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Homey infrared

Like Emile said on friday : "If your remote cannot be found, just let us know! We're on top of making our database as complete as can be."

To make this more easy for you and for us I made a google form.  Have fun and thanks in advance!

 https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfBB5gPhwLqYG4h9_ezY1w41swtRrNlgsHLtUdfPORfpj4YhA/viewform


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Comments

  • The 'extra info part' is for example when you can not find your model number or there is something really specific we need to know.
  • I'm sorry to say but why are you building you're own database with IR codes? I can't image that there is no such database already available to buy or open source. This will lead to annoyances  because their (read all..) devices are not yet supported.

    If you, for instance, could start with the database that the harmony logic product line uses that would be great. But I guess that would cost you big money..
  • ZperXZperX Member
    edited September 2016
    Yes totally with @jjtbsomhorst 
    Or as been mentioned many-many times on this forum: make a central database where we can directly add, rate and change IR codes by HEX, Pronto.

    Don`t underestimate the power of the community. Look at the app store. Also this will allow Athom to focus on other things.
  • I don't understand why they can't find a way to reuse the database they had before.
  • ZperXZperX Member
    edited September 2016
     
  • supericesuperice Member
    edited September 2016
    I'm sorry to say but why are you building you're own database with IR codes? I can't image that there is no such database already available to buy or open source. This will lead to annoyances  because their (read all..) devices are not yet supported.

    If you, for instance, could start with the database that the harmony logic product line uses that would be great. But I guess that would cost you big money..
    No, there is no open source database of sufficient quality. The closest thing to that would be the LIRC-database, and although we've used parts of that in the past, the quality of those signals is often not good enough for a commercial product like Homey.

    Even if such databases exist, most of the time they do not contain enough information. Regular IR devices often use specific hardware to received their specific signal. Homey can't do that, since it needs to be able to send and receive EVERY type of signal. This means we have to do really advanced things in software that other product are able to do in hardware, like noise cancelling when receiving IR. To do this we need to have a solid understanding how the signal looks like: we can't really do many smart tricks with plain prontohex codes. We need to know the start pulse of a signal, what the 'words' in a signal look like, and preferably what carrier frequency the signal uses. Regular prontohex does not provide this information in a satisfactory manner.

    Since we have comparable problems on 434 and 868MHz, we've decided to use the same way of defining a signal for infrared. The LIRC database is actually quite close to our format, so it was easy to make a huge database of LIRC-signals, but as mentioned earlier, the quality of these signals (mostly the quality of the metadata) is just too low.

    Over the past few months I've been working on software that can convert a bunch of related prontohex codes to our internal signal definition format. This involves some machine learning, as well as just trying to fit 'known' formats of signals. It's the closest thing to actual magic I've performed: it recognizes data out of unrecognizable blobs of IR codes. I'm convinced that part works great right now, I can safely say that piece of software is the best tested software within all of Athoms' code, so we can convert almost any hex config to something Homey can receive properly, so that's great news Stefan did some great work with finding prontohex definitions of all recent models of popular TV brands. The quality of those are great, and we've actually tested at mediamarkt with loads of devices to confirm they work as expected. Over time we will add more configs to that database, and we will strive to make them all of exceptional quality.

    The manual learning part is tricky. What Homey receives is a raw version of the signal, which is pretty close to prontohex. There are some other complex things involved, but mostly, we try to run manually learned signals to the same converter we use for the prontohex sheets in the database, so the performance of Homey with manually learned signals is comparable to those of the database. When the software doesn't know what to do with the prontohex codes, and can't convert it to our signal definition (this may happen when you're using different remotes in one learning session, or when you just teach Homey a single button) we keep it as a prontohex signal internally. Homey can send prontohex pretty okay-ish, although our signal format works better. Receiving however is sheer impossible without the extra data Homey needs to do noise cancelling, filtering, and signal matching, so we disable that if we couldn't convert the raw signal.

    So yeah, we're creating our own database, but that's mostly because we want to be able to receive IR in a generic way as well. Plus, that gives us a way to do a quality check on every signal we put in our database. 

    TL;DR: We went for quality over quantity this time. A full database in which no config works as expected serves nobody, so we want to make sure that signals that are in the database work great

    This post turned out way longer than expected xD
  • @superice ;
    Thank you so much for the in depth explanation. It is very much needed at this point and is very much appreciated.
    • Since you can convert between HEX and your code a partially editable central database would be more than valuable. Limited code is still better than no code.
    • The receiver side of Homey used to be exceptionally sensitive. It could receive a signal shot from an other room (with 1-3 bounce). Now homey only react to every 4th-5th a signal if we direct it straight to homey. If it 10° off-course (@ 2-3m) than the signal is never `received`. I don`t know if it is due the new noise cancelling but could you please restore that sensitivity? Perhaps the noise canceling could be reduced when not in learning mode.
    • Would it be possible to see the received codes in homey and edit-fine-tune the properties there?
    IR is still the most widely used control protocol (after dry contact).
  • @superice Nice, I enjoyed reading that. Insightful information
  • Thanks @superice for this great post. But I still have one question:

    "Regular IR devices often use specific hardware to received their specific signal"

    How are the Harmony Logitech devices doing this? Over the years they have build a HUGE database of devices.

  • bvdbosbvdbos Member
    edited September 2016
    Probably at the same way Homey is doing this... And as you state, it took them some time while the Harmony-team only had one protocol to support... I guess...
  • And I guess the Logitech Harmony DB won't be open source/available, lol
  • ZperX said:
    @superice ;
    Thank you so much for the in depth explanation. It is very much needed at this point and is very much appreciated.
    • Since you can convert between HEX and your code a partially editable central database would be more than valuable. Limited code is still better than no code.
    • The receiver side of Homey used to be exceptionally sensitive. It could receive a signal shot from an other room (with 1-3 bounce). Now homey only react to every 4th-5th a signal if we direct it straight to homey. If it 10° off-course (@ 2-3m) than the signal is never `received`. I don`t know if it is due the new noise cancelling but could you please restore that sensitivity? Perhaps the noise canceling could be reduced when not in learning mode.
    • Would it be possible to see the received codes in homey and edit-fine-tune the properties there?
    IR is still the most widely used control protocol (after dry contact).
    Interesting, receiving should still be working fine as we've only edited the configurations, not so much the noise cancellation code. Are you aware of the fact that although Homey has six infrared LED (transmitters), it only has one receiver, located on the 'lowest' side of the LED-ring? If you have rotated your Homey since the last time, you may have a lesser experience. We could probably change the sensitivity of the noise cancelling to be a little less specific, but we'd have to test whether that works as well if you have two signals that look a lot like each other.

    Does it work as badly in the pairing wizard (if you press a button in the list view when selecting a signal from the database it should highlight the button in blue when pressed) compared to the flow triggers?

    Thanks @superice for this great post. But I still have one question:

    "Regular IR devices often use specific hardware to received their specific signal"

    How are the Harmony Logitech devices doing this? Over the years they have build a HUGE database of devices.


    I don't think Harmony is centered around receiving except for their own internal protocol, their main feature is transmitting right? Transmitting is easier because you don't need all kinds of noise and echo cancellation, so it's much less of a challenge to get it right (although I have to say, I'm impressed with the Harmony Hub, their metadata and labeling in their database is quite good!)



    By the way, I don't know if you guys have noticed, but the signals in our database sometimes provide discrete codes as well. For example, the Samsung Most Models configuration has an explicit Power On command, so you don't accidentally turn the tv off if it's already on :) That's something I personally use a lot :)
  • superice said:
    Interesting, receiving should still be working fine as we've only edited the configurations, not so much the noise cancellation code. Are you aware of the fact that although Homey has six infrared LED (transmitters), it only has one receiver, located on the 'lowest' side of the LED-ring? If you have rotated your Homey since the last time, you may have a lesser experience. We could probably change the sensitivity of the noise cancelling to be a little less specific, but we'd have to test whether that works as well if you have two signals that look a lot like each other.

    Does it work as badly in the pairing wizard (if you press a button in the list view when selecting a signal from the database it should highlight the button in blue when pressed) compared to the flow triggers?
    Yes I know the receiver is the black rectangle box at the front behind the ring. To be honest I was so surprised how sensitive it was despite it does not have direct view to outside world. If I could flash the old firmware to homey I could show the difference. It is earth and sky. I was not exaggerating when I said I could send IR signal from the other room with ~1-3 bounce. So direct view was not needed at all. I haven`t moved homey since. Yes the sensitivity seems to be the same in all scenarios.
    superice said:
    By the way, I don't know if you guys have noticed, but the signals in our database sometimes provide discrete codes as well. For example, the Samsung Most Models configuration has an explicit Power On command, so you don't accidentally turn the tv off if it's already on :) That's something I personally use a lot :)
    That is an other reason why it would be valuable to have an editable database so we can add discrete codes too (from harmony or other sources). So those too not having harmony can benefit from the discrete codes.
  • @superice Kudos for the "Power On" (and other discrete options!)

    Unfortunately it's not working for my (only) AV input.. AV1/AV2 don't work for me.. not a dealbreaker, but it fits my Nintendo 64 flow haha  :)
  • superice said:
    I don't think Harmony is centered around receiving except for their own internal protocol, their main feature is transmitting right? 
    I think Harmony also has the ability to learn IR-commands which it does not know, similar as Homey. But perhaps because they have such an extensive database the need is much less to use it. BTW The guys from NEEO are also building their own IR-database and also try to use the discrete codes as much as possible, perhaps hack into that :wink: Although it will probably be a couple of years should it ever arrive...  
  • Many phones have built in IR database and learning capabilities.
  • Julian said:
    I think Harmony also has the ability to learn IR-commands which it does not know, similar as Homey.
    Confirmed. Harmony can learn IR signals from devices it doesn't know... the remote has learning functionality built in... see also this support article. This works quite well, most of the time (though you may have to repeat the steps a couple of times to get it right).
  • Julian said:
    superice said:
    I don't think Harmony is centered around receiving except for their own internal protocol, their main feature is transmitting right? 
    I think Harmony also has the ability to learn IR-commands which it does not know, similar as Homey. But perhaps because they have such an extensive database the need is much less to use it. BTW The guys from NEEO are also building their own IR-database and also try to use the discrete codes as much as possible, perhaps hack into that :wink: Although it will probably be a couple of years should it ever arrive...  
    Ah yes, but learning something quite different since you can 'afford' to require users to teach Homey the remote from up close. When actually receiving for flows and stuff like that the performance has to be much better, and we can't just listen for the raw signal then because we can't do noise filtering on raw signals.

    Bumblez said:
    Julian said:
    I think Harmony also has the ability to learn IR-commands which it does not know, similar as Homey.
    Confirmed. Harmony can learn IR signals from devices it doesn't know... the remote has learning functionality built in... see also this support article. This works quite well, most of the time (though you may have to repeat the steps a couple of times to get it right).
    This is exactly my point. When using a 'received' card in a Flow, you can't afford to have to do it a few times to get it to work, that would be a bad user experience. Therefore, we have to do much more noise filtering and signal parsing than the Harmony on the receiving side. Pairing may be quite similar, but there just aren't that many products that do receiving 'in the wild' precisely for these noise cancellation reasons.
  • @superice - to be clear, I was talking about having to repeat the learning steps a couple of times, to get Harmony to learn the IR buttons correctly. Once they have been learned, triggering the assigned function once will also trigger the IR signal.

  • just tried to pair my Panasonic airconditioning. I tried pairing the OnOff button via the self learning app. Whenever I try to turn my airco on via a flow, the action card 'Push a button' just keeps spinning and nothing happens.. I am on FW 0.10.1. Any of you guys experience the same issue?
  • IR working too good here, both for generic devices as for custom devices. Too good sometimes as a signal gets send multiple times (bug 946) and because of that my stereo jumps to eco-mode...
  • Right now I'm using Peel Smart Remote: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=tv.peel.app&hl=nl to control my TV, they seem to have a big database and work from almost all ranges within my appartment...
  • @superice You could maybe have a talk with these guys. www.neeo.com I know they faced the same challenges regarding IR and available databases. They have chosen to build their own database for the same reasons. I can get you in contact with Raphael Oberholzer, Their CEO. 
    (If your interested and if he allows me to share his contact info that is)
  • nklerk said:
    @superice You could maybe have a talk with these guys. www.neeo.com I know they faced the same challenges regarding IR and available databases. They have chosen to build their own database for the same reasons. I can get you in contact with Raphael Oberholzer, Their CEO. 
    (If your interested and if he allows me to share his contact info that is)
    @superice ;
  • The competition? It is not just remote but home automation. I am sure they have a hybrid database with some 3rd party codes and their own. There is no way they can build a database for all/most products manufactured all around the world in the last 10-15 years. For the new products available in Europe is a different story.
  • jordenjorden Member
    edited October 2016
    Did anyone get the Samsung Horizon remote working yet?

    EDIT: Just tried to learn one button of my Sony TV, just to try. When I test the flow, the action keeps on spinning... (not sure if the TV is in range, but shouldn't it get a green √ ???)
  • I see the same with the vradio app but that's because of media-components missing in Homey.
  • ZperX said:
    The competition? It is not just remote but home automation. I am sure they have a hybrid database with some 3rd party codes and their own. There is no way they can build a database for all/most products manufactured all around the world in the last 10-15 years. For the new products available in Europe is a different story.
    You're wrong. They have build their own database. Supporting all products is something different than having it in your database. Their database isn't that extensive that it holds 15 years of products. I know they have spent a huge amount of effort in it. It's one of their main pillars. For homey it's voice controlled home automation with iR being a smaller part. 

    they are competitors on some level. It doesn't rule out they can offer each other something. Both being startups in a similar technology. Logitech will never sell their database that's for sure. And the other databases available are of poor quality.

    I definitely understand if either or both are not interested. I'm just offering a way to get them in contact with each other. Who knows what could happen.
  • I have played with IR yesterday and some things worked fine, while others didn't. I have added my Philips TV as a device and Homey is able to switch the TV on and off. This works fine.
    But I also have some IR-candles with a small remote (just on/off). Homey did notice my key presses, but when I try to switch the candles on or off, nothing happens.
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