Just gotten my remotes. Hardware looks great, working, connected fine to the app, for one I tried the firmware upgrade, all very nice so far.
But firstly apologies this is a bit of a brain dump, but hopefully there is something useful here.
The SkipApp has some oddities.
Firstly where I can run it. It doesn't want to run on Windows 10 Home laptop, just throws as weird error ('0x80073CFD') and its an old error which would suggest the solution is to upgrade Windows! Then tried my old mac laptop and found that needs to be 10.15 minimum (I did say it was old, but as a laptop its fine, just no go with Skip). So only machine able to run this is a large Windows 11 desktop... not the easiest thing to move around, so is limiting my testing.
So wider support for OS versions and OS's in general would be nice to have in the future, Linux would be very nice, maybe mobile, but that opens another huge can of worms.
In the app, I've noticed that when I try to clear a button (especially on power button), the wastebasket icon would start to fill and then it disappears before filling up and so never deletes the item. Thankfully there is the clear all, but this is a pain if you are setting up a sequence of IR codes to send out.
The sequencing between switching activities I got it to work once using the power button and some combination of power button and activity, but since then I can't find that combination again. This generally doesn't feel right and simple to for family members to just pick up and use. Ideally I'd like to press button A, and that starts a sequence, that selects all the inputs etc, volumes, etc. And when you leave an activity (by pressing one of the other two), it would be nice to have an exit sequence to occur (like the power button now, but instead attach that to the actual A,B & C's). That then frees up the power button to do just higher level tasks if people want like turn services on and off ready for what ever they plan to do.
e.g. start of the evening, press power, to turn things on, and then activity B to start watching, then when done power to turn it all off or a different activity to switch to A.
Just reminded of the old web design rule of reducing the number of links people need to click on, to get what they want.
Onto remotes available and quick test of the codes, its sometimes hard to find what product matches your description, perhaps to save space in the app, is it possible to have a web database, where we can search for our devices, and it shows us the recommend one(s) to try/use within the app.
The lack of "memory" between activities on what devices you have, is as frustrating as I thought (especially with the above remembering what everything is called). A favourites category would solve this, but I could just clone Activity A to Activity B, and then modify B that would work well, and in fact might be better as this would be useful as most times, you are changing out just one device for another - (eg. a bluray for a roku) while the tv, amp, etc stays the same.
I know learning IR codes is on the to-do list, but is there a way we can help support and grow these codes, but submitting our own remotes, for rare devices. so far ones that I can't find include:
- Westinghouse Fan controllers (ID6 remote specifically)
- Manhattan T3R
I didn't get to try all of the other Manhattan's due to running back and forth, but the most obvious ones the T1's listed, it certainly didn't work. Likewise I didn't get to test the Sony BluRay's to know if mine works or not yet.
And this is a left field question, is it/will it, but possible to take a remote we have to hand, and use that to send commands to the skip app, to let it help identify what it is in the database and offer suggestions to use. Appreciate it might need us to have the Flirc USB, in fact I added one onto my order in case that was the case.
Sorry for the long post, I hope it helps, and happy to clarify and retest anything. Do really like what I've seen, I still need to develop the muscle memory with some of the menu's as often get frustrated in being in the wrong place, but maybe my long term logitch harmony use is biting here (the first version).
