[Success Story]
The New Breed Of Universal Remote
The battle to control the flow of media in the connected home may be won "remotely." UEI's NevoSL wirelessly controls digital systems throughout the home.
Combine sophistication and simplicity to achieve elegance. Such is the primary goal for today's developers of home-entertainment/ automation control devices.
How come? Simply put, the high end is driving the market for such devices, and consumers willing to spend tens of thousands on gear and setup have neither the time nor the inclination to abide anything clunky or overly complex. The trend today is to store electronic equipment out of sight, but the remote control must remain front and center— and it better look spiffy.
Developers at Universal Electronics Inc. kept elegance in mind when they designed the NevoSL handheld universal remote controller and its companion product, an IP-addressable bridge called NevoLink (Fig. 1).
"We were sold on another manufacturer, and I was skeptical, but I held (the NevoSL) in my hand for about two seconds, and then said 'okay, this is it,'" says Robert Gilligan, customer service manager at Engineered Environments, which assembles and installs customized residential electronics systems.
"Ergonomically, NevoSL is the best-of-breed among highend remote controllers. We've had a chance to use it fairly extensively for the last month or so and have a number of clients who are very excited about it."
The Nevo name should sound familiar if you own an iPAQ PDA. UEI first developed Nevo as an embedded application for the iPAQ 3900, as well as for some tablet-sized products. It modified the application for the iPAQ rx3715.
Apparently the application didn't hurt the iPAQ, as sales have run well into the millions. But UEI was aware of a disconnect of sorts between its conventional wand-style universal remotes and Nevo in either a PDA or a tablet. "In either of those, changing the volume or changing the channel was a two-handed affair that also required the user to look at the face of the device," says Mauro Dresti, UEI's senior director of emerging technologies.
UEI selected affluent consumers who go for cuttingedge technology and professional installers of high-end home-entertainment systems as its target markets for Nevo hardware. The company had lots of experience designing remote controls, plus a large database of RF control codes and the ability to squeeze that database tightly enough to make it fit inside an 8-bit microprocessor. Without compression, Dresti says, the codes would require about 100 times more storage capacity.
To overcome those limitations and address what it saw as a significant market opportunity, UEI developed its own hardware to support its Nevo software. "Research indicated that the average family spends four to five hours a day watching TV," says Dresti. "That makes the remote one of the most frequently used devices in the home and the logical gateway to home-entertainment and automation devices and systems."
The cornucopia of codes makes it likely that NevoSL will work with just about every product from almost any manufacturer. System installers can download additional codes from UEI's database via the Web. But pointing a wand at a TV or stereo receiver is one thing, and controlling a high-end home from any room is another. UEI was far from the only company to see opportunity in universal remote controls.
DESIGN CHALLENGES - UEI wanted to bring its Nevo remote to market as quickly as possible and at a reasonable cost. "We saw an opportunity to redefine the experience of home control," says Dresti. "We wanted to combine the functionality of the software we developed for tablets and PDAs with the intuitive tactile feedback of our traditional remotes. Products that had the ability to support multiple devices lacked the form factor and the ergonomics of remotes. Considering the target user, we wanted to design a simple, elegant, high-end solution."
For UEI's in-house design team, that meant the ability to use the device by touch alone, without looking at a display screen. It required a color graphical user interface sufficient to permit the use of large icons, as well as backlit keys with good tactile feel and acoustic key response.
The remote had to be small and light enough for one-handed operation, yet able to manage complete control of multiple devices. Easy setup and customization also were essential for the Nevo. And, it had to include USB support.
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