TrueMote - a true Logitech Harmony remote replacement?

[bakman2]

TrueMote - a true Logitech Harmony remote replacement, for me at least :')

This has been some months of work, mostly think-work. Bear with me

For a number of years I have been searching for the 'ultimate' remote control and they don't seem to exist. I have been using the Logitech Harmony Ultimate for a long time, but the battery consumption was too high which got annoying, plus their support no longer exists unfortunately. I have the hub which I still use, it has a nice API via which stuff can be controlled.

After I gave up on the search, I come across this wonderful device from Waveshare - the ESP32-S3-Touch-LCD-2, which has so many useful features - an IMU (gyro/accelerometer), capacitive touch, battery charging circuit, 16MB flash, 8MB PSRAM and ofcourse Wifi and BT. After ordering a couple of them (they are like €16) I started some experimentation, it ended up to be a rabbit hole, but I have now have a remote control from which I can fully control anything and make it look/function the way I want, with ofcourse: Node-RED and Home Assistant.

Although it is not a remote control as in the classical infrared sense, but fully controlled using MQTT.

I experimented with breadboard layouts and prototype boards, it was too finicky to make it fit into a neat package, so the next rabbithole: let's try to make an actual PCB (using KiCad) - I have no skills or knowledge with electronic design, but i managed to design a PCB that actually turned out to be working (!) once it was manufactured in China.

Quite impressed with myself to be honest haha, but already learned from the many mistakes along the way (which is a great part of the journey).

Next, I had to design a case that would fit everything (using FreeCad), a lot of trial and error designing and 3d printing, but I have a fully functional prototype with a USB port for charging.

So what does this thing actually do:

It runs a webserver that lets you design your own interfaces using drag & drop of widgets, it is completely customizable and the way it does it might sound a bit janky, but it works quite well:

Drag and drop widgets onto the canvas - (resizable), this could be a button, images (MQTT), labels, data values (MQTT), sliders, list widgets (MQTT), charts (MQTT), press save and it will create a screenshot for the elements that cannot easily be rendered using the arduino graphics library (like icons on a button) - it will capture every x/y/w/h position of each element, stores in a json config and the graphics library will render the remaining elements on top of the background image.

You can also receive images via MQTT straight in the web interface and save it as a background image for the interface (ie you can design your own dynamic interfaces and put 'invisible' buttons on top of it).

[bakman2]

Continued...

The dynamic elements come from MQTT. This very fast - it feels like a local operation. For example, a Spotify song image, it comes from home assistant, gets resized in node-red and publishes it on an mqtt topic as a binary (those are like 4KB) and when you go to an interface on the remote, it subscribes to the topics it requires and renders the interface. When I press the navigational button right/left, Node-RED capture it, send next/prev track to home assistant and a new image is immediately shown. In short, you can see who is at the door when the doorbell rings

Every dynamic widget can be configured with a topic. If you want to display a chart, send the data to the topic and the it will render a chart (chart type can be set in the web interface or in the MQTT payload).

Each button press (touch or physical) will emit an MQTT message with the current interface and the button name which, ofcourse can be captured in Node-RED. It has an API via MQTT - from which an interface can be loaded by sending a payload with the interface on a specific topic and it will load.

A slider will emit its value that can be set in the widget (range), can be done realtime or on release. And the current value can also be set via mqtt.

Some flows:

This means you can create fully dynamic interaction menu's - as the list widget is using mqtt to build it's nested menu's and can be controlled using the standard directional/ok buttons for traversing.

It has many power control features for deepsleep, it dims/sleeps after a (configurable) time, uses a ballswitch/angle sensor to wake up (pick it up and it turns on), the IMU/buttons/touchscreen keeps it on while using, and as long as the web interface is open it stays awake. The thing has been in use for ±7 days now, i don't know how long the battery will last, but i think it will be a while (2000mAh 3.7 LiPo).

It uses Wifimanager to setup and has full OTA support.

All this C++ code is way over my head and I am glad several AI's were helpful to write out my ideas (although it is a lot of handholding, datasheet verifications, still need to understand what you are doing and how it to get there).

Next step will be to create a better PCB layout for the buttons and instead of a remote control - and I am also thinking about a wall mounted display as this project would also fit very well.
New PCB schematic/layout will be the first step, after that I will open source it for however is interested.

Goal achieved: it has replaced my Harmony!

[marcus-j-davies]

I have never designed a PCB, or know the first thing you should before doing so.

But… well done @bakman2

I love the “maker” attitude here — and the success of course, kudos!

[jodelkoenig]

This is crazy cool stuff ! Thanks for sharing !