A Truly Universal Remote

Even if you're not all that familiar with home automation, you're almost definitely familiar with home theater. We all have at least a handful of set top boxes, TVs and speaker systems that we've collected to make movie night as spectacular as possible. And for every new device, there's a new remote to control it. If you're a home theater power user, you've probably invested in a universal remote, a special type of remote that can be programmed to control all of your devices at once.

In this day and age, I think it's wrong to call a remote "Universal" if all it controls is your home entertainment system. In the age of the smart home, we have dozens of other devices that a truly universal remote should be able to connect to and control. Enter the new Harmony remote from Logitech.

The Harmony remotes have been around for a while, but only as home theater remotes. These new "Home" remotes have the potential to really revolutionize the way your entire house runs.

The hub itself is nothing all that special compared to other home automation hubs. It's the bridge between all of your smart devices and your phone, tablet, or computer. The only thing unique about the Harmony hub is that it can send intra red signals that can be interpreted by your TV.

The remotes are what I find really interesting. They solve an important problem with home automation on your phone: The touchscreen. Home automation isn't something you should have to think about. When we walk into a room we're familiar with, we can reach for the light switch, feel it, and flick it on, all without turning our head. But if our phone becomes the control panel for our home, we're forced to look at the screen and manually find the virtual button we want to tap.

A physical remote has buttons we can feel without looking, like a physical light switch, except one we can carry with us anywhere. If you ask me, this is a huge step forward for home automation, and an even bigger step forward for the universal remote.