Neeo’s ‘thinking remote’ for controlling everything in your home hits Kickstarter with $50,000 goal

The Internet of Things is pretty good in theory. Connect everything up to the internet and control it all remotely, providing you have the cash to retrofit all the necessary tech into your home.

Add in things like stereos, TVs and other devices, and you’ve probably got quite a few remotes piling up in your house, which is why Neeo has launched a crowdfunding project on Kickstarter for its ‘thinking remote.’

In a nutshell, it wants to control everything in your home that it’s possible to control remotely – whether that’s the lights, window blinds, the TV (things like Apple TV and Roku boxes are supported by default), Nest or virtually any other connected device in your home.

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Neeo says that it’ll support more than 10,000 audio-visual devices out of the box to make setting everything up as simple as possible.

It also recognizes who has picked the remote up, thereby personalizing playlists, films and other favorites – as well as making it easy to set up parental controls or an ad-hoc guest mode.

The system works by combining the ‘brain’ with a remote – either a physical one with hardware controls and a 3.2-inch (480 x 800 pixels) display, or by using the Neeo app. Naturally, there are different funding tiers available depending on which you’d prefer.

Early backers can get the brain and use it with the app (available for iOS or Android) for an Early Bird price of $148, while you’ll need to shell out $199 for the Super Early Bird offer that includes a controller. The next tier up from there is $219, and there’s also a family pack available that delivers two remotes and one brain to allow people in different rooms to control other devices at the same time.

The project is looking to raise $50,000, and while there’s always some risk associated in backing any Kickstarter campaign, the team behind the product have manufacturing experience across the electronics and telecoms industries, so we’d hope to see this one delivered on schedule. The first batch is due to start shipping in March this year, while non-Super Early Bird tiers are due to start shipping in May.

➤ Neeo [Kickstarter]