L5 Remote Turns Your iPhone Into A Universal Remote

By Roland Hutchinson on Tuesday 5th January 2010 9:27 am in Gadgets, iPhone Accessories, Technology News

L5 Technology has launched a new accessory for your iPhone and iPod Touch that will turn it into a universal remote to control your HDTV and the rest of your home entertainment equipment.

The L5 Remote is a small infrared dongle that plugs into your iPhone or iPod Touch, it comes with a free application that features everything you need to control your home entertainment setup.

L5 Remote Turns Your iPhone Into A Universal Remote

“With the fast pace of innovation in the smartphone market, handhelds are becoming the consumer electronics platform of choice, causing disruptions across many markets. We see peripherals that connect smartphones to the physical world as key components in the revolution,” said Wade McNary, founder and CEO of L5 Technology. “Leveraging the power, versatility, and portability of handheld devices, and following Apple’s philosophy of design elegance and simplicity, we have solved a common problem. This one small device reverses a long trend toward complexity in remote controls.”

The best part about the L5 Remote, is the price, it will retail for just $49.95 and will come with a free iPhone and iPod Touch application, which would make it a lot cheaper to use your iPhone or iPod Touch as a universal remote rather than buying a stand alone remote.

Product Page via Dvice

Tags: Gadgets

Cacher123

1st off – ad says “Made for iPad” – not! It is compatible with the iPad but what you get is the iPhone’s interface (smaller screen in the center of the iPads screen) and the little toggle at the bottom right of the iPad screen that says “2x” which when pressed doubles the size of the iPhone screen to fill the ipad’s (common to iPhone apps which work on the ipad as opposed to “designed for the iPad” apps).

While this is a minor nit, what it means is that you are limited in sizing the buttons and on the ipad screen are left with fairly large buttons which take up alot of space.
A “custom” button creator (instead of the “pick a button we have already designed”) would be nice. You can only pick round, square or rectangular buttons. No triangles or other shapes as some remotes have.
Also, when you “Name” a button you lose any background colors the buttons may have had. For example when you make a “power” button red or yellow to diferentiate it, when you name it “TV Power” for example, you lose the color! You are left with the option of having a colored button with no lable or labled buttons with no colors!

Also, when you name the individual remotes, the name pops up in the upper left of the remote’s screen in a small font. Would be nice to place it where you want it like “Left, Center or Right|||||||”|| ||(maybe you want to place a button where that name is) and have the ability to change the size of the font.

Physically, the unit doesn’t really “latch” into the iWhatever’s port. It sort of just slides in and out, needs to have a more secure or “latching” fit. I worry about repeated removal & insertion causing damage to my port connector. Also, the labeling is actually on the bottom of the unit so you tend to try to plug it in “upside down” in relation to the iPod screen. That’s counter-intuitive and may cause people to break the connector.

Biggest drawback is that this is a “learning” remote. You must point your old remote at this one and press the individual buttons to do programming. If you have lost an old remote, you’re out of luck. Even many $9.99 universal remotes have a “library” of remotes you can access by entering a five or six digit code # to set up all the buttons.

All in all, works as advertised, room for many improvements, but worth more like $25 then $50.

I’ll probably keep it as I have an old iTouch I no longer use which I’ll keep the remote attached to. Won’t be using it for my iPad though unless they add a whole lot more design flexibility.