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What is the YIO Remote

YIO Remote is an open-source, Raspberry Pi Zero W based, high quality DIY touchscreen remote. It comes in a form of a self-assembly kit, made for smart home and tech enthusiasts, who like to tinker with electronics and software.

It started as a hobby project, but after sharing it on the Home Assistant Forum, Marton was overwhelmed by the positive feedback and started working on a kit so people could easily build their own YIO Remote. After almost a year and lot of work later, the YIO Remote DIY kits were released at a kickstarter campaign.

What is inside the YIO Remote?

The YIO Remote is a combination of a remote and a smart charging dock. But let's focus on the remote itself first. It has a CNC milled, bead blasted and black anodised housing with a 3D printed back plate. Features a 3.5" high resolution, 480x800 pixel, 18 bit color LCD panel with a glass capacitive touch panel. On the PCB, there is a proximity/gesture/ambient light sensor, a battery fuel gauge, a haptic motor driver, GPIO expanders to handle all the buttons and a lithium polymer battery charger.

The YIO Dock serves as the charging station for the remote and has some nice features too! It has a smart LED indicator that informs about different states like connection statuses, but also signals when it's about time to charge the remote. It houses infrared LEDs and an IR receiver for sending/learning IR commands accompanied by both Bluetooth and WiFi radios. There is also a 3.5 mm jack port connector for IR extenders.

The dock has the same CNC milled and finished aluminium body as the remote, a 3D printed insert and an acrylic plate on top that hides both the IR LEDs and IR receiver. The heart of the dock is powered by an ESP32 chip. The dock can be powered using the USB-C port, that adheres to the USB-C standards. You can use it with any charger that does too, from laptop to phone chargers. Just make sure it supplies 3 amps. The USB-C port can also be used to connect to your computer to debug and program it.

Assembling the remote

Please keep in mind that even though it looks like a finished, retail product, it's actually a self-assembly kit you're backing. All it requires a day or two, the necessary tools and some soldering and maker skills to build a YIO Remote.

Click here for the assembly guide or click here to view the assembly video.

You will need the following tools to assemble the remote and dock:

• Soldering iron
• Tweezers
• Flush cutter
• Glue and hot glue. We recommend B-7000 to glue in the display and parts in the dock. Superglue can leave white residue therefore not recommended.
• Polyimid tape

Software

The software is open source and developed by the community. The code is available on our GitHub repository or join the discussion on the forum or chat. It is under heavy development thus constantly evolving and being extended with new features.

YIO Remote allows users to directly interact with their smart home hubs by using our modular integration system and extend its usage. An integration allows YIO to support its connected devices. Next to smart home hub integrations, direct device control is also supported, for example Spotify.

Supported integrations so far:

• Home Assistant
• Homey
• Roon
• Spotify
• YIO Dock We support various devices types, aka. entities.

Supported entities so far:

• Lights
• Blinds
• Media players
• remote(infrared devices)
• Climate control

A beautifully designed user interface gathers all the various integrations and devices under one unified look. The UI was designed to be usable by anyone that can use a smarthome app. The goal was to provide UI choices that look clean and simple while offering as many features as possible.

If you're not into coding, but would like to follow the development of the project, we provide an SD card image and regular software updates. On top of that, we made the initial setup very simple. You can setup your YIO Remote with your smartphone or computer in just a couple of minutes. There's also a web configuration interface, where you can simple edit your configuration on the remote, add new entities or integrations, rearrange your UI pages and much more. Every change you make is automatically saved and live updated on the YIO Remote!

We created a guide on how to run the YIO Remote software on your PC or Mac. Check out thewiki page and give the app a test drive.

And we have many more ideas! We would love to hear your ideas too or if you're interested, join the development of the project!

YIO in real life!

There have been a few, who had the chance to test ride the prototypes of the DIY kit. Check out these forum posts, about their experiences:

Markus' journey in Germany click here Niels' encounter in the Netherlands click here Markus' impressions from Switzerland click here

How did it start?

Marton was looking at smart remotes on the market, but couldn't find anything that fitted his needs. He wanted something that he could use with my setup, not locked into any proprietary sytem and works locally. But most importantly, looks good both on the inside and outside.

For that reason Marro decided to build one myself. Here is a photo of how the remote evolved.

Marton being a designer, was not satisfied with the first version. It did all the things he was missing, but it looked bulky. It also needed a higher resolution screen, the charging was cumbersome and the wire ratsnest were a pain to the eyes. He set a new goal to improve upon all these and make it look like something you could find in stores.

And that is when the first version of the YIO Remote was born. It had no buttons, but it worked. After using it for an entire year, Marton decided to share it with the Home Assistant community. After that, things took off and together with a few enthusiasts, we have spent the rest of the year working towards the version that was made available as a kit on the kickstarter campaign.

Thinkers and DIY enthousiasts like us can build a remote by using their own parts and design or use the same hardware parts for the best experience. Read more about the hardware and features here.

User interface.

The user interface is designed to be adoptable by anyone that can use a smartphone app. Our goal is to provide UI choices that look clean and simple while offering as many features as posible.

1. Notification indicator
2. Current time
3. Battery status indicator
4. Active page name
5. Group name
6. Group power switch
7. Entity
8. Entity power switch
9. Active page selection
10. Page selection.

Pages

The interface selection is based on pages that can be swiped left and right. A page can either be the favourite, settings page or custom pages. Pages have an image header providing more visual information to a page. A page could be used to segment rooms, areas, a specific purpose or anything else that makes sense to you.

Groups

A custom page consists of one or more groups. Groups are a set of entities that can be defined by the user. Groups are another way of organizing entities. A group can be configured to have a group switch, this switch can turn on/off every device within the group at once.

Favorites page

The favorites page is a reserved page that do not show groups but entities directly. The favorites page is a optional page that like all pages can be sorted at any place.

Settings page

The settings page is a reserved page that offers all user settings. The settings page is a optional page that like all pages can be sorted at any place.

Profiles

Profiles can be selected by holding the status bar for 1 second. A profile consist of a group of pages. Every user can have their own UI preferences. Configurate profiles through the web configurator.

Customization

The YIO interface can be configured by using the web configurator. Here the user can add Profiles, Pages, Groups and manage their integrations, settings and entities.