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We have tried to structure the RedEye system around the way you actually use your home theater equipment. Even so, sometimes a high-level overview can be helpful. Here is a brief rundown of the philosophy and the basic concepts you’ll encounter when using RedEye.
Infrared remote control. Since the 1970’s, most wireless remote controls for home theater equipment have relied upon infrared signals. While relatively easy and inexpensive to produce, infrared signals have some drawbacks:
- Most infrared remote controls are “one-way” — that is, they only send signals to the equipment and cannot receive information back from them.
- Infrared signals cannot travel through walls or other opaque objects. Often this limitation is referred to as the “line of sight” problem: your equipment must have an unobstructed view of the remote control in order for the system to work.
- Infrared signals have relatively poor range — usually between 25 and 50 feet (7.5 to 15 meters). In addition, sunlight contains large amounts of infrared light can degrade the effective range of an infrared remote.
- Infrared signals are “low bandwidth” — meaning that they cannot send large amounts of information quickly. As a result, they are good for turning the TV off or on, but forget about streaming audio or video.
Radio frequency remote control. Radio frequency remotes also use light waves to send signals, but they use higher frequency microwaves, which gives them certain advantages. Chief among these are the ability to travel through walls, longer range, and wider bandwidth. Although much less common than infrared remotes, radio frequency remote controls have become more popular recently as they have become more affordable. For example, both the Sony Playstation 3 and the Nintendo Wii use radio frequency (Bluetooth) remote controls.
The RedEye system uses both infrared (IR) and radio frequency (RF) signals. The RedEye dock sends out IR signals to control your home theater equipment. However, in order to overcome the limitations of IR, it communicates with your iPhone using RF signals — specifically, a Wi-Fi network. This combination of IR and RF gives you the best of both worlds: compatibility with a wide array of equipment over IR, and the ability to control your equipment from any room in your house over RF.
Rooms. Because of the practical limitations of IR, a RedEye hardware unit must have line of sight to the equipment you are controlling. Thus each RedEye unit corresponds to one room in your house. If some of the equipment in a particular room is tucked away in a closet or A/V rack, we recommend using an IR repeater.
Devices. A device is a piece of equipment in your home theater system, such as a TV or DVD player. Within the RedEye application you should add a device for each piece of equipment you want to control.
Commands. A command is a bit of functionality that you can use to control a particular device. For example, you might have a command to turn on your TV, and another to turn up the volume.
Activities. An activity is something that you do with your home theater setup, such as Watch a DVD or Listen to an MP3. Activities are a powerful way of grouping functionality from a number of different devices in one place. Because they are based around what you do rather than the different pieces of equipment that you own, activities make it easier to operate complex home theater systems.
For example, consider all of the equipment involved in watching a DVD. At the very least you need a television and a DVD player. In many cases, you also have a surround sound system. To watch the DVD, you need to turn on all of these devices and then tune the TV and the sound system to the proper inputs. Then which remote control do you use? You want the TV or sound system remote to change volume, but the DVD remote to access the menu and specific titles. With RedEye activities, one tap on your iPhone turns on everything and presents you with a single button layout so you don’t have to juggle remotes.
The general idea behind activities is that less is more. Activity button layouts should include only the buttons that you regularly use. Commands that you use less frequently are always available through the “Commands” and “Devices” screens in the application, so there is no need to complicate the button layout by adding them there, as well.