Worth the wait, here at last, Simple Control 5!
As a long time Roomie user, I’ve been looking forward to this release for some time.
Initial impressions are awesome. Simple to upgrade. Much slicker, cleaner, faster and simpler to use. Much clearer licensing requirements. Well done!
A couple of quick niggles. Calling up a guide at the top right of an activity and then closing it in the Home Bar is counter intuitive. I keep going into Edit mode in the guide…
Struggling with my Amazon Fire TV. There seems to be some lag when navigating.
Next task is to setup Alexa.
Looking forward to the edit mode for the activity layout but once again, well done for a super upgrade!
My really one big issue currently is you had avr feedback beautifully incorporated into an activity, i never had to leave an activity which was great. Now input feedback and surround sound processing feedback is only available in my denon remote activity. It was the most useful feature of the old app, and now i constantly need to leave the activity page to change the sound processing or avr input and click the popup denon remote activity. I dont know how this can be viewed as better.
Essentially put the options in the logo tray available for the denon remote activity and make it available in the activity like you could in the old version. Not sure why this was changed but its much less intuitive. Unless this can be fixed, support will have to get back to me.
I might have a few more as i dig away or support gets back to me. The nest integration is a bit puzzeling how to set two setpoints for hot and cold when in auto mode, but hopefully support gets back to me on that. I also dont know how i can edit a home button such as lights in the home bar, when you add vera in simple it adds a bunch of stuff as lights, like sensors, cameras, bluetooth, weird stuff, and I cant seem to delete that out of the lights section of the home bar…
I also had some custom buttons labeled and mapped on my htpc for plex, where are these? When I edit an activity they show as being present but in the new ui none of my custom buttons appear anywhere?
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mschneider: Those questions are easily answered in the release post at top of this thread.
If you have legacy activities and want them to behave just as they used to behave, mark the Activity to force legacy.
I don’t know what this means. The guide and the homebar are impossible to have on screen at the same time.
No offense but that was a bit of a novel, point form would have been much easier to read.
The line i was looking for was
“Legacy Virtual Remotes and Remote Designs will be removed in a future release when Action Panel Editing replaces them.”
I really hope this is a top priority, this is the number one thing I miss most. I also dont know how i can edit my lights. Short of getting rid of everything in vera? LIke i dont know why bluetooth, and zigbee modules show up in simple as devices and as lights, but now all those things show up as lights in the home bar and i cant delete them or edit that, its a mess.
The ability to edit,delete, design our activities was the most powerful feature of simple and this desperately needs to be added as soon as possible.
Beyond that my only other complaint is the removal of avr feedback and sound processing from activities as described in my first post, dont know avr information (especially such important feedback) was removed from activities.
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“Miss” doesn’t make sense because it didn’t go anywhere. I think you may need to keep reading…
You can also edit your Vera manifests. Like I said at the end “give it some weeks”. First, figure out how to use it and what’s changed. Don’t adopt until you’re comfortable. It’s quite likely (as is the case here) every single thing you mentioned is actually still there, or has a feature to handle it that you have not found yet.
Just exploring! Do you have intent on supporting HomeKit scenes? Individual devices are nice but I have 20 lights devices in my Home Theater that are already configured in scenes. Ideally I would like to trigger scenes when things play or pause or on some action.
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HomeKit Scenes is a feature request we’re tracking. Traditionally we’ve asked people to post new threads in the forums to track feature requests. Now that we’ve switched to this new forum software, it might be sufficient for people to simply like your post. But regardless, it’s one we plan to add, and we do want to continue to gauge interest in it.
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Sorry. My use of terminology confused you here. If I have a TV Guide and I open it using the book icon at the top right of the activity screen, the guide opens and displays the edit guide button top right with an X at the bottom of the screen to close the guide. Intuitively I want the close button where I clicked to open it. No deal breaker but you asked for feedback 
Awesome Blog post.
Not just the v5 Features part, but also the History Lesson. Your perception of the current AV-Control and Home Automation scene is also valuable.
This looks awesome. I have been playing around with this version and have a few questions/issues.
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Sonos: When I click the activity in the family room for example it only gives me the option to play the family room speakers. The legacy configuration automatically loaded all the rooms in the activity and allowed for easy grouping. The new one doesn’t seem to do that. I see in the home bar all of my speakers are in the sound tab but it won’t let me group any of them to the family room activity.
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HomeKit: I synchronized my HomeKit devices, which were basically just my lights/switches. I had previously had this set up as a lutron activity where I could control scenes etc. Now unless I select the force legacy remote option the lutron activity doesn’t work (Assuming there is no new remote for this). Keeping the legacy remote for now for scenes. Question: If I use the iPad as the iOS hub device (I am still using the appliance for now) can I remotely control the HomeKit devices using Siri? Additionally will there be any support for A/V activities (watch directv, watch FireTV) to be controlled via Siri, or just homekit devices? Wondering if Alexa is replaceable with Siri now?
If Alexa is still required for voice control, can Alexa control my HomeKit Devices through the Simple Control App? Can Alexa still control my legacy remote activities?
Also Homekit imported all of the rooms for each of the lights around the house, is there a way to remove the rooms from the room selection tab without removing the lights associated in the home bar? Basically I don’t have any activities in a lot these rooms just lights switches and don’t want to have “Foyer” for example in the room selection.
Sorry for all the questions, just trying to wrap my brain around this new world. Really loving the simple design great job!
Elan
The grouping control is in that screen, upper right corner.
Whatever you setup with Siri is between you and Siri. Siri is a closed system that works only with HomeKit. Using Alexa allows you to access everything through us rather than just HomeKit.
You can remove auto-created rooms from HomeKit Sync. It wont auto-recreate them unless you turn off HomeKit Sync and re-import.
congratulations with this release
So how can I pick which HomeKit devices I want? Only allowed to sync all? I don’t have enough free devices to sync all.
If you have multiple HomeKit homes the option to exclude and pick only one home is offered when turning on the Sync option or sync all homes, but within a given home you need to select to sync that home completely or not.
Congratulations. The updates look great and the new licensing is fantastic. Thank you.
I think this will prompt me to rethink my entire config to really use the new features.
Question -
I’m not heavily invested in HomeKit. I have some Insteon devices. If I want voice commands, would it be better to use HomeKit or Alexa?
Any other tips for how to think about updating my config?
(Okay, that was 2 questions. )
Thanks.
- Leon
Any voice control at all, I would strongly recommend Alexa at this time. As much as I’d love for Siri to be a contender, they don’t even have an API (a real one anyway). They’re not in the ring. It’s not a serious conversation.
I think this is something we bridge perfectly. Whether your devices are Insteon, HomeKit, or something else, we can provide the interface to that.
My general “update your config” advice to most users is to eliminate custom Remote Designs and migrate your home control to the Home Bar. Even though Action Panel Editing is coming, now is a good time to rethink what you actually needed to customize in the first place. When it comes, your needs will be simplified to what is actually needed in today’s world.
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Can someone’s clarify the release note on the iTach support?
I currently have 2 iTach setup and co figured. I have two more I haven’t gotten around to setting up yet. If I upgrade, will I not be able to set them up?
Should I go in and add / register the device in V4 before I migrate?
I will be able to add new devices to these iTachs as long as they are added to my account, correct?
Any help would be appreciated.
Thanks,
Ken
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As long as you have at least 1 configured device based on the old GC iTach models in your configuration before upgrading to V5, it will continue to work with those and also be able to add new controlled devices from those models. That is not to say you shouldn’t upgrade those to Simple Blasters now, but that we’re providing this extra time to do so. The GC-100 is by far the most problematic from a support perspective, so I would anticipate final removal of support for that within 1 year and iTach would follow later.