My Smart Home: I’m drowning in remote controls, so naturally I’ve bought another one
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Eight remote controls in a three-metre-square room is getting silly. Naturally, my solution involves spending £118.06 on another one. But this one might earn its place.
I'm deep into the process of setting up my dream man cave in my new house. By day it's my office, but by night I can kick back on a sofa and fire up a projector to watch some TV or play some games.
That sofa is also a bed, so this three metre by three metre room has three purposes - and that means it needs a lot of tech, obviously.
For my office, I've got a posh LED light over my computer and monitor which, for some reason, has a remote control.
I've got RGB lighting behind the monitors for a bit of what posh people call "ambience" - and that's got a remote control.
At the back of the room there are two LED floor lamps, both of which have a remote control, and I've just installed a new LED ceiling light with a fan which, yep, has a remote control.
My projector also has a remote control, as does the Fire Stick I run from it, and so does the cheap galaxy projector I bought the other day to give the room some atmosphere.
I doubt you've been keeping count, but that's eight remote controls. And that's before the new TV arrives I'm going to be running my CCTV system through. And in the summer I'll run an air conditioning unit, which also has a remote control.
It's getting a bit silly, then. And you might expect me to turn to tech for a solution, but it's not that simple.
Yes, there are inexpensive universal remote controls on the market, but they usually take on the functions of a selection of infra-red remotes. And most of mine don't use infra-red.
A few of them link to their appliances through Bluetooth, which is complicated enough, but some actually use RF transmitters - radio frequency, to you and me.
Remarkably, there are gadgets on the market that claim to be able to control all three remote types. At least, I've found one so far. It's by a company called SofaBaton, and it's their U3.
It looks like a large TV remote, but it has a colour display, a scroll wheel, USB-C charging and, I'm not going to beat about the bush here, I absolutely have to own one.
It costs around £150, depending on where you order it from, but I've found one on Amazon, shipping from Germany, for £118.06. It arrives on Monday.
I can't afford it, I don't strictly need it, I'm going to have to hide my financial frivolity from the wife, but sometimes you just have to have something.
It won't be my first foray into universal remote controls. Back in my adolescence I developed an obsession for turning my bedroom into a cross between a home cinema and a disco, and I got sick of all the remotes. They were a lot bigger then.
I saved up my meagre pay-packets and bought a One For All Kameleon 6 - and it quickly became one of my favourite things.
One of the best features it had was "macro" buttons, which were programmable sequences that could perform an array of functions in one click.
It was incredibly complicated to set up, but I could turn on all my tech, and even set specific volumes, or tune into specific channels, at the press of one button.
And the SofaBaton U3, I gather, has the same feature. How exciting.
It's fair to say I've read mixed reviews of the SofaBaton U3, so I'm keeping my expectations fair to moderate. It's going to be a complicated learning curve, I'm convinced I'll encounter unexpected limitations, and I don't think this will be my last universal remote purchase, but if it reduces the ridiculous number of them I have beside me on the sofa every evening, even by a few, I'll be thrilled. I'll keep you posted.