Hello all,

The 890 does not need an infrared receiver in view to work. It will send commands to the base unit through walls or doors and the base unit will flash ir to the devices. Bury it all in the cabinet if you like. Infrared extenders need to plug in to the base unit so be kind to yourself and mark the extenders and leave it very accessible. One has to update the base unit off the website (via usb cable) as that is where some ir commands are buffered. Harmony is not kind enough to include visible flashing led's on the flashers so diagnostics are challenging.

I would urge all to stay away from Harmony's products especially the 890. I have been a Harmony dealer for over a year and can tell you that their 890 remote has caused our company significant stress. That and we get better deals by shopping outside of our authorized distributors. We have had to warranty all but one of the twelve 890's we placed to date. I cover the whole northeast for a territory so some of these have been as far away as 3.5 hours. Their website was good up to the summer and then turned in to a disaster. Last night my last "placed" 890 puked on its self. I wanted to add one button to the the lcd screen and the website hung seven times leaving a white screen where internet explorer was. (no security software or firewall) When it decided to work it told me I needed to upgrade the firmware before making any configuration changes. This would be the fourth firmware upgrade (and one downgrade when they put z-wave device protocol in the thing) that Harmony has issued for this product to memory. After 10 tries the base unit would not take the firmware and the old firmware was removed. Rendering my customers theater, with remotely located equipment inoperable. I wish I had a way to bypass the firmware in that case as many of my 890 problems have been upon a firmware change.

My message to Harmony would be this " I have purchased my last Harmony some time ago. Will you please tell the rest of the world when your beta test (on our dime) is over so that the masses can either consider or exclude your products?

I politely asked to beta test for them a year ago and have later discovered that they beta test upon production. My queston was not answered or shrugged as "our engineering department is handling that". We are NAD dealers. Aside from bad delays upon upload many of the NAD buttons that would be obvious to map were misappropriated. This requires a phone call. Tech help has always been helpful but the idea is that they should correct these problems but take no steps to do so. Every time I had an 890 problem they asked me to read a production run number off of the battery area. It seems they had a bad run but will not admit to it. They take no responsibility for faulty products and have not offered anything to us for having to deal with their internal problems of poor engineering, worse web interface, or bad production runs. Tech help is in Canada. If I remember correctly the rf carrier they use is 902.?? mhz. If you have overlap of rf thats tough. Seems the engineers forgot to make a way to adjust channel or frequency used. Literally all other rf solutions on the market have this adjustment.

For those needing a rf solution, meaning you dont want an ir receiver visible or those who have to buy the plasma proof receiver and the price is daunting, please consider two other remotes. The MyNevo by Universal Electric (harmony rents their ir code database anyways, thats why we have to do web setup, they are not allowed to distribute those codes) and Unversal remotes MX-900. Both will offer the same level of ease of use and functionality. Might not look as slick but trust me, those buttons on the 890 are difficult to "feel" for those power users out there. One gent here claimed to need multiple base stations. The MyNevo can do that for you and very well.
If you need a simple ir remote on line of sight then harmony may work well for you. I would not recommend repeating a harmony through a repeater. My success ratio is sporadic with that configuration as their delays cause problems.

I know harmony will read this but I have to ask why. Its not like we can post a config file on Remote Central and make it available for others. Harmony does not have an open programming interface. Only a web page aimed at the entry level user. Depending on the problems (bad button maps or bad delays) you could be there for a while. That is if you can even get it to work. Last night during my ten tries to upload firmware I even got conflicting indications saying success, and another window sad it failed. In many occasions the website and the software on the computer were not any where near being in synch.

Hope this helps
Darylk