So do you go out and throw down on a fully-featured RF remote to control your home automation gizmos, or do you get one of those snazzy wall-mounted keypads installed to handle the same duties? Frankly, we'd recommend option C, which would involve picking up a device that operates as both depending on your mood. Universal Remote Control's KP-900 is one such unit, which easily snaps into and out of a wall mount for use in both of the aforementioned scenarios. Furthermore, there's even a built-in LCD which showcases relevant activities depending on what main selection you make first. As with everything else spotted in the FCC, you'll have to wait a tick longer before finding out a price or release date, but it looks like this bugger may actually be worth holding out for.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
north @ Jan 26th 2008 3:56PM
I lost my wall remote. That's lame.
Sebastien @ Jan 26th 2008 5:08PM
The device looks good, but why such a weird design when it comes to button layout ?
Just look at how Vol-/Vol+ are not easy to reach...
JeffDM @ Jan 27th 2008 9:04PM
This is lame. Not only are there arrangement issues, there's no gap between buttons to reduce the chance of unintended multiple button presses, so many of the buttons use words when there are commonly accepted symbols. I'd think that people know what FF, RW, pause, play, skip symbols should look like, they're easier to read than words in low light, low contrast situations and quicker to understand at a glance.
The buttons next to the LCD show another UI flaw. A button for a UI element on a panel like that should be immediately adjacent to the displayed option, there shouldn't be a diagonal line to point out which button activates which item on the screen.