Home Assistant* introduced support for infrared a few days ago. Not sure if it would be a good idea to stay in business for a bit longer and see if the Home Assistant community boost the sales.
I am personally interested in an IR Sender to make my old Hifi Setup smarter.
Sad to see someone’s small business close, but these products are in a difficult position of being both extremely niche and very simple. Someone went to some effort to source a nice dongle enclosure and do some printing on it, but beyond that the hardware is something that anyone with a little PCB experience could replicate it in a day. I wouldn’t be surprised if these were just sourced from a generic manufacturer in China and they asked for custom printing.
If there’s demand this would be a good project for someone to make and have ready to build PCBs you could order from OSH Park or even a fully project that you could have JLC build and populate.
I have a tiny business that makes a gadget for musicians: Think something like an effects pedal. I publish my schematics, have shared PCB files, and even offer to give you some of the parts that are hard to get. A few people have built their own, and share their results in web forum threads about my product.
Very few people have taken the bait. I think we techies over-estimate the ability and inclination of people to make something. Even most programmers don’t want to solder. They may still be technically inclined, but want to be involved at a higher level: Buying the basic stuff and using it as a basis for even more elaborate things.
This company and product line launched nearly 20 years ago (2007) and doesn’t seem to have changed much since. That’s quite a long time for something like this. If the owners had wanted the business to continue (perhaps they didn’t), some diversification could have achieved that relatively easily.
I am personally interested in an IR Sender to make my old Hifi Setup smarter.
* https://www.home-assistant.io/blog/2026/04/01/release-20264/
If there’s demand this would be a good project for someone to make and have ready to build PCBs you could order from OSH Park or even a fully project that you could have JLC build and populate.
Very few people have taken the bait. I think we techies over-estimate the ability and inclination of people to make something. Even most programmers don’t want to solder. They may still be technically inclined, but want to be involved at a higher level: Buying the basic stuff and using it as a basis for even more elaborate things.
Is there any alternative?
Most remotes seem to be RF not ir these days.