Product updates

Remote Two has been out in the wild for over half a year now. We’ve been following with curiosity and interest how you all use your remotes with your setups. We are happy to see that in most instances it works quite well, but we also noticed there are areas, that need improvement.

Software updates have been rolling out on a regular basis to fix bugs, improve existing features as well as introduce new ones. 

However we recognised the need for a user experience that makes it easier to set things up. A few months ago we started thinking about how we can improve the setup and configuration process.

We have also researched alternative technologies of what we are using at the moment. The remote’s user interface is built with Qt and QML, which has been serving us well, despite some of its downsides. However there has been advancement in technologies and tools. We evaluated alternatives to replace Qt with a more modern alternative, that has better developer experience, easily runs on different platforms and has a bigger community. In short, something that allows us to move forward faster. We’re not going to reveal what it is just yet, but we have already started to port our ui application over to this new platform.

Design/UX updates for the remote UI and the Web Configurator have been in the works for a few months now. There’s still a lot to do until the release, but as we’re getting closer to the finish line, we’ll be sharing more and more of the new looks and features, what we’re changing and how we’re planning to make configuration easier.

As a first teaser, here’s the new dashboard, a place where you can start setting up and customising your remote. And yes, we’re bringing support for mobile as well.

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We won’t stop updating and improving the current version until this release, so you can still expect regular software updates. With the latest software update it's possible now to opt-in to beta releases. This means that you’ll be able to sign up to receive beta software, but be aware that these updates might not be stable. We don’t recommend using beta firmware on your devices you use daily.

We’re really excited about what we have in the works and can’t wait to show you more as we think it will elevate the experience of using Remote Two!

Added

• Public opt-in for beta-software updates.
• IR codes for Lumagen Radiance Pro (#198).

Fixed

• Web-configurator:
  • Scrollbars displayed on custom icons page (#336).
  • IR-remote button mappings don't show assigned command in edit dialog.
• Apple TV integration: device is no longer switched on with the switch-off command in standby mode (#349).
• Denon AVR integration: New commands: dpad, menu, context_menu and info. Contributed by @albaintor, thanks! (integration-denonavr#33).

Changed

• Apple TV integration: "menu"-command instead of "settings" for control-center (#56).

Fixed

• Long press only mapping doesn't work (#94).
• UI reports old integration version (#338).
• Apple TV integration:
  • Invalid driver metadata file for the Remote Two (#340).
  • Temporary workaround for standby check (integration-appletv#15).

New Features

• Allow disabling the status LED with a brightness value set to 0, except for OTA update, identify, and factory reset indications (#51).

Bug Fixes

• Disable ethernet LED if there's no link (#36).
  With a link and the LED brightness set to 0, the LED will be switched off 3 seconds after receiving an IP address.
• Improved OTA update error handling for invalid, aborted or dropped uploads.

Changes

• Reduce LED pattern debug logging

Added

• Long- and short-press button mappings support in the web-configurator and user interface (feature-and-bug-tracker#56, feature-and-bug-tracker#90, feature-and-bug-tracker#94).
  • Please note that the additional commands are only supported in the Apple TV integration at the moment. The other integrations will be enhanced with future updates.
• New media-player features, commands and button mappings (core-api#32).
• Show network indicator in entity detail screen.
• Apple TV integration:
  • New media-player features (#56):
  • Multi-device support (#118).
  • Enhanced reconfiguration and manual setup option with IP address.
• Propagate entity feature-changes to already configured entities, for example if a device supports more features in a driver update.
  • This is triggered if the integration driver version changes, or if the user requests the available entities.

Fixed

• User interface:
  • Entity detail screen closed if entity is unavailable.
  • Media player:
    • only update the image if image url has changed (#327).
    • do not clear data if entity is unavailable.
    • button mappings for all device classes.
    • artwork aspect ratio was incorrect in some cases.
  • Wrongly showing failed integration setup in some cases, when setup was successful.
• Web-configurator: show correct dock LED brightness when set to 0 (#304).
• Apple TV integration:
  • Only discover Apple TV 4 and newer devices (#173).
  • Improved disconnect & reconnect handling. This should solve the reported BlockedStateError issues (#300).
  • Automatically wake up Apple TV if a command is sent while it is in standby.
  • Fast-forward and rewind commands.
  • Automatically migrate old configuration file at startup and beginning of configuration flow.
• Home-Assistant integration: correctly report integration driver version.

Changed

• Speed up dock & integration connection logic for Android TV, Apple TV, Denon AVR, Home-Assistant (#320).
• Entity detail screen can be also closed with long press of Home or Back buttons.
• Home-Assistant integration: disconnect from HA server in standby (integration-home-assistant#50).
• Apple TV integration:
  • Play/Pause will exit screensaver and continue playing paused media.
  • Update pyatv client library and other dependencies to fix possible connectivity issues.

Fixed

• Dock LED brightness not shown correctly in UI (remote-ui#14).
• Activity loading stuck  (#311).

Fixed

• Media player button mapping not working in an activity (#237).
• Media player progress time might go over boundaries.
• Entity state texts can be translated and are available on Crowdin (#290).
• Web-configurator:
  - Visual bug when moving items in user interface page (#275).
  - Dock LED brightness setting (#304).
• Home Assistant integration:
  - Extract and convert color information from received HA light entities to follow external color changes. Supported color models: xy, hs, rgb (integration-home-assistant#7).
  - Connection timeout setting was used as request timeout. TCP connection timeout was always set to 5 seconds (integration-home-assistant#47).
  - Connection state handling in initial setup to avoid restart (integration-home-assistant#43).

Changed

• Info logs for button events

Fixed

• Device power state handling when switching activities in the same activity group. Fixes for "Turn off unused entities" options:
  - "Always": determine correct power commands of IR remote-entities (#225).
  - "Run modified off sequence": correct order of original power-off sequence commands (#286).
• Regression in activity groups when adding an activity to a group: activity is correctly associated to the group without having to restart the remote (#225).

Added

• Activity groups: New option for switching activities: "Run modified off sequence" (#64).
  - Run the original off-sequence of the old activity and dynamically filter out power-off commands.
• Web-configurator: configure, check and install Remote Two software updates (#274).
• Dynamic power toggle feature in remote-entity. Automatically add a POWER_TOGGLE command if the IR dataset has POWER_ON and POWER_OFF commands.

Fixed

• Web-configurator:
  - Show correct dock status LED brightness value (#178).
  - Available entities not shown in last setup-flow step.
  - Backup: Show status display for backup and restore operations.
• Integration drivers: subscribe_events message sequence order after authentication (#272).
• Entity group toggle only toggles the first entity in the group (#279).
• Activity group shows the set default options for "Remove delays after turn-on commands" and "turn-off unused entities" instead of an empty setting.
• Web-configurator dock handling:
  - Show correct version number after firmware update (#179).
  - Improved error handling if firmware update failed (#54, #184).
  - Show dock release notes if a new update is available.
  - Clicking on the available dock firmware update notification opens the dock information and doesn't automatically trigger the update anymore.
• Activity states are lost when editing an activity group (#225).

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Fixed

• Backup restore of larger custom IR codesets fails because of size limit.
• Core-API: retrieve dock status LED brightness setting. Web-configurator will be fixed in a future update.