What is YOUR set up?

[QuickCarl]

How are you using your netremote software?
What are you running it on?
What are you controling?
What has been your experience?
What would make it perfect?

My answers:
I am using (trying to anyway) Netremote to replace my Pronto TS1000

I am running it on my Dell Axim5 (primary) and HP laptop (secondary)

I am trying to control my HTPC (media center 9) and the rest of my HT gear

Little dicey to tell the truth. Seems to drop connection a lot. Waiting for the 1.0 version and USB UIRT to put the whole thing together

If it were rock solid stable, support the USB UIRT for IR passthrough, had album art working quickly and reliably, and multi-zone (for TOR and me)

[Mastiff]

1. Mainly to control MC9, but also to control my home theater (or I will as soon as I get a PPC with backlight that turns on in the dark!).

2. Fujitsu-Siemens PocketLoox so far, but I hope to be able to upgrade to an IPAQ 4550 if they accept my return of the Loox. It's a major pain in the... (what's your position on strong words, Ben?)

3. MC9, ZoomPlayer.

4. Wonderful! It's something I never knew I had been dreaming about!

5. Multi-zone control via several instances of WebRemote in MC9. But I might have mentioned this before...

Anyway, you'll se much more of my setup on my webpage, now updated with new pictures and a step by step in creating/configuring zones in MC9 and controlling it from my GML in Girder. 8)

[K-Wood]

1. I'm using it as my sole HT remote, at least until I add a touchscreen PC of some sort.
2. Dell Axim.
3. MC9 and TheaterTek on the PC. External hardware is being controlled via Girder/Serial Ports/Slink-E and includes Anthem AVM-2, Sony TA-P9000ES, Hughes DirecTiVo, Panasonic Plasma, and a VCR.
4. It's the killer app for a handheld and the reason I bought an Axim. But the MC9 connectivity is sketchy with period lock-ups and dropouts. When it works, it rocks.
5. Stability; freedom the tyranny of ProntoEdit (yuck).

Next up is whole-house audio and video, probably through the use of a matrix a/v switch that is RS-232 controllable via Girder and NetRemote.

My friends are amazed and even the wife likes it.

- Ken

[brohebus]

How are you using your netremote software?
What are you running it on?
What are you controling?
What has been your experience?
What would make it perfect?

Primarily to replace my old Pronto CCF for control of my regular system components plus my HTPC (DVD via ZoomPlayer) and x10 control. Still playing with ATI's software for PVR funtions.

Running on an iPAQ 3650 with PPC 2002

Controling ZoomPlayer (DVD), Daemon Tools(CD/DVD ISO image mounter), DVD Decryptor, ATI res changes, dScaler (in progress). The other components are a Toshiba 57" widescreen, Yamaha amp, two satellite boxes, and a IR543 IR>x10 tranceiver.

Experience has been good overall - ben's been very quick on implementing feature requests and fiing bugs. I've been fairly busy recently and haven't realy had a chance to play much though. For the price I paid, I can't complain at all. :D Still having problems with executing long macros from NetRemote though, but this may be my fault, not the software's.

To make perfect: Better graphic support (which hopefully Stewart has added in his next Tonto release), UIRT passthough, and solid feedback, which all appear to be coming.

-Dave

[Ben S]

How are you using your netremote software?
What are you running it on?
What are you controling?
What has been your experience?
What would make it perfect?


1) To control the theater and the whole-house audio. I've got 2 pocket pc's, so I try to keep one "running" for the wife while the other is for development.
2) A Dell Axim and a Audiovox Maestro
3) Media Jukebox / Center, Lutron Grafik Eye, Projector and DVD Player via the slinke.
4) Made whole-house audio definitely better than the randomness of the 200 disc jukebox. Overall a nice application :) Could stand to be more stable, though. 802.11 "connect time" is a downside right now. Phone rings, I need to wait until "connect" to pause the movie.
5) Stability. Faster 802.11 connect time.


(what's your position on strong words, Ben?)


Use 'em if you got 'em.

[z.mash]

How are you using your netremote software?
What are you running it on?
What are you controling?
What has been your experience?
What would make it perfect?


1. iPaq 3670 w/ PPC 2002
2. PowerDVD, MyHD, and Glissando (haven't gotten around to setting up MJB in NR yet)
3. Nothing short of awesome
4. DVD jukebox support from Gavin/Ben! (and more time to spend tweaking!!!)

[jeroen020]

> How are you using your netremote software?

To control all A/V gear and X10 devices in the house. I plan to use them not just wirelessly, but built a few in-wall too as a relatively cheap home control system too...

> What are you running it on?

I have 4 Ipaqs, 2 x 3660 (from work) and 2 x 3630 (which I picked up cheaply recently). 3 have WiFi, 1 has a fixed ethernet connection.

> What are you controling?

Through serial plugin in Girder: Denon AVC-A1SE (EU 5800 version) amp, Toshiba MT7 LCD projector, X10 devices (lights, projector screen, subwoofer etc)
Through infrared by UIRT2 (internal) in Girder: Phlips DVD player, Marantz CD player/burner, Mitsubishi VCR
PC: mp3
The Denon has two multiroom outputs, so I can use Netremote to control 3 three zones (living room, kitchen, bedroom).

> What has been your experience?

I'm very enthousiastic of the power and flexibility of this concept for about half a year now and recommend it to all my HT friends. Wish I had more time to implement some ideas, like proper two way communication with the amp and projector.
It's pretty stable, but sometimes I still get errors or it doesn't connect, especially when giving a command before the LAN has properly initatiated on the PPC.

> What would make it perfect?

A bit more stability; having an Ipaq built in-wall in each room; two way TCP/IP integration with my ARQ1 mp3 player; install routine for the PPC; a way to centrally update all your ipaqs at once; to integrate with web-browser based tv guide (e.g. click on a program in the guide and the channel switches automatically).

[tellis007]

I'm just getting started with Netremote but I picked up an iPaq 5450 to use it with. I didn't mind spending the money on it, because I use it a lot for work and I was using a 3700 before with bluetooth already and I wanted to maintain the integrated bluetooth as well.

Anyway, I'm curious as to what you Axim users are using for Wireless cards? If this works as well as I hope, I plan to spread a few more remotes around the house and the iPaq will get pretty spendy if I do that--I can buy 2 axims for every iPaq.

Tim

[mrallen]

>> How are you using your netremote software?

To control a dedicated Linux HTPC

>> What are you running it on?

iPaq 5455

>> What are you controling?

At the moment, just tvtime and X10 stuff

>> What has been your experience?

good.

>> What would make it perfect?

several things. but they're being addressed and I expect 1.0 to be an extremely good start.

[Mastiff]

[quote="mrallen>> What are you running it on?

iPaq 5455

[/quote]

You total and utter bast***... :wink: I want that, but I can't afford it yet! How is the range of the built in WLAN on that one? Have you compared it with a regular PPC with a CF WLAN card? 8)

[tellis007]

I have the 5450 which is the exact same thing as far as I know--just marketed at business instead of consumer. (If someone can tell me a difference, I've been really curious about this). Anyway, the wireless performance is extremely good. I can't compare it to a CF card, since I don't have any and I would really say you have to compare it to a specific CF card because in my experience, wireless cards can very greatly in performance between brands and models.

Anyway, it's not quite as good as my Cisco 350 wireless card in my laptop, but that's actually not a bad thing, since I haven't found anything that can beat that card yet anyway. I get a good signal roughly 100 feet from my AP and through four walls. I haven't really tested the edge of the range, but I can if you want me to.

[Mastiff]

Sounds pretty good! And yes, the difference is only in the marketing. You don't have to check it for my sake, but I'm glad to know that it's not unusually short. That was what I was fearing since it is built in and has only a short antenna sticking out.

[mrallen]

802.11 performance on the 5455 is very good. Better than the built-in 802.11 on my (@#%!$ expensive) Dell craptop.

[sdellutri]

1. How are you using your NetRemote software?
--------------------------------------------
I am using NetRemote to control my home theater. I am still working on building my CCF. I have been adding to it a little each week and following the latest NR developments.



2. What are you running it on?
------------------------------
I am using a Toshiba e570 Pocket PC 2002 PDA (very similar to the Audiovox Maestro). I am using a Linksys WFC12 compact flash 802.11b wireless LAN card. I also have a 128 meg secure digital memory card in the PDA that I have not yet put to use. The PDA is connected to my home network using an SMC wireless access point (2655w), and I am using a dedicated Windows XP Pro for ICS (Internet Connection Sharing) which is connected up to Optimum Online Cablevision Internet service on Long Island (NY).
I also use a Windows XP Acer 351 notebook for modifying and testing CCFs with my system. I have girder and media center running on my Home Theater PC which is also running Windows XP Pro. It is Fast Ethernet connected to the home network (as opposed to wireless). My HTPC is a P4 2.53 Ghz with 500 meg of RAM and using IDE RAID 0 on two 120 gig, 7200 rpm 8meg cache hard drives. I also have a CP290 X10 controller which is RS232 connected to the HTPC. I have a USB-UIRT infrared transceiver for communicating with my other HT gear.



3. What are you controlling?
--------------------------
I am controlling my HTPC software (ShowShifter, myHTPC, MediaCenter, and other basic functions like shutdown and selecting display output device), other home theater components (Denon 2500 receiver <I think an upgrade here is long over due! ;-) >, Sony S7000 DVD, Sony SATb3 DSS, Sony MD JE550, Sharp M20X projector with 100" motorized screen, JVC S4800U VCR) and X10 devices (all of the house lighting, air conditioning, and motor control for the home theater screen)



4. What has been your experience?
---------------------------------
NetRemote is a really great product. I am using 0.99rc3 now, but had been using a prior version for a while. I would find that although every individual command and function that I had defined individually worked by themselves, when it came time to actually using it to watch a movie or listen to music, something wouldn’t be working right. This always seemed to happen when I would make a demo to a friend to show them how cool Netremote is. The problems seem to be related to timing of things or not following a particular shut down or startup sequence between NetRemote and girder. Sometimes the whole pocket PC would hang and I would just end up doing a hard reboot.



5. What would make it perfect?
------------------------------
Stability and performance are key. I would advise not to even think about adding new features (as the feature set already has compelling and significant value) until you get the product fully optimized for stability and performance.
I would also in the future like to see integration with a speech recognition capability. There are a number of inexpensive 3rd party speech rec products out there, and it would be great if there were some hook or API to plug into NetRemote. Maybe there will be a way to do it with the pending release of the SDK.