Image via CrunchBase
Say you’re sitting down to watch TV – chances are you have several remotes around you, one for each A/V components. If you’re a bit of an A/V geek, you might have replaced the dedicated remotes with a programmable universal remote, but at a significant cost: you probably paid upward of $100 for the convenience and have subjected yourself to a couple of tedious, frustrating hours getting it to work just right. Your iPhone or Android might also be within arm’s reach – but what does a smartphone have to do with controlling AV equipment, right?
To date, not much. There have been some attempts to harness smartphones into universal remotes (such as Peel and ThinkFlood), but they tend to require an involved WiFi setup, or they have interfaces too simple to replace conventional remotes.
Enter MiCommand, an Austin, TX-based startup that is looking to truly bridge the gap between smartphones and A/V devices. As the company’s CEO, Jeff Roane, puts it: ”We try to provide ease of use, but without sacrificing the detail people need to control their AV equipment.”
MiCommand’s new Control It All Remote achieves this by taking advantage of the flexibility of a smartphone screen – allowing both activity-centric and device-specific usage without a cluttered interface. For example, in the “watch TV” activity, a user will be presented with the buttons he is most likely to need. When needed, he can go into device mode and have access to all control options for a particular device.
Taking advantage of the iPhone’s multi-touch capabilities, MiCommand’s remote also works with gestures. For example, rotating with two fingers turns the volume up or down, and a single-finger swipe changes channels.
How do the commands get from the smartphone to the devices? Rather than opting for WiFi, Roane and his team opted for BlueTooth which is built into every smartphone and is easier to set up. The Control It All Remote transceiver then converts Bluetooth signals from the smartphone into infrared signals for the devices.
To generate marketing buzz among techies and influencers, MiCommand has decided to launch its app on Apple’s iTunes Store weeks before the actual product launch. Apparently, the gambit has worked – in three weeks, over 20,000 iPhone users have downloaded the app… even though they won’t be able to use it yet. Maybe not quite iPhone 5 hysteria, but certainly a promising sign for when the hardware launches June 20th.
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