Just upgraded from v4.5 – Simple Control Home Remote Review

As of Jan 2019 my old Roomie Service subscription ended (was $17 annually) without the ability to renew or upgrade so I’m forced to move to version 5 now ($49) to maintain the ability to add new devices and use triggers. I plan to maintain v4.5 on several older iPad devices which have been dedicated remotes and use a script to keep triggers in sync between the 2 environments. (2 MAC OS hubs, 1 for each version) My advice for new users; the Simple Control functionality of controlling devices is great but you’ll need to deal with the limitations of the v5 UI. I’ve looked at alternatives to Simple Control that are reasonably priced but I haven’t come across anything I like (yet). Support when I needed help in the past was typically good and responded quickly (sometimes within minutes). Documentation is ok but I haven’t been able to find answers to some of my concerns. One of the main reasons I had over 200 custom remotes in v4 was to have unique volume controls for each room (especially needed when having multiple TVs in a room) which I had to repeat for each activity. Ideally in v5 I would sense the best place for this is with a single custom module that could be added to each activity or have the volume controls for each device in the room appear on the home bar. It’s only been a few days so maybe the functionality already exists but I would hope I could do the same with lights specific to each room. Pros -Upgrading from previous version was painless. -Great device control -Large inventory of devices Cons -V5 Home bar seems to be useless or not intuitive. -Colorless UI with limited icons, adding custom images is possible but not too easy -On an iPad; v5 does not use the full resolution of the device, I prefer seeing more and scrolling less. It reminds me of standard VGA mode on Windows. Other -I would have preferred to pay double to maintain functionality and the UI of v4.5 Update (after about a week) -I’m getting used to the new UI and find it easier to move around in now. -Things are better once I figured out how to expand the commands within the activities. I didn’t see it documented and it wasn’t intuitive. Click the icon to the left of the device... -I find myself going from activity to the room frequently to run inline activities such as light and volume controls specific to the room. In v4 the activity list was visible while the remote was open. -I had to adjust a few toggle activities that were not working correctly. -I like the new Simple Home view for a summary of active processes. -The backup process is quick and easy. I used restore without any issues. -Remote access works great. -I look forward to new updates that improve user interaction and ease of making global changes.
Review by UserInWisconsin on Simple Control Home Remote.