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Is Logitech preparing to sunset the Harmony remote ecosystem or at least to stop selling Harmony remotes?

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First post, by darry

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As an amateur of retro gear, both computer related or otherwise, I find Harmony remotes very useful when buying used A/V gear that often does no come with a remote. Additionally, my home A/V setup is currently using a Harmony 665 .

Consequently, the possibility of the cloud-based Harmony system eventually being turned off has always worried me . While shopping for a Harmony remote for a friend, I have stumbled upon some worrisome information that leads me to believe that the system's days may be numbered .

a) Amazon Canada no longer sells new remotes
b) Logitech Canada's webstore shows out of stock for all models
c) This article speculates on the subject https://avgadgets.com/logitech-discontinues-harmony-remotes/
d) This Reddit thread mentions someone getting information about discontinuation from a retailer https://www.reddit.com/r/logitechharmony/comm … g_discontinued/
e) The Reddit thread in "e" mentions this "reassuring" response from Logitech : https://support.logi.com/hc/en-us/community/p … -Harmony?page=1 but to me it just sounds like their PR people towing the party line until the bigwigs state the obvious . I could be wrong of course .

I realize that my remote will continue to work if Logitech pulls the plug on the related cloud, but config changes or device modifications will no longer be possible .

I wonder what my fellow Vogons members thoughts on this are ?
Have any Harmony users among us thought of what they would do in a post-Harmony world (that sound so ominous) ?
Is anybody using the Sofabaton U1 ( http://www.sofabaton.com/u1.html ) or something else that is both as comparatively flexible and has a big device database ?

Just to be clear, I am not trying to spread FUD . IMHO, Logitech are doing a great job of that on their own .

EDIT : Maybe I have found another future use for one of my older Raspberry Pi units : a LIRC server with a WEB based UI to control things . That would actually be fun to do (as well as formative) . Where this partly falls apart is that there is no publicly available database of remote codes as large as Logitech's , Sofabaton's and possibly URC's ( www.urc-automation.com ) . I wouldn't be surprised if the big players like them "cross-license" (for lack of a better word) this info among themselves . In the meantime, there is always this https://github.com/probonopd/irdb , http://www.remotecentral.com/cgi-bin/codes/ and various forums .

EDIT: A new report of Logitech chat saying that the discontinuation is true . See https://www.reddit.com/r/logitechharmony/comm … armony_remotes/

But, amazon.ca has some stock now .

Reply 1 of 6, by Rawit

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That would suck, been using Harmony remotes since like 2005. I did notice they scaled up and scaled down the line-up a couple of times, perhaps because the rise of "smarter" devices, CEC and domotica/IOT. The article states that Harmony makes up a small percentage of the sales for Logitech but it's the only programmable remote brand available locally for me. If they stop selling I hope they release some software so we can continue programming the remotes. Fortunately I don't reprogram often and the current software is pretty crappy anyways.

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Reply 2 of 6, by darry

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Rawit wrote on 2021-03-09, 16:22:

That would suck, been using Harmony remotes since like 2005. I did notice they scaled up and scaled down the line-up a couple of times, perhaps because the rise of "smarter" devices, CEC and domotica/IOT. The article states that Harmony makes up a small percentage of the sales for Logitech but it's the only programmable remote brand available locally for me. If they stop selling I hope they release some software so we can continue programming the remotes. Fortunately I don't reprogram often and the current software is pretty crappy anyways.

The only good that could come of is an adrenalin shot to Open Source alternatives and/or some reverse engineering and repurposing of Harmony hardware .

Reply 3 of 6, by megatron-uk

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Ah, crap.

I have a pair of Harmony One remotes that I've been using for about a decade. They are fantastic things and the touchscreen panel makes up for those occasions where a button doesn't directly map to the physical layout.

The automation functions are also brilliant - turn on TV, turn on amp, set it to hdmi 3, then turn on the media player. Far better than messing about with 3 remotes and remembering to turn the devices on in the correct order.

Last time I looked the open source programming for them wasn't particularly advanced.

My collection database and technical wiki:
https://www.target-earth.net

Reply 6 of 6, by darry

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Rawit wrote on 2021-04-12, 09:21:

And they pulled the plug on their remotes... Support seems to continue however. And just last weekend one of the buttons of my remote seems to be completely worn out.

I hope that they will find ways to license what they have and keep some kind of revenue stream from it to justify keeping the backend up and running and/or, if they see little to no potential value in the remote code database, that they will make it public or find a buyer for it that will make use of it .

The market for higher end universal remotes may be smaller than it used to be, but it is not dead . Logitech's retreat is likely to be a boon to Sofabaton and URC's business .

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