Timetable for multi brain functionality?
I was told this feature would be coming soon with upcoming firmware. I bought an additional brain in anticipation of this. My problem is I have my TV on the wall, but all of my equipment is hidden in a closet that’s not so close. So the brain being the ir blast and the ir extender do not help me control the tv. The remote works fine for controlling the equipment in my closet, but I can’t turn my tv on and off. I am a very patient person and I love this remote, it’s by far aesthetically the nice looking remote on the market. But if I cannot do basic functions such as control my tv and my equipment which is in a closet, a function that every single other smart remote on the market has solutions for, I will have to bite the bullet and go back to a harmony. Which I don’t want to do because I love this remote. I do not like not knowing when this next firmware with this feature is to be expected. My wife is not as patient as I and nor is she as tech savvy as myself. She just knows when she hits the button only certain things turn on and off and others don’t. Thus far I have basically purchased a $500 paper weight if I can’t do something as basic as controlling my tv with my equipment in my closet. Which is a very very common scenario for your customer base. No one buys a smart remote to control their cable box hooked up to their tv’s. We have AVRs, we have 3-6 devices connected, we have smart home devices. So to not be able to do something this basic and above to not communicate anything at all about a time table for it,is egregious. And I am very sorry that I wasted my money on this product. Your support is great if it’s support for something your team can fix, but your communication is ill advised and awful especially considering the clientele you intend on selling your product to.
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Hi Joseph,
Thank you for posting this. I can assure you that the multi-brain functionality will be released to all folks including yourself. It will be included in the next firmware release which we plan on releasing in the next 3-5 weeks barring any setbacks.
Just as an FYI, this is a feature that I have personally tested and worked great ;).
We certainly appreciate everyone's continued patience between releases. Should you have any questions feel free to DM me or post them on here :).
-Jeff
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Jeff So, are we still within schedule for the next release ? From the information you gave a few weeks ago the new firmware should be released in two weeks.
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Daniel Sütel Hi Daniel! I am gathering information from our dev team so I can better assist here. We just released a new internal firmware in which I am personally testing. So that is obviously news that our dev team is very much active and working on new builds as we speak :). Once I have a more clear time frame I will share it with you guys here :).
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Jeff Hi, you know its all about release for production 😉
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Jeff
Other 8 weeks since your post … Not even a word about the new Firmware with multi-brain. I realy wondring about your communication … or your dev-team … or anything else.
If you honest to yourself you can shurly understand our disapointment of neeo.
As for me the realy basics working i can use NEEO but every time I use NEEO I see the potention of the device and I could cry because NEEO take only a micro step every couple of months (guess NEEO-Team think it was a huge step, but it's not). -
Andreas Coradi There was a statement about the delay of the firmware from him, it is down in this post...
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Joseph Plunkett I have the same setup and came to a perfect solution for me without a second brain. I tried two solutions:
1. I put one part of a wireless IR extender in my cabinet and the second one under my sofa. This solution worked well. The only problem was my wife: when she vacuumed the living room the IR sender where displaced ;-) The solution was more or less reliable.
2. At the time I mounted all the TV cables in the wall I mounted also a two stereo cables of which I only use one, because everything now goes through HDMI. So I take the IR line out of the brain into a IR Remote Control Extender (like this) and connect the NEEO blaster to one of the output channels of the extender. I connected the the second output to the unused stereo cable. At the the TV I connected the stereo cable to one the IR emitter that are delivered with the extender and put them in front of the IR receiver of the TV.
The second solution works very reliable and is wife compatible! I think a second brain for your situation is over done.-
Sven Wiese-Solty I appreciate the suggestion. Option 1 has been my work around, I basically have the brain set up outside of my closet with the ir cable going into my closet. I would of done option 2 a long time ago if I had a way to route an IR cable to the tv. unfortunately all cabling was ran when the room was down to the studs. So without major wreckage I don’t have a way to get the ir cable to the tv. There is various options out there but I bought a second brain a month or so ago in preparation of this next firmware update. It will be the cleanest solution and mimics the set up I had for which was the savant total home. Savant was smart, they placed an ir emitter in the charging base station. And since most people have their chargers on an end table or something like that in the room the tv is in, that solution works great for most people.
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Jeff were at the 5 week mark now. What is the word. As people mention quite often on here, the current system lacks many required features for an activity based remote. IR learning, hard button customization and the ability to blast IR in multiple locations. My gaps with the remote are not that severe as my set up is not that complex. However. This remote is not what I would like to call “wife proof”. As it is right now I have to keep my brain on a little table that is placed next to my closet where my equipment is and angled right so it has visibility of my tv to control the tv and close enough that I can place the blaster in the closet to control that equipment, what this has created is an extremely ugly set of wires coming out of the closet to a table that is set up for its that device, and my wife absolutely hates it. The multi brain functionality will bridge my gap and I can place a brain in another part of the room and hide it pretty well (I will probably simply mount it behind the TV). But as it is right now I cannot fend my wife off much longer. If this firmware is not released soon, I will have to switch back to a harmony. I recognize that this doesn’t matter too much as I’ve already bought the equipment so you guys already have made the sale. I will however never recommend this product to anyone, I won’t even resell this thing because it is worthless to anyone I know that enjoys home theater as much as I do., and I will be leaving my review where ever possible. This is easily the most beautiful remote on the market which was why I bought it. But lack of basic functionality really makes this remote difficult to justify. Not to mention at this point if spent over $500 on hardware to make this remote work. I have held up my end of the bargain with purchases and support of the company, I need you guys to hold up yours and get this firmware out. With the amount of features missing, rather than having a major release every so often, you guys should really focus on minor releases no more than a month a part from each other, and you will slowly bridge everyone’s gaps and people will see progress and continue to be patient as more features continue to roll out. Instead you go with major releases that no one is really able to communicate any kind of time line for and it drags on for months on end while, we, the paying customers that keep your company afloat, suffer through it. Focus on a single bug or feature, fix it, and roll it out. The only reason I can see as to why there is such a tremendous timeline for releases, is if you guys outsource your actual development, and if you do, then you will have some tremendous hurdles ahead. Because I can have someone hand program an entire ERP system backed up by an SQL server using c++ in 90 days if they worked for me and we’re working full time. I really find it hard to believe that this is this challenging, a developer who built this system and knows it in and out should be able to bang stuff like this out on pretty short order.
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Joseph Plunkett What type of TV do you want to control? Eventually, it is the easiest way to control the TV itself via LAN insofar as the TV supports it. Then the Brian can send in the closet what he wants, you capture the sent command in an external system via forward action and then simply send the appropriate command via the network to turn on the device on / of and send any command via LAN. So you need only one Brian in case your TV can be switched over the network.
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Fonzo I have an lg ef9500 oled. I bought an additional brain in anticipation for this feature. So I have a $300 paper weight on my hands.
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Joseph Plunkett Now you can wait that the problem was hopefully then solved with a firmware update. Otherwise, if you have a raspberry lying around at home, you can also try to control the LG via LAN. I myself use for such things IP Symcon and IPSymcon NEEO , LG is controlled by this PHP class . But you can also use something like Xampp and evaluate the command send from the brain and then send the matching LAN command to the LG TV.
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Joseph Plunkett
You can also send Forward Actions to Node-RED using : https://flows.nodered.org/node/node-red-contrib-lgtv
Eman.
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Joseph Plunkett New firmware with multi-brain will be announced next week.
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Jeff Announced or released?
(Announce could also mean announce it for a release in a few months)
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Beni Meaning we should be releasing a new firmware in the next few weeks or so.
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Jeff wait so you’re announcing the firmware next week and releasing it a few weeks later. Why would you do that for a firmware update. It’s not a new product. Just announce/release at the same time. Instead I’m now being strung even further along. You replied and said next week, which is clever wording to the point of being deceptive because now I am going to be scouring the website until I see the update release and notes, and it won’t actually even be there for another few weeks. Stringing me along and wasting my time. You guys are worse than a used car sales man. I have never purchased such an unpolished expensive item. And it will be my last, serves me right for thinking I could get away from the other proven companies out there. You guys have made an elegant beautiful remote and at this point the only thing I can hope is that everyone else takes notice to their sales and their competitors and simply makes a nice looking/simple remote and I’m jumping ship as fast as humanly possibly. This is a diseaster with no end in sight. I’m just going to continue to be told a few more weeks indefinitely until you’re blue in the face. I mean come on.
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Joseph Plunkett That is not what I said. Not too sure how you got that message and typically every time we announce a new firmware; the firmware is already been released.
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Jeff then why did you tell me next week and the other gentlemen next few weeks or so. Very conflicting.
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Jeff
Quotes from you about the new firmware
2 days ago To Joseph Plunkett
"New firmware with multi-brain will be announced next week."
Yesterday To Beni
"Meaning we should be releasing a new firmware in the next few weeks or so. "
It's gone from "next week" to "next few weeks or so" in one day! That's a big difference and is why people are confused and annoyed too.
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Geoff T Joseph Plunkett Releasing firmware is not as simple as one would think. I am vague for a reason. We had a test version that we tested and were ready to put it into beta then we found a bug that needs to get addressed. So now, that pushes the release out a bit more. You guys keep going back and forth assuming things when I have been very clear that we are working on a firmware and it will be released. This is exactly we say "a few weeks" etc.
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Jeff I understand your challenges and you’re reasoning. I get it. But don’t get upset with me asking for a real timeline. I am not the one who sold a completely unpolished product as final. I did a lot of research on this remote prior to purchasing and not once did I come across anything that hinted that it wouldn’t control my set up properly. A set up that is probably the 2nd most common home theater set up out there. So I called customer support, explained my problem. And the person (Jose) who was very nice and helpful, told me this firmware was coming and would resolve my needs without purchasing oddball 3rd party amazon junk and without having to build a raspberry pi box and locate code and build my own solution. If I was going to do that I wouldn’t of purchased your product in the first place. So I bought an additional brain, in anticipation for this firmware, and yes I am asking for updates on the firmware as I patiently wait to be able to properly use the $500+ worth of hardware I purchased from you guys. You can be mad at me all you want for answering. All I want to do is use my remote without having a box set up on an end table and a wire wedged in the door frame going into my closet. I want to support you guys, I’ve purchased and purchased again and would purchase again for my other home theater and my other tvs because it’s eaiser than having to teach my wife how to use 3 different remotes. But you guys are making it very hard for me to do so. You guys should be amped up, motivated and driven to push these features out sooner, because you are one sexy looking remote from your competitors away from never selling another’s one. Because right now that’s the only reason anyone would buy this over any other solution on the market. You’re remote is beautiful, and that’s about it. Because right now it doesn’t nothing more than what a Stock remote provided by your cable provider would. Maybe capable of much more, but doesn’t actually do anything more. So please ponder on that with your team one of these days. I am not trying to be mean but I am genuinely insulted. All I want to known is why you told me one thing and this guy another. And apparently in 24 hours you guys discovered ground breaking info that pushed your release back weeks. Not to mention much of this could be alleviated if you guys had some kind of development board that people could simply click on and view progress and read notes. No other company does that, I get that, but no other company has a product they sell that’s basically non functional.
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Joseph Plunkett Just to be clear, I am no way shape or form upset and I apologize if that is how I came across. Nevertheless, the firmware update will be announced soon. I appreciate your continued patience in this matter.
Best,
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Jeff Okay, I think its time that you be more specific , what kind of bug are we talking about ?
also please tell us which features and fixes will be included in the upcoming firmware.
I have the awkward "customer experience" I´m getting lied to.
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Daniel Sütel there is no reason to get specific on something that Will never see the public version anyway. Some times a bug is found during beta testing, thats what a beta test is for. If its a critical bug then it Cannon be released until fixed.
Jeff Has exactly told the situation, I can confirm that. It’s one of the worst kept secrets that I’m amongst the beta team even though I’m not supposed to tell. NEEO team members including have said before that soon a release was coming and that was honest at that point. But if a bug is found that may effect some users then it’s delayed. Also good to know is that not everything stops at that point. Normal development and lesser bugs still getting attention. I know the NEEO team could improve letting know what they’re working on but that’s beside this point.
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Niels de Klerk Niels, its NEEO obligation to build trust to the customers. That you do by giving information the customer appreciates as valuable. its not about the bug its about the act of beeing open and be received as trustworthy.
Your position reflects as a perfect example of beeing non objective to the whole situation.
The title says it "tech enthusiast and NEEO Fanboy" , that exactly how you beeing received.
I would recommend to leave the communication to the real experts at NEEO , but by lack of them existing I´m undecided.
Certainly it does not help if a Beta Tester is "understanding" , to the contrary , it fuels the fire of frustration.
As always its nothing personal.
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Daniel Sütel it’s really simple if anyone of NEEO tells their expectations of what and when in regards to firmware they get the same crap as Jeff now got for telling you. And if it changes for whatever reason they will get the same crap twice again. Making your and others comments play a big part in what you see as a problem.
Its clear you don’t trust what is said, I know that Jeff said is correct so I confirm that to you. Just know I don’t care if you believe me or what you think of it, I’ll sleep just as well. In the end it’s you not believing, while blaming the rest.
i know there’s no point holding the mirror but hey, I tried.
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Daniel Sütel lol. Nah I’m not angry. I do really understand you want your setup to work. It just doesn’t help to be angry as it won’t speed up things. They are not stalling it and they are working hard to deliver. But until it’s finished, they cannot be sure when that will happen. I’m sure you will be pissed off when the firmware was released with multi brain but you couldn’t use your setup because of a bug. Either way they often are in a difficult situation.
I’m not here to come up for Jeff or NEEO. He can probably handle himself better then I can lol. I’m here on PN a lot because I love the product and like to help out.
Dont think I’m talking easy because I’m beta. In between versions I’m waiting more or less the same period and potentially run into blocking issues. Now this doesn’t happen to often luckily but it does happen sometimes.
Im not hiding im a fanboy, that doesn’t mean I won’t criticize NEEO.
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Daniel Sütel Let me tell you from one who is by no definition a fanboy (it's one of my worst kept secrets that I am not amused by the ongoing lack of native Bluetooth support, IR learning and the pace this is coming along and I still favor my Harmony over NEEO) that I am totally with Jeff and Niels de Klerk in that matter.
I totally understood Jeff referring to an announcement with further details on a relase pending. There simply cannot be a reliable "preannouncement" of a release date. The moment you can is when it is tested bug free (is there such a thing?) - plus all the documentation done - so, actually "Now!". Not a week ahead, not a day, even not an hour.
Things can happen up to the last moment. This includes the requirement to hide features from the GUI that have shown bugs during beta or even excluding them in the code (requiring another spin of test). Thus, it is also difficult to give reliable announcements what exactly is included.
At least we do know that apprently MultiBrain is one of the features allthough, did I mention, I was really hoping for Bluetooth control and Hue bridge scenes.
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Klaus Grosser I have led a team of Software engineers for PLC and microcontroller for over 4 years. I know exactly how its done and I know exactly that you have a scope from the First day on you start coding. Also you should be able to release function A even if function B is giving you a headache. Also if the timeline looks shit you need turn back on the scope or throw more men at the project. If that doesnt help you sleep and eat in the Office. Besides that , customers dont care about problems neither does the competition. They want product, fast , good, reliable
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Daniel Sütel Of course, everybody wants a perfect solution and that in no time and no money paid for it. but this never exited. Let me say the part with sleep in the office was done by the Team (don't know if still or not) but there where sleep bags in the office, but you still can encounter issues that are unrelated to any function you additionally code and this can stop a whole project from going live, so the communication stated there will be new software coming, so everybody should at least see a visual that there is work put in (if they believe or not, must be decided by each person itself).
Klaus Grosser A developer always try to get a bug free code, and until somebody is able to prove the other way, the code is considered bug free 🤣
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If you want this functionality now - I have it built into the openHAB integration I did. Don't know if you want to go that route but thought I'd throw it out there until the firmware becomes available..
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Tim Roberts , i can vouch for this. Without Tim’s great work I would have tossed NEEO a long time ago. Still believe the NEEO firmware should be made open source. I sense some anxiety in the inconsistent responses from NEEO about the firmware release date. If it doesn’t deliver I don’t know how NEEO could recover other than making the firmware available to their Community. I bet within a very short time the user experience would be vastly different and improved. But for now I’m grateful to people like Tim for making this at least a somewhat bearable experience. Thanks again for your effort and time.
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Daniel Sütel Klaus Grosser Niels de Klerk I appreciate everyone jumping in and voicing their opinions. What we need to avoid as much as possible is cursing or taking "shots" at one another. In an earlier post Joseph Plunkett took one my responses as disrespectful and as you all know, that is not who I am and what this forum should EVER become. At the end of the day, we all want the same thing a NEEO that works reliably for all of our use cases. I wish I can be open and share specific information as then everyone here would have the "Aha" moment and have a better understanding of our constraints.
I agree that we (NEEO) need to do a much better job at communicating on things to come, but to be fair we also share much more information than many other tech companies. Often this is difficult for a variety of reasons. Nevertheless, the update is being worked on as we speak.
Klaus Grosser Based on what I have gathered, I do not foresee any Bluetooth support anytime soon. Believe me, I am advocating for IR learning too and last I heard this was being tested by an engineer in our Switzerland office.
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Jeff If your statement about the blietooth is true its definitively time to sell my neeo. cec is just no usable and the competitors can handle bluetooth devices without any issue.
sad to have such a nice hardware with the lack of proper software :-(
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Jeff I dont understand you personally , you repeat this statement
Jeff said:
need to do a much better job at communicatingbut you use wording like
Jeff said:
Based on what I have gatheredJeff said:
we also share much more information than many other tech companiesfirst quote is leaving you as the messenger the door open to step back from the made statement. Well this is the easy way , I be vague , so no risk for me. I dont like to believe that you´re left out of company communication streams that much that you actually dont have access to those valuable information.
second quote I suspect should made us the customers believe NEEO is the good guy in the wild west where all the others are much worse. Might be case (I highly doubt that) , but is totally unimportant . You can use a million words and say nothing or one sentence which has very valuable information. I dont care about the others, NEEO is what I paid for.
You are the Head of customer experience, head of , this title I refer to as a main management position who leads by example, makes decision to greater the value and the reception of the company, who initiates changes to constantly improve his and the performance of others around him.
You want to make the customers happy !
No Bluetooth makes me sad !
No information which feature from the voting session will come when makes me sad !
No roadmap of bigger things to come (multi brain functionality is not as big as you think it is) makes me sad !
NEEO had numerous oppertunities to improve the communication, customer approach policy, clean up the mess, start with a fresh approach to regain trust.
No, I have not seen anything of that.
you´re not listening to the voice of the customer, which is number 1 duty of any sucessful business
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Daniel Sütel The issue here is, that Jeff is based in the USA (California) and the Development is settled in Swiss (Bern) so all Info's he is sharing needs to be gathered ;-)
Should be possible to see from anybody here, due to the times answers are posted. Also you can find these info's at neeo.com
At least, this is what i believe!
You shouldn't forget, that Jeff is also an Employee of NEEO and therefor may also have limitations (like everybody when employed today) when it comes to company internals. Therefor i think he is making a very good job, if he is not allowed to tell something, this can be multiple reasons.
I still believe i the Product, that Bluetooth is not visible on the horizon makes me sad as well, but i also see much other issues, that needs to be addressed so if they going to improve CEC to a useful feature, that it is easier and provide a better experience as IR. Also CEC is a easier protocol as you have a dedicated small set of Commands and the protocol is limited and fully available and needs to be supported by all company's that use it. So from development sight, this is the easier feature to implement.
Bluetooth has also a limited set of dedicated functions, but each company can use own implementations and this needs to be available as well (and needs to be coded individual for each device).
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What I struggle with is comments like 'I do not foresee any Bluetooth support anytime soon' yet it still states on neeo.com that it support Bluetooth 4.0!
Bluetooth is fairly big feature and needs sorting or clear communication and updating of www to be clear. Otherwise its false adversting.
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Paul McEwan In wrong advertising or announcing things the company NEEO is very good. The hardware supports things like Bluetooth 4.0, ZigBee, Built-in IR receiver (learning mode), but without the appropriate software which can address the hardware the features promised are not usable. If NEEO at least had clearly communicated with a thick note that it is planned sometime in the distant future, then that would have saved the one or the other disappointment or one or the other user would not have bought the device at the present time. Now some users, who have bought the device exactly because of the product features, have to wait an eternity that the software supports the features listed on the website.
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I wonder if the pro will have bluetooth support and hand recgonition?
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Paul McEwan I don’t expect before our combos have support. The hardware is included the software is not.
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Neeo RIP.
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Well looks like no more updates. RIP neeo indeed. Glad I supported them enough to to show positive financials get them to be bought out by someone else. You’re welcome Raphael
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