Almost DOA....

[RRawpower]

Is there an existing issue for this?

• [X] I have searched the existing issues

Description

Not exactly Dead on Arrival, but hugely disappointing all the same to discover a relentlessly endless loop on power up that has proven utterly impossible even to enter any search for country following language selection (American English) before the cycle starts all over to tap screen again. Not to make too much of my own background as a former Apple Mac tech, but under the circumstance I knew enough to make sure to let the remote charge on the dock for at least an hour and then follow the recommendation to press power for ten seconds for a (soft?) reset to no avail. I assume "How to restart the remote?" is useless unless and until I actually get past the initialization screens since no menu can be expected to appear to select "restart". Same goes for "Factory reset" if "Settings" are inaccessible. So far as I can tell, the only remaining option worth trying seems to be “restore factory firmware”, though I’m unsure if the symptom described technically qualifies as “remote is unable to boot up”.

At some point I guess I had not been depressing the power button for ten seconds as I thought until I finally saw a screen appear with a choice to “Reboot” that almost immediately disappeared. But when I attempted again to keep pressing power, the screen remained blank. So I’ve no idea how I managed to invoke the Reboot screen since I’d not pressed any other buttons other than power throughout, including volume up and down that I was aiming to get to “Recovery”. More frustrating then was following instruction to press and hold the left side volume up and down along with power reverted to the original Hello tap to begin screen once again rather than “Recovery”. And then the “Power Off”/ “Reboot” screen appeared again momentarily. After another round I finally saw “Reboot” again but only tapped the button rather than held it simply because it’s consistently gone in a split second. At long last, seeing and holding “Reboot” until its graphic swiped across right understandably started up once more to Hello, tap to begin. And STILL could not succeed in entering even two characters into the country search field. Yet I finally got to Recovery and put the remote in the dock to restore. I must say, however, having so far relied only on the tap screen, without any further familiarity or user guide, it did take me a minute wondering why pressing the blue dot “Yes” on the tap screen got no result until I realized the home and blue dot icons on the screen are meant to correspond to the physical buttons below. Reasonably intuitive once you know, but frankly not immediately obvious even for this former professional designer. And, again, no other hints, let alone guides, in the purported Support section.

In any event, the update completed and lo and behold, rather than the insistent tiny tap screen keyboard below the search for country field up to that point I found instead “Select country” with a far more convenient country selection scroll list. Only to hit another impasse with “Administrator PIN” which, needless to say, is nowhere to be found in Unfolded Circle Support. So I surmised again that I was to enter my own choice of numerals the same as any banking or other PIN. Now I fully realize that more detailed guides, let alone comprehensive user manuals, are not common these days, but if only for such initial startup at least some minimal text sheet would be welcome for any new user with a new device who might want at least some hints what to expect. While there was no blinking orange light on the dock to configure it next, the label on the bottom for pin reset was just the answer I needed to solve the “Connection refused” error.

So the dock got set in order to go on to Integration setup with my Sony Android TV which the screen immediately identified. But even confirming the TV was on and connected to my WiFi router, the remote kept returning a timeout error. Leaving me no choice but to skip that for now, so I assume there’s little else I can do with the remote until I get it to recognize the TV. And once more returning to the main support page, I realize there is absolutely no user guide whatsoever for either the remote or the dock, just a couple of fairly limited sets of FAQs which I supposed must be attributed to “Our support pages and articles are being updated.”

Other than all that, the industrial design, build quality, and packaging are all first-rate. I look forward to discovering how much better the actual UI and functional experience should be than this unfortunate sequence of startup obstacles.

Randall Ross New York, U.S.

How to Reproduce

All detailed above

Expected behavior

All detailed above

System version

1.0.5

What part of the system affected by the problem?

Overall system

Additional context

No response

[martonborzak]

Thank you for the detailed explanation of the issues you encountered during the setup of your remote and dock. We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience caused, and we understand how frustrating it must have been for you, especially given your technical background.

It's concerning to hear about the relentless endless loop you experienced during the initialization, and the challenges faced even after attempting a soft reset and restoring factory firmware. Your feedback about the user interface, particularly the correspondence between the tap screen icons and physical buttons, is valuable and will be taken into account for future updates and user guides.

We are actively working on updating our support pages to provide more detailed and helpful information to our users.

Regarding the "Administrator PIN" issue and the "Connection refused" error, we’ll improve the wording, so it’s more clear what those labels mean.

We appreciate your positive feedback on the design, build quality, and packaging.

The Android TV issues have since been resolved and if you update to the latest firmware, it should work. You can do that by going to Settings/Software update.

Once again, we apologize for the inconvenience and appreciate your patience and understanding as we work to fix bugs and streamline the software experience.

[RRawpower]

Thank you very much, Marton, for the immediate response and acknowledgement. However unintentionally harsh my notes may have come across, they actually do reflect my own reactions step by step in sequence to try to record the particulars correctly. In retrospect I might now suggest just a bit more explanatory text in some of the respective setup screens should be quite sufficient to illuminate the interactions effectively. Such as parenthetically below “Administrator PIN” perhaps: "(enter four digits as your own Personal Identification Number to access and manage Remote Two’s settings and other reserved features)”. And for that first instance of tap screen icons corresponding to physical buttons: “Note the icons displayed on this screen are not buttons to be tapped but meant to indicate the physical buttons below corresponding to the choice of answer as labeled onscreen”.

As it happens, ironically, right after submitting my concerns I realized from the version request in the form that there might just be some update as it turned out once I found that Settings screen. Of course the remote still needs much more time even to reach 50% charge to download and install. But it’s certainly good to know on that point I was on the right track. I would think there must also be Integration for Google TV forthcoming as well as Android, as prevalent as both have become. Especially considering my next upgrade for a whole new home theater once I relocate back to Los Angeles in the fall will be one of Sony’s latest top 77% OLED models which are now Google TV since they moved on from the Android OS on my A9G.

If nothing else, I hope my constructive criticism may help inform and prompt some relatively basic and quick improvements before and while many more backers start receiving their remotes as I just did today. Since startup issues must always be expected, I’m confident most people will make some allowances if they also find the product and package as credibly impressive as I did, despite the odd issues which hopefully may be isolated to just a limited number of devices.

Randall

On Sep 12, 2023, at 4:35 PM, Marton @.***> wrote:

Thank you for the detailed explanation of the issues you encountered during the setup of your remote and dock. We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience caused, and we understand how frustrating it must have been for you, especially given your technical background.

It's concerning to hear about the relentless endless loop you experienced during the initialization, and the challenges faced even after attempting a soft reset and restoring factory firmware. Your feedback about the user interface, particularly the correspondence between the tap screen icons and physical buttons, is valuable and will be taken into account for future updates and user guides.

We are actively working on updating our support pages to provide more detailed and helpful information to our users.

Regarding the "Administrator PIN" issue and the "Connection refused" error, we’ll improve the wording, so it’s more clear what those labels mean.

We appreciate your positive feedback on the design, build quality, and packaging.

The Android TV issues have since been resolved and if you update to the latest firmware, it should work. You can do that by going to Settings/Software update.

Once again, we apologize for the inconvenience and appreciate your patience and understanding as we work to fix bugs and streamline the software experience.

— Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub https://github.com/unfoldedcircle/bug-reports/issues/43#issuecomment-1716390919, or unsubscribe https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/BCRBGTIQWT4KWUJZJGUZVHLX2DBPRANCNFSM6AAAAAA4VKKAYA. You are receiving this because you authored the thread.

[RRawpower]

Following up from our last exchange, once my Remote Two was sufficiently charged I was able to update the system to version 1.1.2 and proceeded to add my Sony Android TV integration correctly. Only now, of course, I’ve no idea what “Manage entities” means or implies from Android TV’s Local integration screen. Otherwise, all I could do so far was press the Home button to give a new title to a given room. As you know, then pressing the Home button to “Add entity” or “Add group” is fairly mystifying without any guide or even index as yet to define all the apparent operational processing structure, nomenclature, and functions, let alone a basic tutorial or walkthrough by way of example, if not step by step instruction. Other, that is, than the Useful tips which, unfortunately, effectively loops back to visit the rudimentary “unfoldedcircle.com/support” page for more tips which I can only take to mean at this point the handfuls of FAQs.

From random exploring, I did already deduce the upper right circle led to Settings. And that the Status bar must represent the battery level – though again it’s puzzling not to find any more specific percentage of battery level within Setting anywhere else. That can actually be useful, if not essential, for reaching the prerequisite 50% in order to update the system as I found yesterday. But at that time then there was a seemingly random intermittent clock face with a numerical percentage readout that did indicate steady progress, but for my inability to invoke that screen deliberately thereafter. Of course there’s no reference to “clock” in Settings or anywhere else I’ve noticed so far, which certainly may not be critical but it’s all the more perplexing to happen by chance upon even a few incidental elements only to wonder just what may prompt their appearance, if not some user action or setting.

As much as I really do not want to belabor all this preliminary setup, I certainly do not expect what necessarily must amount to inordinate “hand-holding” customer service for the fairly astonishing lack of documentation or even fundamental instruction. And knowing you are a principal, if not the lead developer, I certainly would not want to impose and prevail upon you for such personal support. I can assure you that I would not take it at all personally were you to refer me to another actual support staffer who would hopefully be well prepared to facilitate new user setup – or at least direct users to hitherto concealed support web pages.

I must concede that I’ve not yet ventured into checking out the Web configurator simply because from the first time I heard of it I assumed it was intended to be a most robust advanced UI development tool. One which I would not personally be apprehensive about trying, given my own professional design and tech support background. While I may still look that over as time allows, I must say in my experience it makes far more sense to start first with proper familiarization with all the basics before delving into such ideal customization I’ve actually been looking forward to for over twenty years ever since the paltry Philips Pronto.

So I’ve had no illusion about getting such a customizable device’s remote functions working immediately right out of the box - though it would have been nice to see if Remote Two at least could manage to change the volume or even channel up/down once it was paired to my Sony TV in the Android TV integration. I’m actually unusually patient as long as I have some sense of where I’m heading or what I need to do overall. As it is, the couple of “tips” for Settings and Status bar might have been the right direction to just be helpful enough had any or all of the other initial screens so far likewise included more explanation. Or, again, even an informal tutorial sequence if the programming of such screens might be too problematic to distinguish between limited initial setup and everyday actual function. Either way, unless I’ve completely missed some other points of information either online or in the device itself, I don’t think I’m being too presumptuous to suggest you must already be getting many if not most other users reporting the same confusion.

Randall