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Sevenhugs’ Smart Remote wants to replace the phone as your home’s control panel

Chloe Olewitz
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As our collections of connected devices grow, so does our need for one comprehensive smart remote. Sevenhugs thinks its location-sensitive, simple-to-use Smart Remote will eliminate the need for hundreds of different apps for every IoT device you own. It will register whatever device point it at and pull up the relevant control panel on its display.

A working prototype of the remote is already complete, and it works with Hue lights and Sonos speakers and will soon work with Nest thermostats. When it launches, the remote will come packaged with three lamp socket modules that will make the Smart Remote immediately functional in the home.

The socket plug-ins are designed to establish location specificity for the remote. When all three socket modules are placed in the same room, the Smart Remote can use them as anchors to establish the physical location of controllable devices nearby. The user will program the Smart Remote to register a Sonos speaker system or Philips Hue light in any part of the room, for example, and the remote processes location data in order to determine which device the user is attempting to control.

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John Phillips/Getty Images for TechCrunch
John Phillips/Getty Images for TechCrunch

With the release of new connected gadgets all the time, it won’t be long before users get tired of downloading a new app for every light bulb in the house. Instead of pulling out your phone, unlocking it, scrolling, finding the app, opening it, and selecting the on button, the Smart Remote requires just pointing and clicking.

The company hasn’t announced yet how much Smart Remote will cost, but there are plans to launch a Kickstarter campaign in February of next year that it hopes will ship by the end of 2016. Sevenhugs has also released an APK and API so that developers can build integrated applications that will make the Smart Remote even more functional by the time it launches to the public.

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Chloe Olewitz
Chloe Olewitz
Chloe is a writer from New York with a passion for technology, travel, and playing devil's advocate. You can find out more…
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