain decreete "power on hex code" - and other descreete codes - for your paticular devices.

How does Total Remote adress this ?

Perhaps Total Remote is for the Joe Sixpacks of the world. I orderd TR, and awaiting my new Dell Axim to arive. I had a Ipaq with Nevo....Without going into it, don't waste your money or time. Ipaq was fine, the Nevo remote is a bad joke.
I hope Total Remote becomes popular enough to get develped into an excellent product with an open source software so people can do some custom programing.

What the TR people should do is OEM their really nice audio-port IR emitter to the people at TVRemote and NetRemote. The current add-on emitter for TVR is an unsupportable kludge (tied to an obsolete iPaq hardware spec) while the TR plug-in emitter should be workable across every single PocketPC (PPC 2002) box with a stereo headphone jack.

TR would sell a lot more emitters at $30- a pop and we'd have more choice in the software used to drive them. The 'ccf issue' would become a non-issue.

Perhaps a series of letters/emails to both the TR and TVRemote people would get the ball rolling on this.

This message was edited by westmetro on 12/04/02 22:07.49.

Well, I just ordered one. I figure for $29, it wouldn't hurt too bad to be a Guinea Pig :)

-Larry

I've ordered one as well. Got an E-Mail last week saying they're on backorder and should be shipping this week.

I tested the demo today with built in IRDA on my iPAQ 3850. Naturally I didn't have the Griffin-Booster so range is not an issue here. The software and the website look like a professional product which one cannot say about PDAWIN.
Anyway, I was impressed with the many devices that were already built in, so I started with my Receiver Yamaha DSP AX1 which, to my surprise, was already in the library. Unfortunaletly there was no skin defined for it and no buttons, so it simply was a name listed in the device tree. :-(
Nevertheless Total Remote lets you define your own devices so I started to make a new one. Learning the codes should not be the problem -I thought- so I selected another amplifier skin and started "sampling" the keys. Sampling went well and was done in a matter of minutes. Unfortunately the sampled codes were not reproduced correctly. Especially the volume buttons did not repeat. So I tried to relearn them in different ways, short keypress, long keypress etc. nothing worked correctly. After that, I tried programming my Toshiba projection TV. The results were a bit better, but not satisfactory. I don't know, if it works better with their own IR-boster, but I doubt it.
If anyone has experience with the IR-Gadget from Griffin, I would really like to hear about it.
Finally, I have to say, it would be a nice product if learning would improve, especially the repeat function. I can't use a remote that is not able to control the volume of my amplifier.

Wilhelm

Rats! Backordered :(

And griffins communications policies SUCK. No email allowed. You are required to call a toll number just to get an ETA or modify/verify an order.

TL

This is a post I placed into another forum, but I have updated it since the vendor changed their website.
----------
Review of the demo!
Well for those interested in testing the product, As you know their website now has the demo and manual posted. (originally found it on German site before vendor had it on theirs)

It is the 3 day demo that was mentioned in another post, and I have to say the product looks to be pretty slick. I was able to use the software with my iPaq 3800 with the internal irda and was able to control my TV, VCR and DVD player from about 10 feet away. My H/K AVR-55 receiver was a different story but I think the IR Reciever in it is not that great anyways.

About the only issues I ran across with the software are these:
- this is a small gripe, the learning command allows for the PDA screen to be inverted for ease of programming, but the help text that is displayed during the learning session is not inverted. So you have to read upside down while programming the remote.
- When adding a different device, (another TV, or VCR) the skin for the remote was blank. Of course this could be because it is a demo, so potentially a non-issue with the retail version. (RESOLVED: this is explained in the manual how to assign a skin)
- The remote is slow (1-3 seconds) to load, and switch between devices, even after a soft reset of the Ipaq. I believe this is because of the way they have implemented the skins for the devices. Read below.

I didn't attempt to make my own skin, but did load it into a photo editor. It appears to be 3 images for each remote skin laid out side by side. (Example: Default Dvd Remote Screen/all buttons 'depressed'/color mask) This allows the remote to have movement when you 'click' a button, and the color mask states where the 'button' area begins and ends. There are really no instructions that I could find about how to create a new skin and what the colors should be for the color mask, but that is probably detailed in the PDF file that was mentioned in another post. The potential problem with this is, if you have a device that you wish to have 3 different screens of options for, this requires a file with with a size of 720x960 pixels (9 240x320 images) on it and a file size of 146KB. 5 screens would require a image size of 720x1600 pixels. I believe this is what makes the loading slow.

Last note, in response to Wilhelm, you can assign a skin (ie tuner) to the preprogrammed device in the remote control software. Check out the PDF manual on their site, I think it explains how to do it there. :)


Hope that helps, it looks like a pretty slick product. I am considering ordering it cuz the little hardware piece looks cool and the software works as advertised. :)

Well Sneetch, the problem was not assigning the skin. Naturally the skin that I assigned had no IR-Codes whatsoever. The problem was that TR was not able to learn the codes correctly.
Just to clarify things

Wilhelm

Well, RATS!

I got mine in today. It doesn't work at all :(

I know the codes work, because if I switch to built-in IRDA, it works, albeit from only about a foot away.

I have a Compaq iPaq 3835, which is on their supported list.

I think my booster unit is DOA :(

The documentation is incredibly slim. No troubleshooting info whatsoever. No mention on how to make your own skins.

So far, I've found no skin to realisticly use form my RCA UTV DTV/DVR box. It _appears_ to be listed in the supported devices list, but what the heck kind of skin do you use?

I've found the overall concept quite puzzling so far, mainly due to the weak documentation.

IMHO, this product is not up to Griffin's usual quality standards. Yet.

Looks like I get to find out what their tech support is like :)

TL

UPS tried delivering mine today, but I wasn't home so I have to go pick it up tomorrow. A bit of what might be bad news, I saw several posts on Pocket PC Passion that said Total Remote doesn't work very well with the Dell Axim. Which stinks, since that's what I've got. It was listed as a supported device when I ordered it, now it doesn't appear on their web site. Sounds like they're working on fix though. Here's a link to one of the threads:

[Link: pocketpcpassion.com]

The iPaq 3800 series should work VERY well with Total Remote. I imagine you have tried troubleshooting like doing a soft-reset or disabling any other software?