Customer Reviews
Don’t waste your time with this product
With several years of amazon buying under my belt, this is my very first review. I hope that can explain just how unsatisfied and frustrated I am with this product to make me go to the trouble. I’ll try to be as unbiased and black as white as possible.
I am a fairly competent tech guy. I have a home theater consisting of a 1080 flat screen, a pioneer premiere receiver and a mac mini server supporting an 8TB Drobo raid system storing my media running through a custom XBMC ported player; I know my way around setting up electronics. after finally giving up on working with six different remote controls, I was on a hunt for the perfect all in one. I first tried out the Harmony 1100 which was great all except for controlling a few of my mac’s functions. I then moved on to Acoustic Research which didn’t support Mac’s OS X so back it went to the store. Finally, I tried out a Harmony one which was 95% what I wanted so I thought I could give the RedEye unit a try since I have pretty much every remote software installed on my iPhone already.
I will note here, I don’t work for Harmony or any other remote company, I’m just simply working with what I have found while researching online or buying off the rack at best buy. I’m sure there are some serious remotes out there but I’m working with a budget of 2-300$ or less here.
RedEye’s packaging is great, after pulling off the shrink wrap and seeing it, I was quite excited to get to the guts. although the actual IR unit looks nice, it is poorly made out of thin plastic. When plugged into the wall, there were several extremely (serious here, they were bright) bright blue LED’s that shone through the smoked housing; not a good sign for a dark theater room. they turn off but every time you hit a command, they blink. following all of the setup instructions as well as following the video on the website, turning my phone’s airplane mode on etc etc, I finally found RedEye’s wifi signal after 3-4 minutes. next I had to name the “room” and save it. the RedEye app on my phone crashed several times so I deleted it and downloaded it again from iTunes. Same problem. I went through this process for an hour and gave up and walked the dog.
After 30 more minutes of trying to name my room, it was on to setting up my devices. I entered in my TV and noticed that software was really buggy even when selecting brand names. Putting check marks over top of the right navigation in the software, serious lag etc. I’m a UI designer so I can appreciate the ease of setup a product comes with. Yikes. Another note, the software doesn’t search for a specific device by model name ala Harmony yet gives you several different option “test IR bursts” to test your devices. this, in my opinion is fairly freshman and caused a lot of issues that have long been improved upon by other remote controls. this is how it was done with universal remotes a decade ago. (Harmony has every single individual model number already in it’s databank online.)
Everything was going fine until I lost the signal for the RedEye box. I tried to see it on my iPad and wife’s iPhone but it was simply gone. I tried resetting the unit by poking it’s reset button but it didn’t work. I gave up for an hour.
Once I finally could see the wifi signal again, I tried my cable box but it wasn’t found and asked me to teach it by pointing my remote to the RedEye box. given that my cable box remote has over two dozen functions that I use, I skipped this step and gave up.
I’m assuming that the hardware does it’s job. the blue LED’s are annoying seeing how they blink every time you touch a function button on the iphone but I can sort of look past that. they do light up the entire room and you can’t just hide the box so if that’s a dealbreaker to you, which it will be to many, pass this product by right now.
The main issue is the setup and the UI of the actual iphone app. For example, let’s say you are watching a movie, you need to run and get a snack, you have to not only swipe the phone on, you have to launch the app and wait for the phone to see the “room” you created. Sometimes this took 5 seconds, sometimes it took 2 minutes; most of the time, it didn’t even show up. THAT is the dealbreaker. I can get past the fact that there is a time period of waking the phone up and launching the app, the fact that there is such a delay in when the phone sees the RedEye wifi network, it kills the whole convenience of quickly making adjustments to your theater.
I wanted to make this work, I really did. I have several iphone remote apps already which work great including Boxee, XBMC and Rowmote so what better to add than an app that could actually control my hardware as well. When working, RedEye’s buttons look great. I was able to turn my TV on and off and it worked like a charm but there were three main issues that are making me return it: 1) the setup for other devices, 2) the horribly frustrating and extremely buggy app and 3) the massive lag when going from a sleeping phone to making a device function command.
Final thoughts? Pass on this one, let my research save you the hassle and the near 0 in price.
Solid performance, tricky to set up
After once again not being able to find the last of the 3 remotes I need in order to play a DVD in our house, we ordered the RedEye.
We picked the RedEye because it works no matter where in the house I am, I can turn off the TV from the upstairs bedroom. More importantly, the (free) iPhone app works without requiring any hardware attachment to the iPhone. this was important, as we are always losing remotes, and we didn’t need any more hardware to keep track of.
Setup was a pain. the device starts off on its own ad-hoc network, requiring you to connect to it and change it to using your home WiFi (if you have one). It took me 90 minutes and three tries to get it working on our home WiFi. Adding new remote controls to the RedEye app is easy…you tell it the brand name and type of device you are adding (DVD, TV, etc), and it downloads the various remote controls it knows of and has you test them. this was a quick ‘n easy way to add my TV and cable box, but it did not recognize my VCR+DVD player, which I had to teach it. (RedEye is continually adding more devices to their online database, so this problem will go away eventually.)
However, it is a joy to use. mainly because I never have trouble finding my phone 
the buttons on the remote app are large and easy to see. And you can change them, if that’s your thing. on the downside, since it works over WiFi, there is a 1-second delay when starting the RedEye app while it connects to the RedEye device. this, plus the effort required to wake up an iPhone that has gone to sleep means that using the iphone as a remote while watching a show requires us to disable sleep on the phone, which runs down the battery. Also the lack of tactile sensation is disconcerting…you have to look at the phone AND at your TV. the app provides a vibrate feature when you press a button, but the vibrate lasts too long…about 1 second. RedEye claims that Apple won’t let them vibrate for a shorter time.
Finally, once my phone was set up to work with the device, my wife’s phone worked with it with no setup! this is because the RedEye device contains all the configuration and remote info…the app itself remembers almost nothing.
Definitely a product worth investigating if you have too many remotes.
ThinkFlood RedEye
Companies have been coming up with new and innovative ways to use the iPhone ever since the iPhone was available and particularly since the App Store opened. ThinkFlood has introduced their own creative use for the iPhone called RedEye, a hardware and app solution that turns your iPhone into a remote control for, well, pretty much darn near anything that uses an infrared (IR) remote signal.
Because the iPhone is not an IR transmitter, it cannot work directly as a remote for devices that use IR technology for remote control. the hardware portion of the RedEye solution is a small box, slightly larger than Apple’s docking station, that also doubles as a charging station.
I’m a sucker for good packaging and ThinkFlood did a nice job with the RedEye. In the box are the RedEye station, the power cord, and inserts that make the various versions of the iPhone or iPod Touch fit snugly in the station. I have a thick skin on my iPhone and was able to use one of the inserts with my iPhone without removing the stick-on skin. one thing that would have been nice is if each insert has some sort of labeling to indicate which version of the iPhone or iPod Touch it was for.
Once plugged in, the unit emits a blue light to indicate it has power. to use the RedEye, the RedEye app (free from the iTunes App Store) must be installed on the iPhone or iPod Touch. When you first launch the RedEye app, a tutorial video launches explaining how the unit works and how to set it up. this was very nice as there are some tricks to setting the unit up that wouldn’t be intuitive to the beginner. I did not have any difficulty setting the unit up other than getting the network setup, which was fully explained in the tutorial had I watched that in full first. And once you set up your first device, the rest come naturally.
Once I was correctly networked, the rest was a breeze. you start by configuring what ThinkFlood calls “Rooms.” In my case I set up a room called “Basement.” Within that room, you can have any number of activities, for example “Watch TV” or “Watch DVD” or even customized activities. you are only limited by what devices you have that accept an IR signal. Configuring which devices to control couldn’t be easier. Simply select the manufacturer from the list in the App, send some test signals to the device, and select the signal that works.
Once you are fully configured, your iPhone works exactly as a stock remote would, perhaps better. the screen on your iPhone looks just like a remote. you can also use multi-touch gestures for commands to your device. For the advanced and not so common commands (for example, adjusting aspect ratio), there is a separate command screen that appears to cover any command that your device is capable of accepting. It was quite simple to set up the devices I tested and I was pleasantly surprised how all-encompassing the list of devices is. I tested televisions and stereos from 3 to 10 years old from various manufacturers and had no problems.
ThinkFlood provides wonderful support for their RedEye product. on their website you can find FAQs, video tutorials, the manual and email support. the video tutorials are particularly useful for setup. As a consumer, I appreciate companies that provide thorough support as ThinkFlood does.
At 8, the RedEye is a bit pricey. However, if you compare what this unit can do to something like the Harmony universal remotes, the price is definitely in the ballpark. one drawback is that, although you can configure several rooms, activities and devices, you would need a RedEye base station in each room assuming your rooms are physically outside the IR range of 35 feet or so. on the flip side, you get an extension of sorts because your signal to the Redeye is WiFi, which has a much farther range depending on your wireless setup. so you could centrally locate your RedEye unit between rooms to maximize the IR + WiFi range.
For someone looking for a remote control solution without having to have a dongle or device attached to the iPhone, this is the answer. the device is unobtrusive, only requires one cable for power and is simple to use.
Needs a lot of work
I’d be skeptical of some of these 5 star reviews on here. I suspect they’re internal marketing for ThinkFlood. I bought this device (impressed by the gung-ho reviews) and, while it seemed VERY promising – especially the “actions” feature, I was disappointed.
1. the IR range is VERY POOR. the base needs to be VERY close to the device you’re controlling. you can’t just put it discreetly to the side, it literally has to be smack bang in the middle of your coffee table to even BEGIN to work (and who has a power socket right under their coffee table? Besides, do you really want a giant glowing blue iPod dock in the middle of your coffee table anyway?) It has LESS THAN HALF the range of my other remote controls in my home (and yes, even when it has a direct and totally unobstructed line of sight).
2. It says it is iPad compatible, but a month after the iPad has come out there is NO NATIVE IPAD APP, just an up-res-ed iPhone app that feels clunky and pixel-ly. not encouraging. Furthermore, there is no sleek non-iPod-touch-docking base station available. if you have an iPad, wait.
3. NONE of my devices, I repeat NONE of my devices were in its database of remote controls. NONE. Panasonic Plasma. Sony DVD. Samsung Blu-ray. Nada. Imagine inputting all of the buttons on your remotes manually onto the device. It’s kind of hellish.
4. THERE IS a LAG! you sometimes have to press a button repeatedly to even get a response. It’s really quicker and more convenient to use a normal remote control.
In RedEye ThinkFlood has something that could be GREAT and offers a lot of potential, but unfortunately, in execution, this product fails. the company has a cool website and its owners have a blog and they seem very responsive and genuine, but in this iteration, as much as I WANTED IT TO WORK, this product just doesn’t work very effectively to justify its cost or its alleged convenience. or maybe I just couldn’t get it to work. but I tried and I have a Master’s degree, so it can’t simply be my ineptitude.
Excellent Universal Remote Solution
I purchased a RedEye universal remote system a few months ago and have been using it to control my bedroom TV (plasma), DVD player and cable box. I have been using a Harmony one universal remote to control my main system (plasma, AV receiver, blu-ray, HD box, etc.) for about a year, so my point of reference will be against the Harmony one but also in the context of a secondary TV in the house.
Out of the box, I found the RedEye system easy to set-up. While, indeed, the directions in the box are fairly brief, I found it more useful to use the on-line video which walks you through the setup. Using the video, it was pretty straight-forward to get the system up and running and the menus themselves are pretty user friendly to allow you to create macros without to much difficulty.
Compared to the Harmony one, the remotes database does seem more limited on the RedEye, but (hopefully) the database will improve over time. even with that, setting up various remotes that it didn’t recognize was very straight-forward. Admittedly, I didn’t program every function into my RedEye, but only programmed the basic functions that I felt I would use regularly (on-off, change channel, numbers, volume, etc.). I found that as I used the remote over a few days and felt that there was a function I was using that I hadn’t programmed, it was very quick to add the function as well as a key onto the RedEye remote panel.
I do, however, revert back to the original remotes for more complicated adjustments to the components. While this sounds like a negative, I do the same with my Harmony one remote as I find fine-tuning picture quality on my plasma or setting up speakers for my AV receiver are easier done with the original remote. so, overall, I don’t take this as a knock against the RedEye.
Compared to the Harmony one, one criticism (a modest one at that) I would lodge against the RedEye is that it is more difficult to switch between components on the RedEye vs. the Harmony one if you haven’t directly programmed a key onto your RedEye remote panel (RedEye allows you to program your own remote for various tasks – watching a DVD; watching cable – combining “buttons” for the TV, DVD player, etc onto a single combined remote). so, if you’re starting a movie and you want to change the brightness on the screen (and you haven’t programmed it onto you remote panel on your iPhone), it takes a few layers of menus to achieve the desired outcome.
I have seen many criticisms of the RedEye in that it requires external hardware to operate (compared to dongle based solutions). While the RedEye manufacturer has addressed this criticism via the RedEye Mini, critics underestimate the benefits of the external module as it allows anyone at home with an iPhone or iPod touch to use it as a remote and, because the set-ups for each room are stored in the external module, there’s no need to set up for each iPhone or iPod touch. they only need to download the app and they’re ready to go after the initial set-up. In addition, I prefer the external module to the dongle-solution as there’s no risk of losing the dongle when you’re finished using your iPhone/iPod touch as a remote.
While perhaps not ready to take on the Harmony series for larger systems or more complicated macros, overall, I think RedEye is an excellent universal remote solution, especially for bedroom or simple (2-3 component) home set-ups.
RedEye Universal Remote System for iPhone, iPod touch and iPad …
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