PACKAGING | CONTENTS

Like many companies for the last 15 years or so, Switchbot take the Apple packaging route, with just the remote on the front of the box, leaving the rear to host the details. The side is equally minimal, with just the name of the product. The box is pretty sturdy, in an ‘Apple’ way too, so less chance of damage to the contents, thankfully.

The back spells out the features pretty well, so it works with devices that typically use an infrared (IR) remote control, thus replacing said remotes. It also works with SwitchBot’s own devices, using Bluetooth, which is the communication method of choice for SwitchBot. It does state the remote is Matter compatible, although this is only the case once it’s connected to one of SwitchBot’s own Matter enabled bridges/hubs, of which there are two – the Hub 2, and the Hub Mini Matter. The fourth point stating ‘Start Quick Scenes’ also requires that the remote be connected one of their hubs, to both trigger scenes in the SwitchBot app, and other Matter platforms. The remote comes with a built-in lithium-on battery that offers up to 5 months of average use between charges.

Aside from the admittedly lovely looking remote, you’re provided with a USB-A to USB-C cable for recharging the battery inside, a couple of warranty and social media cards, the instruction booklet, and a sim pin for resetting, as required.

Given that SwitchBot all are still clinging to Bluetooth, it comes as no real surprise that this remote would use that, even in the face of Thread’s increasing prominence. Ordinarily I’d deride such a choice, but given SwitchBot’s sizeable customer base, it doesn’t make sense to potentially abandon them for the sake of one device, so reluctantly, I can see why they opted to go down this route.

THE UNIVERSAL REMOTE

As a remote control, I personally like that it’s unencumbered with a ton of buttons, which is almost always the case with remotes for TVs, ACs, Blu-Ray players and the like. Of course, that could lead to some confusion for some, due to buttons taking on different functions depending on the device connected, but I found it generally intuitive. I’m not a pensioner (yet) though, so maybe my experience is a tad skewed. Still, the concept of a remote control is familiar to almost everyone I’d argue, and this should ‘slot in’ for most people.

with almost half of the body being taken up with a screen, you’re left with a relatively small set of controls, but as already stated, the functionality of some of these change depending on what you’re controlling. When it comes to controlling a TV for example, you get the standard volume controls and mute button, as well as a channel button. There’s a ‘back’ button and a Home button, both of which have become more common on remotes. The one button that sticks out – literally – is the red button with a SwitchBot logo. This is for the remote only, and basically takes you back to the top menu of the remote, where all devices will be listed.

What’s less common for standard remotes is the jog wheel, which you’ll be more familiar with if you own an Apple TV, perhaps. This serves in the way you’d expect, but in certain circumstances, it also makes use of the typical up/down/left/right controls if you’re selecting something within a list or menu. There’s a ‘confirm’ or ‘select’ button in the centre, and above that are on and off buttons, that for a TV or AC, work as expected.

Above the array of standard buttons, but below the display, are four ‘shortcut’ buttons. These change what they offer based on what you’re controlling, which I’ll touch on in more details later.

As the remote uses IR, you get the same transmitter window at the top/front of the device, so nothing different there. What is different to many other remotes, is the built-in lithium-ion battery, so you don’t use AA or AAA batteries like you would a normal remote. With this, you have a USB-C port for recharging the internal battery. Next to that is a pinhole to reset the device if necessary.

THE DISPLAY

I’ve already added a few devices to the remote; my Xiaomi TV, an Apple TV4K, a Tower fan, and my bedroom AC. In addition, I’ve also added the remote to a SwitchBot hub Mini with Matter, and from there, exposed the remote to Apple Home, which then gives me the option to program four buttons, which I’ll go into later. Focusing on the AC control for now, and as you can see, there’s a large ‘OFF’ on the display, along with an AC icon. Below that, three of the four shortcut buttons have options assigned to them with the relevant icons. Pressing the main On or Off buttons on the remote will turn the AC on or off, so that’s pretty straightforward for most people to understand.

• The first of the three shortcut button (the one with a snowflake icon) gives you access to the different AC modes – more in fact than you’d typically get in Apple Home. Home; Cool, Heat, Dry, Auto, Fan Rate.
• The second button gives you access to the different fan speeds; Auto, Fan Speed 1, Fan Speed 2, Fan Speed 3.
• The third button allows control of the louver (not the famed Paris museum…), the blades that allow control of the directional flow of the cool/warm air from the AC.

It should be noted that the controls and options within each of these separate sections may well be different, depending on what type and model AC you have. Additionally, the sections assigned to the shortcut buttons are automatically set, and can’t be changed.

One rather important final note, and one that I’ve approached SwitchBot regarding, is that when you change any settings on the AC via the remote, they aren’t synced with the AC in either the SwitchBot app or Apple Home. This appears not to be an oversight, as SwitchBot told me AC control via the remote is entirely independent of any instance of the AC in other apps or ecosystems, and essentially works as intended. To me this is a major fail, as the one reason many people have smart AC controllers, ditching the existing remotes is for this very point – changes in the AC need to be reflected in your smart home when the changes are coming from a smart remote, or your smart home. I hope they reconsider this, as you may as well not use the remote for your AC if your smart home isn’t aware of the actual status of the AC.

Quickly onto the TV control, and in my case things were a bit tricky for my Xiaomi TV, as the main remote it comes with actually uses Bluetooth. This meant that I couldn’t program the SwitchBot remote with the Xiaomi remote. However, the TV does receive IR controls, and so I was able to program some basic instructions, but in a really circuitous way, as I’ll describe on the off chance that someone else might have a similar issue.

I have many Aqara hubs, one of which is the P3 AC companion. For whatever reason, I was able to create a remote within the Aqara app using the P3 as the remote for my Xiaomi TV. I then had to teach the remote’s basic instructions to the SwitchBot Hub Mini with Matter. This involved having the Hub Mini receive IR signals from my P3 in order to learn them. I then transferred the set of Xiaomi remote controls from the Hub Mini to the Switchbot remote, which thankfully was easy enough, and done all via the Switchbot app.

Incidentally, the screen is capable of colour, but it’s used quite sparingly for some reason.

Regarding Apple TV control, you simply have to go into the settings for your Apple TV, and add the Switchbot remote as a third-party remote control, which is something Apple TV has offered for a while now, so in this respect it’s nothing new. Having said that, controlling your Apple TV from the remote is via Bluetooth, not IR, so there are some differences at play here. What you’re missing that exists on the standard Apple TV remote is the option to invoke Siri. That option isn’t going to be coming to this remote any time soon, even if it had a built-in mic, which it does not.

All the controls work in much the same way they do on the original Apple TV remote, so it should immediately be familiar, even if the buttons are in slightly different places.

IN APPLE HOME

If you want to use the four shortcut buttons on the remote to control scenes or devices in Apple Home, you will need to connect the hub to one their Matter bridges. Once that’s done, you’ll be presented with a single tile (shown as a button). Tapping on it reveals four programmable buttons, much like any smart button in HomeKit. However, unlike most smart buttons, you’re only getting a single press action out of each one. Regardless of this, as I mentioned in my video for this product, as for the Apple Home/Matter integration, it makes the remote a glorified smart button, to an extent. That could be seen as a little unfair, as smart buttons can’t do the things the remote can do, all in one package, but if you were purely looking at this to control scenes in Apple Home, that’s pretty much what it is. For buttons #2, #3, and #4, I’ve simply used previously created scenes, but for button #1, I decided to try something slightly more useful.

I wanted to be able to control my blinds with the one button, and so I used the ‘Convert to Shortcut’ option that allowed me to press button #1 to close or open the blinds. It’s very simple, so all I’m doing is when the button on the remote is pressed, it checks to see if the target position is 0% (or closed), and if so, it’ll set the blinds to be fully open, otherwise set the blinds to fully closed. Of course programming the button for different open/closed percentages isn’t possible without a lot more trickery, but it does what I need, all within one button press.

THE SWITCHBOT APP

In the SwitchBot app, you can see I have two remotes, although only one is really in use at present. Tapping on the tile for ‘Remote B’ brings up individual panels, each representing a device the remote is able to control. If I tap on one of these, it’ll open up a screen that’s essentially a replication of the remote itself. This allows you to tap on any of the buttons, and see what options are tied to those buttons. In most cases these can’t be changed, however, but it does give you an idea of how these buttons and the controls their assigned to actually work.

When it comes to Apple TV, you don’t get a lot of options, and in fact, volume control isn’t available here. This is usually because the original Apple remote takes on the role of controlling the volume on your TV whilst setting it up. In my case, I have a soundbar that is both capable of AirPlay, but is also directly connected to my TV, so I’d have to separately set up the soundbar in the remote, which is less than ideal.

Device management has changed a bit since I did my video review for this product. In fact, it has changed twice! Originally, the ‘How to Add’ section had three options – Import Existing Appliances, Manually Add, and Third-party Control. Now as you can see, that’s currently down to two for some reason, so currently, you can only add a device that has first been set up via one of their hubs. This is not good, as originally the missing option allowed you to add a device without the need for a hub (although you wouldn’t get Matter integration). Between the first update that I featured in the video, and the current update, they did expand on the amount of categories you could add directly to the remote, although I can no longer show you that, until they presumably add it in a future update.

One final feature to mention is ‘Find Universal Remote’, which once pressed, gets the remote to play a beep sound for a couple of seconds, allowing you to dig it up from the back of your sofa, for example. The buttons and display also flash briefly. You can achieve something similar with the Apple TV remote, but it would require the use of an Apple AirTag, and a specially designed case to hold both the remote and the AirTag, so not quite as good I guess.

IN DAY-TO-DAY USE

I was initially quite excited about this, and it probably shows that in the video. Having since lived with it for a couple of months, it hasn’t lost any of its sheen in many ways, but the limitations have slowly surfaced, meaning there is a lot of room for improvement. I think the design and simplicity of the remote is great, and it really does well with the minimal amount of buttons compared to a standard remote in most cases too. Where it falls down is with the previously mentioned lack of syncing the AC state with the app and/or Apple Home. I like the idea of the four shortcut buttons that are exposed to Apple Home, and even though they’re single press, I’m not sure what else could be achieved in this sense. It’s also fair to say that whilst you can compare it to 4-button smart control device, those devices can’t also control your TV, fan, AC and more, so it is a bit more than that.

I just wish SwitchBot would bite the bullet and move to Thread. It’s well overdue in my opinion, and if this were to use Matter over Thread (if that’s actually possible), this could be a real killer device. As it stands at the time of writing, the latest update has fixed some issues I encountered early on; no Apple TV control at launch, with the second update, introducing several bugs, one of which was the inability to rename the shortcut buttons. Now with the latest update – V2.6 – there seems to be no option to add devices directly to the remote, which is insane really. Hopefully that will be fixed soon, but I do see some people being less than happy with some of the limitations. For me, being a constantly curious smart home enthusiast, I just muddle on and make the best of it!

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PACKAGING | CONTENTS

I ordered the Remo Nano from Amazon Japan, which thankfully is able to ship this product internationally. You might not be able to tell from the pics above, but this thing is tiny. The box is a mere 75 x 75 x 15 mm / 2.95 x 2.95 x 0.59 inches (WHD), and if you look at the design on the front of the box, you can make out a simple embossed shape; this is the actual size of the Remo Nano, so you can see it lives up to its name.

The back of the box outlines the specs for the unit, stating that it uses Bluetooth LE (for initial connection and pairing) and 2.4GHz WiFi for its network connection.

Given the size of the box, it should be fairly telling that the device does not come with a USB power supply. In fact, it doesn’t even come with a USB cable, but then most of us have an abundance of both of these required parts, so I don’t think there’ll be any complaints as such.

With the unfolding packaging (so Japanese…) you get a small line drawing showing some use cases for the Nano; TV and AC control in this case. You also get a QR code to download the required Nature app, although as you’ll see later, this is a part that makes things more complicated. Finally, the Nano itself is nestled in the middle – as I said, it’s tiny.

THE REMO NANO

The Nano comes in at an eye-wateringly small 47 x 47 x 12.5 mm / 1.85 x 1.85 x 0.49 inches (WHD), whilst weighing just 13g or less than half an ounce. The front features a faint circle imprint and nothing else, whilst the back has some basic model details along with an 11-digit Matter code. This last point surprised me, as the Nano has been on sale for a while prior to getting the Matter update, so either I was lucky enough to get one fresh out of the factory, or the company had Matter integration planned well in advance, providing a Matter code long before it was needed. As this code is only digits, you can’t scan it like you would a QR code or the older 8-digit HomeKit codes, so when adding this to your smart home platform, you’ll need to manually enter the code.

The top of the unit has nothing of note, and the underside has a cutaway for a USB cable to be fed through to the USB-C port for powering the device. As previously stated, you’ll need to provide both your own USB-C (to USB-A) cable and power adaptor, but any typical USB power supply will be adequate.

The last image above compares the Nano to my Aqara Temperature and Humidity Sensor, and for good reason; The Nano doesn’t contain anything besides the IR transceiver. This might seem obvious, but as you’ll see later, this is an important thing to note for one particular use case.

NATURE APP

Before you can use the Nano, you do need to initially add it to the Nature app, which provides the all-important Matter update. This is the part that’ll almost certainly be an issue for most people outside of Japan or the US, although there are workarounds. The aforementioned issue is that the Nature app seems to only be available on the Japanese and US App Stores, so if you have an iCloud account tied to your own country, chances are this app will not be listed. There are two options available to get around this I’m aware of;

1. Set up a new iCloud account set to Japan or the US, sign out of the app store, and sign back in, using the Japanese/US iCloud account. You might enter further barriers to getting the app to download, including asking for a Japanese/US credit card or possibly registering a Japanese/US address, but in the case of the former, I wasn’t asked for a card. The app is free to download anyway, so I’m not sure why they would want this information.
2. If you have a spare Android phone, you can download the Nature app from the Google Play store, regardless of location. This would allow you to add the Nano to the app, update it, and assign devices it would control using IR. From there you can add the device directly to Apple Home using the Matter code.

This second option is only of any use if (a) you have access to an Android phone, and (b) don’t mind using it whenever you want to change any settings to the Nano – like adding or changing a controlled device, or updating the firmware. Assuming you set up your devices and aren’t going to change them, you should be ok.

Assuming you’ve overcome these obstacles, the Nature app is quite clean and simple to use. The main page shows the devices you set up as tiles, with each tile expanding to a different set of options or user interfaces. The app is also capable of automations, although they are a little limited, based on location and day/date.

If you’ve used an IR blaster before, regardless of what platform it works with, you’ll probably know the procedure for setting up a device, and the Nature app is really no different. You choose the appliance category – in this case, I’ll add a Split AC control – and you point the AC unit’s original remote at the Nano so it can discern the make and model of the device in question.

In some cases, you need a remote, but with ACs, you can forego using the remote and opt for selecting a make and mode from a long list. Many of the brands listed are Japanese, understandably, but you can still get it to work with your AC by teaching it the remote. In this instance, I chose the Daikin brand and selected a particular model based on the remote model. It then asks you to test whether the AC responds when you test the simple on/off control. If it works, you can select ‘working’ and continue. If it’s not working, the Nano will try additional signals to find the one that works with your AC, which is usually successful eventually.

With that all done, you simply need to name the device and it’ll appear alongside your other devices, which in my case is an LG TV and a set-top box that I’ve named AV receiver.

If you were solely to use the Nature app, you get pretty much all the controls you need via the different user interfaces. For AC control, you get all the options that would work with your AC. In fact, you get more than HomeKit usually offers, with additional modes (Dry, Fan) and blade control.

The same goes for the TV, although in this case, it’s replicating the remote control, not the TV as such. You can also add more buttons if necessary.

As for controlling the Set Top Box, as these types of devices are very non-standard, you only get on/off, although once again you can add more control if required.

Wrapping up the Nature app, the settings page is quite extensive, with a variety of options I won’t go into now. From here you can connect to both Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant in the traditional, cloud-based way, but with Apple Siri, you get the option to use Matter and/or Siri Shortcuts. Tapping on Matter goes to a page that shows you a video tutorial on how to set it all up, although long story short, you simply connect the Nano to your platform of choice using the included Matter code, and devices added to the Nature app (that are connected to the Nano) will then be exposed to that platform.

REMO NANO IN APPLE HOME

As you can see, the device I have set up in the Nature app through the Nano now shows up in Apple Home. Before I go into more detail on these, there is somewhat of a device limit with IR blasters in Matter. Currently, a maximum of three devices will be exposed to your smart home platform, although you can control more devices if you only use the Nature app. Similarly, you can add three devices and have them exposed to Apple Home etc, and in the case of iOS, you can control any additional devices using Siri Shortcuts. This seems to be a Matter limitation, so it could be upgraded in a future Matter update – or not.

Regardless, when it comes to these exposed devices, be prepared for another disappointment; with the exception of AC control, all other devices will be exposed as simple on/off devices, with the option to have them show up as a light, a fan, or an outlet. So for the TV, you won’t be getting the UI you saw in the Nature app. This has always been true for Apple HomeKit, and I don’t see that changing any time soon.

As regards AC control, you do get roughly the same range of options as you’d find on a standard HomeKit-compatible AC controller from the likes of Tado, Sensibo, Aqara and others, so in that sense, it offers a lot for a little. However, as the Nano doesn’t come with a temperature sensor, you’ll notice that the main display shows 0.0º. Most other AC controllers will come with both temperature and humidity sensors built in, which would be displayed on the tile (at least in the case of Apple Home). In a sense, this doesn’t really matter, as most of us will have plenty of temperature sensors dotted around the house, so using those to trigger automations for your AC controlled by the Nano is going to be easy enough.

The Nano acts as a bridge or hub, and so to see the Nano rather than the devices connected to it, you need to go into your Home’s settings and ‘Home Hubs & Bridges’ where it’ll be listed alongside other hubs. You get the now more common option of turning on Pairing Mode to add the Matter device to other additional platforms. As you can see from the third screenshot, I’ve currently only got it connected to Apple and Google at present, although as it uses WiFi it should work with Samsung SmartThings and Amazon Alexa too.

IN DAY-TO-DAY USE

As stated at the beginning of this review, you may find it harder to choose a device to control these days compared to maybe ten, or even five years ago, with AC control being one ongoing option. It’s still nice to be able to turn a TV or set-top box off within a scene or automation however, and even though many of these devices only offer simple on/off control, to be able to do so within Apple Home is still quite useful. Siri Shortcuts was probably my go-to option for things like this, but you had to have your iPhone etc connected to the network in order for it to work, and unless someone else in the home also had the same set of Siri Shortcuts on their iPhone, it wouldn’t work for them if you went out of the house. This is why I think this still has its uses.

Has it performed as expected? Yes, it has, although placement is key when it comes to an IR blaster, so if you’re controlling three devices, they all need to be not only in the same room/living area, but they all need to be within range of the outgoing IR signal. In my case, having the Nano high up, but effectively looking down at the TV and the set-top box has worked very well. The only issue you would encounter, which is still also an issue for IR AC controllers is that the on/off state of a device can be out of sync if someone uses the original remotes to turn a device on or off. As IR devices aren’t able to send info back to the Nano to confirm their state, there’s no way for the Nano to know what state the device is in. Just hide all your remotes maybe…

All of that said, this has still been very useful in my situation, or rather my wife’s. Prior to this, I set up an automation with the Aqara G3 that turned on the TV using its built-in IR blaster, but due to the position of the G3, the relevant signal couldn’t reach the set-top box, so this had to be performed manually. Now, with a single tap of a wireless button (an Aqara one ironically), my wife can turn the TV and the set-top box on, as well as set certain lights all together, in HomeKit.

For the relatively cheap price paid – ¥3,980 (roughly US$28), that’s very good value, and even more so when you compare it to the price of a dedicated AC controller that can cost anywhere from US$50 – 150. We’re probably not going to see remotes for some devices vanish any time soon, even if we have smart TVs, but for those older appliances with IR remotes still in our possession, this is a decent (very) little device.

The post Nature Remo Nano IR Controller w/ Matter (review) appeared first on Homekit News and Reviews.

thanks for sharing your request! Our team is definitely working on Homekit, we hope to be able to share some good news soon but we don’t have any precise date to share for now but we’ll make sure to keep you updated.

So, this may come to nothing at all, as has been witnessed before, with other companies. However, Sevenhugs do boast that their device is already compatible with “…over 650,000 devices and services…”, which includes many devices that are already compatible with HomeKit, including Wemo, LiFX, Sonos, Philips Hue, Vizio. Even Apple TV is included, although this may simply be down to control via Infrared (IR) functionality.

If you’re not aware of the Sevenhugs remote, it comes in two variations, the Smart Remote U, and the Smart Remote X. Both devices use wifi, bluetooth (4.1) and IR, and can control up to 80 devices (of which up to 20 can be via IR). The Smart Remote X uses a function called ‘Point Mode’, which deploys the company’s own indoor positioning system that allows the user to simply point at a device in order to control it – even if it doesn’t use IR. Both remotes use an accelerometer, compass and the aforementioned IR transceiver and receiver, whilst the X model has an indoor positioning sensor (that works with Point Mode) and a gyroscope. The X model also comes with the company’s own room sensors, bundled with the remote in a 3-pack.

https://youtu.be/ATQtSXfuylU

Whether any of this proposed HomeKit integration will come to pass, is anyone’s guess, but given that other companies, like Crestron and Savant have already made moves into this area, it’s still possible we could finally see a HomeKit compatible remote – or at least a remote that works with all your HomeKit devices – at some point in the near future.

The Smart Remote U currently sells for US$199, while the Smart Remote X with three included Remote Sensors, is priced at $299. and is available from either the company’s own website or from Amazon.com.

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