agree

I love TS because it can do and be anything (even more than voice), Living in Quebec many of my customers are multi-lingual just my own environment one of my sisters family is francophone while the other anglophone, in 2019 I had my cousin from Greece here and my spouse she is from a mixed marriage so add relatives that talk two more languages (if they visit). the perfect icon can be so much more useful.

That being said a TS also means mostly having to look at the screen, yes you can put buttons in the corners of the scree to help find them but without looking hard buttons are a lot easier.


the thing is
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you have all that space under the screen. 6 little configured hard buttons (or pseudo buttons) and that would be amazing.

1) I find this so odd. Quebec culture has it sown peculiarities and we are an extremely high end shop that might be a different experience with customers, but I don't get this phone discussion. You need dedicated controllers (no matter where they comes from). Even if I can add the same functionality to my phone in the rest of the world don't people some times go out and live the kids with a babysitter? during that time do people leave their phones with the person taking care of the kids? do they add the apps/configurations on the sitters phone? is the sitter not allowed to use any of it the whole time?

2) yes if you hand over your phone that is true, but you can always use a "smart phone" with no sim and then there are no calls or texts on it and you can always not add an e-mail account.

With most control systems a cheap pad/phone used as a dedicated controller can support the babysitter. There is no need for services, such as email, messaging, or cell service. The babysitter will have the services on their own phone. You might want to tinker with some subnets in order to allay security concerns.

Use of a phone/pad is probably not part of AVA’s business model.

On the AVA images I see some buttons along the body’s edge. Are these used for Volume/Mute?

Honestly, what does a babysitter need other than control of a TV?

I started the dealer paperwork over the weekend, but after getting the reply from AVA i kind of ground to a halt. I just couldn't see the benefit of a skinny touchscreen. It hit me that I could set up a iPad Mini for $500 plus a nice stand. I know I wouldn't make anything on the sale of the iPad, but I could still charge for the setup. If I'm not giving them any buttons, I can at least give a little larger screen. I mainly do Elan systems, so I have a couple of nice wand remotes anyway.
Just my 2 cents.

Hard pass for me. Priced to high, and I'd prefer to run apps on an iPad Mini anyway.

I have to have hard buttons. For HT control and operation, I refuse to sell any remote without hard buttons. Touch screens for me are only okay for audio and other home automation.

My AVA should be here today. I'm pretty excited since I can try it out with multiple home automation apps. I even made a demo for Bitwise Controls because you don't need a processor for page flips / popups / etc.. all done in the UI editor, but it would allow me to hand it to someone and show a fully working UI as it would work with RTI, Crestron, AMX, you name it.

Im with golden on this. No hard buttons, no go! Nothing worse then having to look at a touchscreen when I simply want to change channels or raise the volume. Done a few installs over the years with only an ipad or iphone as the control. EVERY ONE of them eventually added a wand style as they learned using only a touchscreen simply sucked. Tried to warn them upfront "you will hate it". And, they did. Of course.

Received my remote yesterday around 7:45. I took some pics as I unboxed. Had it set up with my Google account and the apps I wanted to install pretty quickly.

At the risk of sounding like a complete fanboy, the fit and finish of this remote is spectacular. Aluminum and glass as opposed to plastic. If Apple designed a stand alone remote, it would look and feel like this.

Two things I didn't know. It has a fingerprint reader on the back, plus a small IR emitter window on the top. I think it's for future use. The fingerprint reader is optional, and can be set up to access individual accounts. You do not want to have to unlock the remote every time you pick it up, but it would come in handy for only allowing certain people access.

It has an expensive, high end feel to it and it is geared toward a certain type of client. The base is very heavy, but that also makes it so it doesn't move when you place the remote in it or remove it.

The native screen resolution is not the same as the usable resolution when it comes to RTI or Crestron. The RTiPanel app showed it 54 pixels less than native, so I had to adjust for that. It makes sense because there is no always on screen manu like older versions of Android have, and there is static infor at the top, such as the clock, WiFi, etc...

The pages I created for the screenshots have been modified for the changes, and I moved volume and a new home button to the bottom, but I also made the top menu much better at the same time.

I've only been playing with it a short amount of time, and the screen contrast, brightness, and off axis is perfect. I also found you can turn the brightness all the way down to 10% and it still looks fine. That will extend the battery life, I'm sure.

I will post a full review with pics soon, but I am really liking this so far.

good catch. gwstudio thanks for the review so far, do you know what those buttons do?

wouldn't that depend on install automation, configuration and what the sitter wants to do?

are all the installs a TV? don't you sometimes add controls for lights, drapes, music....

but the point was not about how many devices or what they do. IMHO every room that has a display needs its own controller be it OEM, universal remote/controller or touchscreen. It just sounded weird that he talked about handing your phone to someone else to control the equipment and then worrying about what they might see on the phone.

thanks for the review so far, that sounds real cool. can you give a bit more info on that info?

we do sometimes add functionality that is only available through passcode/pin for some clients, so could it be used for that? i.e. anyone can turn it on or off but only person A,B,C can change the settings.

Again, what does a babysitter need access to anything but the tv for?

Yeah, why would the babysitter need to control the lights, music, or whatever else might be on a remote control? Naptime for the kids, need to drop the shades.

I've seen too many smart homes that don't have a secondary way of controlling things like music, lights, and shades.