Hand Held Remote That Works With Vera

[RexBeckett]

I really like this idea and if cheap enough could use it as a clock at bedside as well.

You're also one button away from a weather forecast and a look at your diary.

What kind are you using and dock?

The dock part was important to me. I wanted it to look good and allow easy mount/dismount. The top-dollar ones have wireless (inductive) charging but I didn't want to pay that much. It may be different where you are but I didn't find any really cheap tablets that met this criteria. It is, of course, possible to just use a stand and leave the charger plugged-in. Several promising tablets failed here because the designer had placed the USB socket on the bottom edge. 

I bought some early-model Nexus 7's from eBay. They have charging contacts on the bottom edge that mate with pogos on the stand. They cost about 50% more than the budget tablets but they work so well I think they were worth it. YMMV.

[strangely]

Having a connector on the bottom of a cheap one sounds advantageous, and a nice excuse to get creative with some woodworking tools... with of course a nice piece of wood and a cable to make a custom stand!

I may just do this myself

[bds42]

My usage, is fairly simple.  I have the most common scenes on the "single-press" and rarely used, often counterpart "Off" stuff, on the "press-and-hold".

For me, they're set as:

a) Goodnight (press) and All-On (hold)
b) HotWater Pump On (press) and Off (hold)
c) Sonos On (press) and Off (hold)
d) spare

I'm interested in your Sonos On? What does it do?  Start playing where you left off with the Sonos last time?  Or does it play a particular playlist? 

Also-I imagine with some PLEG magic the same button press could toggle it on if it was off and off it it was on...


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

[guessed]

I'm interested in your Sonos On? What does it do?  Start playing where you left off with the Sonos last time?  Or does it play a particular playlist? 

It's simply a call to "Play", done as an Advanced Scene.  That particular Sonos is used like an Clock Radio, so it's always tuned to the same Radio station.  It's also set to go off at a particular time, like a regular Alarm clock, but sometimes we get up earlier (etc) and just want to turn it on.

They're plain-old scenes, one is "Master-Sonos-On" and the other is "Master-Sonos-Off".  Easy stuff, nothing complex in these, but the Sonos (Connect AMP) is atop an armoire so this makes it easier.

I have a more full compliment of scenes on my iPad, iPhone and Nexus it's just that most of the time it's easier to grab the mini mote and "go" (esp without the glow they give off). 

I often break out the native Sonos app at some point later, once my mind is in gear and the Mrs has woken