Logitech Harmony 350 for Universal Control of Up To 8 Entertainment Devices ( Renewed )

I was hesitant to buy this as I didn't think it would be comparable to the original Harmony One which I currently own two of for the past 10 years. They haven't given me any issue other than the common battery bloat issue, just needed to replace the battery and the remotes were good to go. But now the remote that I most frequently use in the living room some of the buttons on the remote are no longer being responsive. And with the wife complaining that the remote no longer works and refuses to watch TV down stairs because of it, I was forced to upgrade *wink. After researching the latest Logitech has to offer and I landed on the Harmony Elite. Functionality wise I thought I was going to be disappointed with less buttons and digital number buttons and boy was I wrong... To start with programming the remote was simple I was able to transfer over all my settings from my original Harmony One the only issue I had was the switch inputs didn't transfer over I had to set those again, but that was pretty easy. Overall I thought the setup was a snap especially if you previously owned a Harmony Remote.I have all my equipment located in a closet behind the TV, and with my previous Harmony One Setup I had an IR Receiver that sat on the entertainment center and the IR Hub in the closet. With the Harmony Elite I was able to remove the IR Receiver and I had to now place an IR Blaster for the TV to power on and the HUB in the closet. The cool thing, I was able to add double sided tape and tape the IR Blaster to the back of the TV with the Blaster facing downward, since IR bounces off everything it works perfectly. Why did I do this, since the remote has an IR emitter you ask? Because during the holidays my wife loves to decorate the entertainment center which normally ends up covering the TV's IR receiver and now I have the flexibility to control the IR signal out of the HUB's IR output and not the remotes . I also noticed that the IR Blaster also works as a IR Receiver, which I don't use but there is that option if needed.Now on to the fun after going through the setup and was sort of disappointed to the lack of buttons I noticed you could assign more than one function to one button! (Short press vs Long press) My mind was blown for a second, I could now program "Exit" short press as Back and "Exit" long press as Exit. I realized really the only thing I lost was the number buttons which I was ok with as the digital buttons are actually press responsive, this could be however an issue with people with larger hands as the digital numbers are small so keying each one will require precise touches. The other awesome feature was the ability to control the roku via Wifi, gone are the days of the occasional double skip because of the duplicated IR signal. I also noticed this remote is faster than the One when sending commanded to DirecTV receivers, there's no longer a delay.Overall awesome remote caught me by surprised, I couldn't let go of the Harmony One because I thought it was the best remote ever made but after using the Harmony Elite for a couple of days it's changed my mind. This has to be the best remote I've ever owned! Let's just hope it holds up 10 years like the previous Harmony One...

My Harmony 890 remote finally started to have issues with the buttons not working. I needed a new remote that would allow control of my z-wave lighting and the equipment in my rack.This new remote works better at this than the old one. The z-wave equipment can be located on buttons for easy access and my gear is all controlled by rf through the remote.It is unfortunate that few devices are controlled over WiFi with this product. This requires using an IR blaster on the front of the rack instead of it all being hidden in the rack. My receiver has a remote port on the back which is hardwired to the hub. This requires a converter because the plug on devices is larger than that found on the hub. The hub only has 2 outputs which limits the flexibility of the hub. The Elite remote only supports a single hub unlike the 890 which supported multiple RF extenders. The lack of multiple hubs and WiFi support also required me to add an RF repeater to go to my projector from the hub IR output in the top of the unit.This new system allows configuration through an iPhone app as well as a computer. I found it necessary to use both in my setup. Simpler setups could get by with the app only, but there is more flexibility in resetting the hub in the computer product.Typical with complex Harmony setups I had to call support to fix some issues with my system. Oddly commands were missing on the Elite for one device that were in the 890. I tried copying them and learning them to no avail. Harmony support was able to do this over the phone.I also had issues binding my z-wave devices with the optional extender. Harmony supports solution of reloading the hub through the computer did not work. I finally was able to bind my Leviton lighting with many attempts without their help. Even though they said they were not compatible. After that my z-wave devices wouldn’t always work. I fixed this with the balance network utility for z-wave.After all of this I have a system that works reliably every time.Savant or Control4 would be an alternative to this, but those products are typically going to cost many times more to professionally install. Even though the process of getting this product to work was difficult it was the cheapest option to do this without a lot of custom programming using some Linux based device.