Home Assistant* introduced support for infrared a few days ago. Not sure if it would be a good idea to stay in business for a bit longer and see if the Home Assistant community boost the sales.<p>I am personally interested in an IR Sender to make my old Hifi Setup smarter.<p>* <a href="https://www.home-assistant.io/blog/2026/04/01/release-20264/" rel="nofollow">https://www.home-assistant.io/blog/2026/04/01/release-20264/</a>
Yes, same exact boat, I was just starting to think about looking for a small, cheap device in this space for HA.
I used a Flirc many years ago for my mythtv DVR and it worked great. <a href="https://flirc.tv/" rel="nofollow">https://flirc.tv/</a><p>edit: I used the receiver, but they do make a remote. It looks cool but I have no experience with it.
Let me know if you find one! I wanted to wait for a few months to let the experienced smart homers pave the way.
Sad to see someone’s small business close, but these products are in a difficult position of being both extremely niche and very simple. Someone went to some effort to source a nice dongle enclosure and do some printing on it, but beyond that the hardware is something that anyone with a little PCB experience could replicate it in a day. I wouldn’t be surprised if these were just sourced from a generic manufacturer in China and they asked for custom printing.<p>If there’s demand this would be a good project for someone to make and have ready to build PCBs you could order from OSH Park or even a fully project that you could have JLC build and populate.
I have a tiny business that makes a gadget for musicians: Think something like an effects pedal. I publish my schematics, have shared PCB files, and even offer to give you some of the parts that are hard to get. A few people have built their own, and share their results in web forum threads about my product.<p>Very few people have taken the bait. I think we techies over-estimate the ability and inclination of people to make something. Even most programmers don’t want to solder. They may still be technically inclined, but want to be involved at a higher level: Buying the basic stuff and using it as a basis for even more elaborate things.
If you offered me schematics and PCB designs for a tool I desired, I might be /more/ inclined to give you money just to support you. Nothing to do with my ability or interest in DIY (I also design and sell electronics).
I love learning from and building that type of thing (plus have some musician friends who can never have too many gadgets). Would you be willing to share a link?<p>Note: if you don’t want to create a link to yourself, you could also email me at <my username>0_AT_protonmail_._com
>I think we techies over-estimate the ability and inclination of people to make something.<p>But that was never the worry. The worry is a competitor undercutting you because they do not have to recoup R&D.
A few tricks to beat this are community, brand, an app that only works with the official version (hard to pull off and sad), and going more niche.
> I think we techies over-estimate the ability and inclination of people to make something.<p>If you replace 'we techies' with 'most folks' (and especially with 'folks who didn't do a thing with their hands in thei$ lives') nothing would change.
This company and product line launched nearly 20 years ago (2007) and doesn’t seem to have changed much since. That’s quite a long time for something like this. If the owners had wanted the business to continue (perhaps they didn’t), some diversification could have achieved that relatively easily.
Well damn, I didn't know about this until now, and I could actually use one.<p>Is there any alternative?
Awww I have one of those. It still works after more than 10 years!<p>Maybe that's what happened, everyone who needed one bought and we don't need an upgrade
I’m guessing that modern hardware are all controlled by privacy-invading apps, communicating via the company’s servers.
Presumably there just isn't that much use for that anymore.<p>Most remotes seem to be RF not ir these days.