I did a thing. I bought a bunch of these at the end of last year when they were all the rage, but waited to really set them up until the device handlers were ready. Then promptly forgot about them.
I set up a couple last week and came to the conclusion that the biggest problem with these is that you can’t really immediately pick one up and know the orientation.
So taking a Roku remote as inspiration, I found an excess piece of a watch 22mm NATO strap and decided to install it. This was probably not the best material because it’s too thick and wider than needed to make orientation obvious by look and touch, but it was handy.
There are two screws to remove, one on the battery cover, and one inside the cover. Then there are two clips per side, and one at the front. There’s also a centering notch at the middle of the tail end. To remove these I just used a plastic spudger. I did crack the front one, but now that I know where they are, I doubt I’d have a problem next time.
Once open, Iaid the gray bottom piece down on a flat surface upside down and placed the strap against it. I scribed the plastic to the height of the strap thickness. Then I used a small file to remove the plastic to create a notch to allow the strap to exit the inside of the remote. I used a solder iron to burn a hole in the nylon strap where the internal screw goes through, then cut a notch on the strap where the reset button is, as well as melting in a spot for that centering notch to pass… I did probably burn out that screw hole too much so that it’s a notch instead of a whole, but there’s virtually no gap between the screw hole housing and the battery housing in the plastic. I’d have liked to have kept some material there to hold the strap a bit better. We’ll see how it holds up.
All that done, I put the strap in place and popped the cover back on. There is a tiny gap where the white and gray plastic don’t meet exactly flush where the strap comes out. Not sure if I didn’t file quite enough or if it’s just warped slightly.
I’ll see if I like it and it improves usability. I’ll likely pick up some thinner nylon ribbon to use next time if I decide to do this to other remotes. Maybe I could even color code them, since I have about 10 of the things.
Just thought I’d share in case anybody disliked the difficulty of orienting these like I do.
Nice Mod! I ended up printing labels with a label maker and sticking them on the buttons. I just have the top one be on/off toggle, and the other 3 as different brightness levels for certain lights. I have a bunch of them scattered around my house, some stuck on the walls with the included dock. I think it makes it really easy to tell whats what, especially for guests and the wife. But this is a really cool idea too!
My problem was the one I had in our bedroom. Both my wife and I hit the wrong light several times in the first day or so, especially in the dark. So this is a tactile way to feel which way’s up.
I noticed in the pics it looks a bit jankier than it actually is because I had a slight excess burn I didn’t clean up where the strap comes out of the bottom. That dark spot doesn’t show up much just looking at it, but I can probably take it apart and scrape it off with a knife. It’s not actually a spot on the plastic itself. I also didn’t sand the melted part at the end, which improves things, too.
I’ve got a bunch of these, so I’ll probably do another one with a more appropriate strap or ribbon.
This remote after setup only give option for on/off in action section. Is there any way to enable to other functionalities such as dimming, temperature control etc.
Thank you everyone here for your input on getting this remote to work correctly with Smartthings.
I connected one remote to control a lamp bulb and everything was working fine until today, when I added a second Ecosmart remote to my hub. Now it is acting very strange, controlling a bulb that is adjacent to my hub.
Are there still issues with having multiple remotes connected to the same hub?
I am in the San Francisco Bay area in California and they go in and out of stock, quite often the one with two lightbulbs is in stock when the one with one is not.
I just checked and my local store only has a few in stock with one bulb, but you can get the ones with two bulbs any of the three different ways: pick up, local truck, or online:
Hello @swade. I did get it to work. Thank you what was confusing me was that while the SmartThings was searching it added the remote but did not show a confirmation that it was added and that’s what was throwing me off because when I backed out of the searching screen I noticed it just appeared on the main screen of the app
The limitation is still, as far as I know, that you can’t pair any remote which is paired to Smartthings with any of the Ecosmart bulbs afterwards, because from that point every remote paired to Smartthings will control that bulb, or group of bulbs.
ah, but if you pair more then one remote with smartthings and just have those paired remotes control other smartthings, then you can use more then one remote. so, if you pair the ecosmart bulbs directly to smartthings then you should be okay, right? as the remotes are only paired to smartthings and not directly to the ecosmart bulbs.
