Messages

1

Amulet Remote / Re: Amulet update - cheaper worldwide shipping

« on: May 12, 2014, 06:37:50 AM »

Thanks for the vote of confidence, mdsh 

2

Amulet Remote / Re: Amount of ram?

« on: May 01, 2014, 06:34:45 PM »

This has now become irrelevant anyway as i've realised any manually learned codes are forgotten each time the battery goes flat.

I'm a bit late to this thread, but just wanted to check whether other users are seeing this behaviour - it's certainly not supposed to happen. My Amulet occasionally goes fully dead, but happily retains my Samsung TV programming without any need to relearn codes.

(I've seen one additional report of this from another new Amulet user.)

The amount of RAM used up depends on the complexity of the codes learnt, and also (to an extent) how long you hold down each button for. You should definitely see more than 13 codes - I think I verified it at about 30 codes a while ago, again using Samsung.

Something we'd like to do is add presets for the common vendors, so that no EEPROM storage is needed for most users; the total amount of space available on our IR chip is pretty limited though, so we'll need to get creative with exactly how we implement it.

3

Amulet Remote / Amulet update - cheaper worldwide shipping

« on: May 01, 2014, 06:28:44 PM »

Hi folks,

Not sure if this is the most appropriate place to post this (James can move or delete it if needed), but I figured it might be of interest to some of VoxCommando's international users:

Now that we've completed our inventory move, worldwide shipping on Amulet orders has been reduced from $35 to $15, as of 1st May. This should make it a fair bit more affordable for UK and European users who had been put off by the high shipping price.

Delivery time for European orders should also now be much faster: typically 3 days or so. The downside is that US & Canadian orders now take an extra couple of days to deliver; when we're as big as Amazon and can afford multiple fulfilment centres around the world, that will improve, no doubt.

Also, if I haven't said it elsewhere already, all our shipping delays are now finally resolved and orders are typically dispatched within 48 hours, allowing for local holidays.

Eddy

4

General / Re: The Digital Lifestyle Podcast

« on: May 01, 2014, 05:51:17 PM »

A great listen, James; loads of useful and interesting insights into VoxCommando, and the thinking behind various aspects. I really enjoyed it.

(Thanks also for the nice mentions of Amulet!)

It all sounded very natural - makes me wonder what bits were cut from the original unedited mix :-)

5

Amulet Remote / Re: Users in Europe

« on: March 27, 2014, 08:39:51 AM »

Thanks James - we do have the concept of the Noogie, but not so much as a happiness-inducing gesture! 

Perhaps it's making me happy because it's temporarily distracting me from our shipping woes...

The latest update I had from our local shipping agent here in Ireland, in response to a query, is that I probably won't be allowed to collect the shipment from the airport when it arrives, since I don't hold a hazardous goods transportation license (!). I'm definitely taking a picture of all our shipping boxes when they finally arrive, since they are apparently now covered in hazmat stickers!

One day at a time...

Eddy

6

Amulet Remote / Re: Users in Europe

« on: March 26, 2014, 07:29:51 PM »

Hi Cosmo,

I think I emailed you directly yesterday (assuming you're the customer with a work address in Musgrave's, Dublin 7!) but no harm to post a general update for the benefit of everyone else:

Yesterday evening, our shipping company informed me that American Airlines had rejected our shipment of remotes for a record 5th time. The last three rejections have been for such trivial reasons that it seems clear they just don't want the business and will keep coming up with excuses not to carry it.

We have now engaged an alternative airline and all going well, our shipment will be on the move again today or tomorrow, hopefully arriving in Dublin over the weekend.

I don't like to keep making posts with words like "hopefully" since they don't really convey much information other than that I'm an optimist at heart; however, I do recognize that some information is better than none!

I will of course let people know as soon as we finally have our stock safely in Dublin and available for immediate dispatch once again.

Thanks,

Eddy

7

Amulet Remote / Re: Users in Europe

« on: March 18, 2014, 03:08:24 PM »

Hi folks,

As you may have gathered, we have still not fully resolved our shipping issues, unfortunately.

Our main stock of Amulet remotes was collected from Idaho on 20th February, and should have been in Ireland by 27th February. Unfortunately, they got stalled in Los Angeles due to the large number of Lithium Polymer batteries contained in the shipment.

We had done our research, and had taken pains to make sure the battery manufacturer's guidelines for air transit had been followed to the letter. However, the airline was still unhappy. The shipment was stalled until last Thursday (13th March), while our shipping company organised a safety inspector to come and certify the shipment as safe for international transit. Having provided the extra paperwork needed, we've been told it takes several additional days to process the shipment, since it's in a long queue of other shipments that are being similarly delayed.

Yesterday was a holiday here in Ireland, but I am hoping to hear today or tomorrow that our shipment is on the move, hopefully due for arrival in Dublin before the end of the week.

How can it take more than a month to ship something by air? It sounds crazy and messed up. At this point, shipping by sea looks like it would have been both faster and cheaper. Needless to say, we're as frustrated as you.

All I can do (again!) is apologise for the delay, and re-iterate that anyone who is fed up waiting is of course entitled to a full refund on demand.

I'll post more news as I have it.

Thanks,

Eddy

8

Amulet Remote / Re: Users in Europe

« on: January 28, 2014, 01:44:12 PM »

Thanks for the feedback, Harri. I'm not a big fan of the loud "click", personally -- it was a late change necessitated by a manufacturing issue, rather than a design choice.

There were a couple of reasons why we ended up with IR rather than RF keys for default Media Center buttons. The main one was latency -- we figured the same delay you see when the RF link is initially activating for voice would also apply when sending keystrokes via RF, which would be just enough to be irritating when you have to live with it on a regular basis (it's around 500-700ms, from memory).

The other, less significant, issue was battery life - running the wireless link takes more battery than pure IR. That said, we end up running the RF link whenever motion is detected anyway, so unless you are pressing buttons with the Amulet sitting flat on a table, it's not a big consideration.

A third reason is that Media Center supports IR codes out of the box with no special software, once you have an eHome receiver; with our RF chipset, we can only cover about 90% of the buttons using the generic HID driver, and would need to install custom software to deal with the other 10% of buttons (e.g. Start Button, and a few of the other useful ones).

All of these are good reasons for not making wireless transmission the default, but it could definitely be made customisable via a firmware upgrade. No promises, but it's on the list of "would-be-nice-to-haves".

Eddy

9

Amulet Remote / Re: Users in Europe

« on: January 22, 2014, 05:22:03 PM »

Yes, I live in Norway. Nothing have happens so far. I'd like for this to get solved asap.

Okay, from chatting with our fulfilment house, there was a problem with your shipment which caused the package to arrive back undelivered. I'm afraid I don't have any more specific info on the cause - I suspect it was at our end, rather than any problem with your address, since yours was the very first international shipment made with our new shipper (possibly an issue with customs paperwork?) I am going to email you separately to discuss. Hopefully we can get this resolved asap.

Regarding tracking, I noticed that the tracking for one of our New Zealand deliveries did indeed show progress of the package into New Zealand, through customs clearance, and on through the delivery process. I don't know if this will be typical for all international shipments or if it's specific to New Zealand, but I hadn't noticed it with our previous shipping carrier; it's quite useful! That order spent 3-4 days passing through the sort facility in LA, so if hpooni's order is similar, it should be entering Canada either today or tomorrow, for delivery the following day.

Eddy

10

Amulet Remote / Re: Amulet Remote

« on: January 22, 2014, 05:09:01 PM »

Hi,

After writing above post, I walked outside to check the mail, and low and behold, there was a package from Amulet Devices.
 It contained one remote,  so still waiting for the 2nd one, but one is better than none,  and hey I'm not a pensioner, and I aint dead and buried, so it is a good outcome.

I'm glad your Amulet finally arrived safely, even if the whole experience wasn't as it should have been. I won't repeat what I said in the other thread, other than to re-iterate that we hope to do better in future. I can however confirm that the issue was definitely related to shipping, not inventory.

Regarding your the missing unit, while a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush, two birds in the hand is even better, especially when you paid for them! I already emailed a customer today about a missing unit -- was that you? If not, let me know and we can discuss the most expedient solution by PM.

Thanks,

Eddy

11

Amulet Remote / Re: Amulet remote on openelec xbmc with voxcommando on remote server

« on: January 20, 2014, 12:16:54 PM »

Coming late to this conversation, but one additional thought in terms of a multi-room / multi-mic setup: you can now buy relatively inexpensive USB extenders that work over CAT5.

It would be interesting to see if the Amulet USB dongle works well with one of these extenders, so that the PC running VoxCommando can be located in a different part of the house than the USB receiver (which still needs to remain in proximity to the Amulet mic) - especially if someone is planning on using several Amulets on a single system.

If anyone has experimented with this, I'd love to hear how you got on.

12

Amulet Remote / Re: Can I use Amulet Remote + USB Mic

« on: January 20, 2014, 12:12:01 PM »

Hi folks,

To confirm what nime5ter said: two Amulet's on a single receiver is not supported at present.

It's actually an interesting idea -- multiple transmitters, one receiver, for the scenario described and in principle, the underlying radio chipset would actually support it. We certainly haven't tested it, but it may be possible to pair two units to the one receiver.

There is also a "public broadcast" mode where the receiver will accept transmissions from any Amulet within range, but our firmware currently doesn't enable this (too problematic if you have two independent Amulet setups operating in close proximity).

More generally, we have a limitation in that our firmware is not field upgradable at present. This is actually No. 1 on my personal list of things to fix, though it's by no means straightforward. Nonetheless, it would open up a lot of scope for adding features, improving IR performance, etc.

However, one step at a time: as discussed elsewhere, we need to get more basic stuff like reliable shipping working first!

Eddy
Amulet Devices

13

Amulet Remote / Re: Users in Europe

« on: January 20, 2014, 11:59:15 AM »

Hi all,

My apologies for the delayed response here, especially after James was good enough to give me a heads up about the discussion more than a week ago. Everything James has said above is correct, including the comments about lack of communication being the most frustrating part of all; we hope to do better moving forward, and to more closely monitor the forums here for questions and concerns.

To add a little to what James said:

We experienced significant problems with our US shipping facility over the Christmas period which led to large delays in orders being shipped. We were doing our best to get these resolved so we could contact people with good news; in retrospect, no news most definitely ISN'T good news, if you're waiting for something you ordered to arrive and we should have done a better job of keeping people informed.

I believe the majority of outstanding orders shipped early last week, and all US orders have now been delivered. International orders are still in transit, according to the tracking information I have -- they typically took 7-8 days with our old shipping agent, and I expect the new agent will be similar; we'll need to wait until some units actually arrive though to find out!

Hellow, are you in Norway? If so, my news isn't great -- you may be the one international order that slipped through the net, since you weren't on the list of tracking numbers I received from our US office last week; I should hear later today whether this is an oversight on the list, or whether the order has indeed not shipped. If the latter, I will see if I can find a fresh unit in our European office to ship you immediately.

Brian, I believe your unit was delivered on 15 Jan, if you are in IN; if you haven't received it by now, please let me know via PM on the forum here.

Harri, I have PM'd you the tracking number for your order, which was dispatched last Wednesday and still appears in transit.

If any other readers have orders pending, and have not already received an update from me, please contact me via PM here and I will try and get you info asap.

Thanks all for your patience, and also to James for his support. Our new shipping facility is not as efficient as we would like (it can take up to a week to turnaround orders) but is only an interim solution until we relocate our stock to Europe -- we expect to have this completed within the next 3-4 weeks. We should then be in a position to ship European orders with a turnaround of 3-5 days, and at reduced shipping cost. I will post an update once this is complete.

Eddy
Amulet Devices

14

Amulet Remote / Re: Making VC listen and not listen, and adjust volume

« on: April 29, 2012, 06:08:28 PM »

That did it for me! I re-checked and found that VirtualBox does indeed have the ability to just pass through the USB devices onto the Guest OS. I had to install a VirtualBox "Extension Pack" and add my Linux user to a certain group to enable USB-EHCI support for the VM. I did that, and lo and behold, the Windows OS in the VM recognized the Amulet USB dongle directly (as it should, by design), and all is well

I'm a little late to the party here, but glad to hear there was a straightforward (if non-obvious) solution. Nicely resolved!

I do not hear any popping. So this is probably fixed.

The popping James mentioned is caused by a bug in the firmware on the wireless transmitter chipset we use. It's been fixed by the manufacturer now, and will be included in our next production run, but the unit you have is probably still affected. However, we did rev our own firmware to mute the mic when the radio link is initially activated, which does a reasonable job of working around it.

The Amulet remote's mic does indeed work great. Only gripe I have is the delay when I first pick it up after a while of inaction. The RF link probably takes time waking up.

Yep, that's exactly it - the RF link takes about 700ms to wake up from cold. Once it's awake, the response should be instantaneous. We played with a few different timeout values to try and get a good balance between convenience and excessive battery drain. In an ideal world, it would always be instant, of course!

Glad you're finding it useful otherwise :-)

Regards,

Eddy (Amulet Devices)

15

General Discussion / Re: Regisstering VoxCommando

« on: July 17, 2011, 09:25:50 PM »

Wow, Kalle - that's really nice work! I am very impressed. (And particularly good of you to post it on my birthday :-)

If you are planning on offering this as a product, I'd definitely like to order one for my own Amulet at home.

Out of curiosity, is the small insert for the USB socket on the remote easy to remove if needed (just in case you want to plug in a standard USB charge cable if travelling, for example)?

Eddy