Remember Old Faithful

Voice control is the new kid in the class getting all the attention. Everyone wants to hang out with them and the old favourites are out of the limelight. Controlling your home with your voice is the new controlling your home with your phone. App and voice control won’t have full run of the Smart Home though, the trusty old remote control has still got a big say in how things are going to be run.

App and voice control have lots of benefits but have obvious flaws. It can take several seconds to unlock your phone, open the desired app and press pause on your smartphone or tablet. It can be frustrating if you get the phrase wrong when asking for the temperature to be turned down on your thermostat. Having Alexa dismiss your well spoken voice request can be infuriating. So the majority of us still reach for the faithful remote control sitting on the arm of the sofa ready to adjust the volume or pause the movie for a snacks refill.

The UK’s favourite remote control is probably the Sky+HD remote and most of us can play, pause, punch in numbers and pull up the TV guide without even looking away from the screen. Try being that tactile with a smartphone app. Remote controls have their downsides too, many Living Rooms have a magnificent collection of different remotes for all the devices connected to your TV. It’s quite common to see three or four remote controls lined up in a row on the arm of chair or on a side table. I’m not even going to go down the route of asking what’s connected to HDMI 1, 2, 3 and 4 in your TV. Declutter that armchair and upgrade to an all in one remote control.

Logitech lead the market with their Harmony range of multi device controlling hand held remotes. Logitech have a remote control for every budget and the higher up you go in the range the more devices you can control and the smarter they get. The flagship controllers can not just control your set top boxes, they can manage your connected home devices like smart lightbulbs, motorised blinds and learning thermostats. Logitech Harmony remotes bring maximum benefits with their Activity feature. Press Watch TV and begin a chain of commands requesting the TV and set top box turns on, the TV turns to HDMI 1 and your favourite channel is keyed in to greet you. Press Watch a Movie and you’ll see the HDMI input change, the set top box turn off and your media streamer turn on. From the solitary handset you have control of thousands of devices on the market, even older products like DVD players and audio amplifiers. The Logitech database of device codes is unrivalled.

Customised can work with you to consolidate your existing TV and home controls into a single handset and app with a Logitech Harmony remote control. And just so voice doesn’t get left out of all the fun, Harmony works with Amazon Alexa and Google Home so you’ll have all three methods of controlling your home with one easy to use control system.

Take advantage of our free survey service and find out more about Logitech Harmony with Customised. http://customised.uk.com/contactus