Home Assistant* introduced support for infrared a few days ago. Not sure if it would be a good idea to stay in business for a bit longer and see if the Home Assistant community boost the sales.
I am personally interested in an IR Sender to make my old Hifi Setup smarter.
Sad to see someone’s small business close, but these products are in a difficult position of being both extremely niche and very simple. Someone went to some effort to source a nice dongle enclosure and do some printing on it, but beyond that the hardware is something that anyone with a little PCB experience could replicate it in a day. I wouldn’t be surprised if these were just sourced from a generic manufacturer in China and they asked for custom printing.
If there’s demand this would be a good project for someone to make and have ready to build PCBs you could order from OSH Park or even a fully project that you could have JLC build and populate.
I have a tiny business that makes a gadget for musicians: Think something like an effects pedal. I publish my schematics, have shared PCB files, and even offer to give you some of the parts that are hard to get. A few people have built their own, and share their results in web forum threads about my product.
Very few people have taken the bait. I think we techies over-estimate the ability and inclination of people to make something. Even most programmers don’t want to solder. They may still be technically inclined, but want to be involved at a higher level: Buying the basic stuff and using it as a basis for even more elaborate things.
I love learning from and building that type of thing (plus have some musician friends who can never have too many gadgets). Would you be willing to share a link?
Note: if you don’t want to create a link to yourself, you could also email me at <my username>0_AT_protonmail_._com
If you offered me schematics and PCB designs for a tool I desired, I might be /more/ inclined to give you money just to support you. Nothing to do with my ability or interest in DIY (I also design and sell electronics).
> I think we techies over-estimate the ability and inclination of people to make something.
If you replace 'we techies' with 'most folks' (and especially with 'folks who didn't do a thing with their hands in thei$ lives') nothing would change.
This company and product line launched nearly 20 years ago (2007) and doesn’t seem to have changed much since. That’s quite a long time for something like this. If the owners had wanted the business to continue (perhaps they didn’t), some diversification could have achieved that relatively easily.
Your assumption here is that they wanted it to continue making money, rather than (for example) reacting to the influx of new orders from HA’s announcement by shutting it down. Perhaps a working source of revenue is being voluntarily terminated rather than having starved to death?
I've had reasonable luck with microsoft's windows media center remote receivers and lirc. Although they don't all work the same. The first one I got was easier to use than later ones...
And frustation with atsc 3 and the media landscape led to me abandoning my htpcs.
Home Assistant* introduced support for infrared a few days ago. Not sure if it would be a good idea to stay in business for a bit longer and see if the Home Assistant community boost the sales.
I am personally interested in an IR Sender to make my old Hifi Setup smarter.
* https://www.home-assistant.io/blog/2026/04/01/release-20264/
Yes, same exact boat, I was just starting to think about looking for a small, cheap device in this space for HA.
I used a Flirc many years ago for my mythtv DVR and it worked great. https://flirc.tv/
edit: I used the receiver, but they do make a remote. It looks cool but I have no experience with it.
Let me know if you find one! I wanted to wait for a few months to let the experienced smart homers pave the way.
Sad to see someone’s small business close, but these products are in a difficult position of being both extremely niche and very simple. Someone went to some effort to source a nice dongle enclosure and do some printing on it, but beyond that the hardware is something that anyone with a little PCB experience could replicate it in a day. I wouldn’t be surprised if these were just sourced from a generic manufacturer in China and they asked for custom printing.
If there’s demand this would be a good project for someone to make and have ready to build PCBs you could order from OSH Park or even a fully project that you could have JLC build and populate.
I have a tiny business that makes a gadget for musicians: Think something like an effects pedal. I publish my schematics, have shared PCB files, and even offer to give you some of the parts that are hard to get. A few people have built their own, and share their results in web forum threads about my product.
Very few people have taken the bait. I think we techies over-estimate the ability and inclination of people to make something. Even most programmers don’t want to solder. They may still be technically inclined, but want to be involved at a higher level: Buying the basic stuff and using it as a basis for even more elaborate things.
I love learning from and building that type of thing (plus have some musician friends who can never have too many gadgets). Would you be willing to share a link?
Note: if you don’t want to create a link to yourself, you could also email me at <my username>0_AT_protonmail_._com
If you offered me schematics and PCB designs for a tool I desired, I might be /more/ inclined to give you money just to support you. Nothing to do with my ability or interest in DIY (I also design and sell electronics).
> I think we techies over-estimate the ability and inclination of people to make something.
If you replace 'we techies' with 'most folks' (and especially with 'folks who didn't do a thing with their hands in thei$ lives') nothing would change.
>I think we techies over-estimate the ability and inclination of people to make something.
But that was never the worry. The worry is a competitor undercutting you because they do not have to recoup R&D.
A few tricks to beat this are community, brand, an app that only works with the official version (hard to pull off and sad), and going more niche.
This company and product line launched nearly 20 years ago (2007) and doesn’t seem to have changed much since. That’s quite a long time for something like this. If the owners had wanted the business to continue (perhaps they didn’t), some diversification could have achieved that relatively easily.
Your assumption here is that they wanted it to continue making money, rather than (for example) reacting to the influx of new orders from HA’s announcement by shutting it down. Perhaps a working source of revenue is being voluntarily terminated rather than having starved to death?
Well damn, I didn't know about this until now, and I could actually use one.
Is there any alternative?
I've had reasonable luck with microsoft's windows media center remote receivers and lirc. Although they don't all work the same. The first one I got was easier to use than later ones...
And frustation with atsc 3 and the media landscape led to me abandoning my htpcs.
I've used Flirc
eBay
Awww I have one of those. It still works after more than 10 years!
Maybe that's what happened, everyone who needed one bought and we don't need an upgrade
Presumably there just isn't that much use for that anymore.
Most remotes seem to be RF not ir these days.
Especially given the hardware has no moat and there are a zillion IR transceivers on Aliexpress. It's not a good market.
I’m guessing that modern hardware are all controlled by privacy-invading apps, communicating via the company’s servers.