A harmony adventure.

So, the other day I had Elka inside and I needed to go to the bathroom. I was gone, at most. 20 seconds or so.

The two photos are a result of my running to the bathroom while leaving my Harmony 880 on the couch. It doesn't take a puppy long to decimate a piece of electronics.

All my remotes are packed away and I needed a solution fast. I went and purchased an Harmony 1000.

Awful, awful remote. It requires two hands (I have short fingers); 90% of what I do required using the touch screen, which meant looking at the remote. It also never really calibrated well so my finger always touched the wrong button, and it had a really awful lag between hitting a button and executing the command.

I tried to like it. I wanted to like it.

Today I returned it and got a Harmony 890. This baby has RF which I'll get setup quickly, and means I can get my components into a cabinet and out of sight. Neat.

While I was there, I also headed down to the PlayStation 3 aisle and asked about a way to control the PS3 with the remote. There is a new device: Nyko Blue-Wave. This converts the IR commands to bluetooth. It's so new I had to custom program the buttons myself - however...

I can now control the PS3 with the Harmony 890. I no longer need a controller or separate remote. This is my little version of home theatre nirvana.

I also set it up to control iTunes, so that when I'm streaming music, I can control the volume, play, pause, skip tracks, etc from outside, as long as I have the remote.

The setup was super quick, and I'm really happy with the results. Now I can start getting my feet wet with z-wave technologies, which the 890 can control directly. I'll have my lighting z-waved soon, I hope. And some movie-playing scenes ready to go. Hit one button, queue up the components, and dim the lights. Ahhhh, yum.

Do you envy the destructive puppy, or the new remote? ;)

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But I’m sure there’s something in a shade of grey…
Something in between…