Griffin Beacon Universal Remote Control for iPod touch, iPhone and iPad

by Griffin Technology

Product Features

• Wireless universal audio/video controller for iPhone, iPod touch and iPad.
• Low-profile component designed to blend unobtrusively with any decor.
• Use your iPhone, iPod touch or iPad as a powerful universal remote control without dongles or cases.
• Connects to your iOS device via Bluetooth and gives you control of your TV, stereo, and other home entertainment components.
• For use with Dijit's Universal Remote app, a free download from the App Store.

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Product Description

From the Manufacturer

Universal AV controller for iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch

Product Description

Your entertainment system expects a remote control to speak to it via infrared signals. Your iOS device speaks Bluetooth. Beacon acts as a bridge between them. Imagine being able to control your TV or stereo using your always-handy iPhone. Or your iPod touch. Or your iPad. Beacon pairs with your iOS device via Bluetooth and works with Dijit's Universal Remote App to put complete control of your home entertainment center in the palm of your hand. There are no bulky cases or dongles, no wires or cables. Control your home entertainment system using the Universal Remote App on your Multi-Touch display. Setup is quick and easy. The Dijit app uses a library of constantly updated device codes to simplify setup for your TV, set-top box, sound system, media players and more. There's even an integrated learning feature for components not yet included in Dijit's library. Bluetooth pairing is simple and puts you just a few taps away from using Dijit's intuitive Program Guide and your touchscreen-based device to change channels, volumes, input, set your DVR, and more.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

73 of 78 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Excellent product, some minor quirks. August 2, 2011

By F. Lamaestra

This product is great and the software is fantastic.

This product saves people from having to spend 10k on 'solutions' from dinosaur HT companies like Crestron to get outdated giant brick remotes to control all their HT devices; usually on a equipment rack inside a closet. Using a tablet is the future of remotes. It's no wonder this device is consistently sold out because all the HT installers are gobbling them up.

On the downside, there were just a few situations where I lost blue-tooth synchronization and others where I had to bring my beacon back from sleep by touching the top button.

Overall, great product.

Other notes:

To DIJIT:

Please add haptic options so the IPAD and iphone vibration features can work when pressing a button. This is major missing feature and these IOS devices have this function built-in; might as well use them.

Please create the ability to temporarily remove the swipe un-lock from my IOS device if it went to sleep with DIJIT running. I hate having to unlock my device every time just to hit mute or change a channel. I should just have to touch the screen to bring it back to life and then push the GUI button.

Please add Playstation 3 support, the IOS device already has blue-tooth, this is major limitation; especially since I can control all my other consoles.

To Griffin

Please add an AC adapter option, this 'AA' requirement is not good considering how much time is spent watching TV and movies. Having blue-tooth running all the time can't be good. I would be surprised if I got the claimed 2 months battery life, which doesn't seem that long anyway. Let's not add to the landfill problem. I should be able to install this device in a rack and never think about it.... Every time I go into my movie room, I have to change the batteries on this thing, ridiculous. I may jury-rig the battery terminals to a same-spec wall-wort to avoid this issue.

Please add a firmware update connection on the beacon. I can't believe there are no bugs with this device, unless all this is just a dumb repeater.

Please allow changing of the sleep timer to 4 hours, instead of 60 minutes. Most movies are over 60 minutes and I hate having to bring my unit out of sleep mode.

Please add a 2.5mm or 3.5mm jack for IR extension cables. This is the standard for all IR repeater devices and would allow the beacon IR to reach a whole A/V rack of equipment. These 2.5mm IR repeater cables are about a buck on auction sites.

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Update:

Looks like there is a Griffin Utility App to update the firmware for this device. Nice.

Some bad news people: The promised Android App appears to require a SPECIAL Beacon. Your IOS Beacon will not work with android devices even though they are all using bluetooth. Crazytown. Read more ›

56 of 61 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars Not quite there yet October 10, 2011

By Pompano Mark

Amazon Verified Purchase

I gave this product 3 stars, even though I eventually returned, because they are really close. The product works as advertised but has a few limitations that I found unusable in my situation.

Pros:
Decent software that was intuitive
Price
Good support for many types of devices

Cons:
The Bluetooth is limiting since you can only pair with one device at a time.
After the device goes to sleep the wake up process was not smooth. I had to play with it to get it to reconnect.
IR output produced inconsistant results. Position is critical and in my case I had few options for location

This would be a terrific product if it was WiFi instead of Bluetooth and I would gladly pay more for that feature.

35 of 38 people found the following review helpful

2.0 out of 5 stars Disapointing January 7, 2012

By Eric Loche

My kids dropped my wonderful Harmony remote. I stumbled across this and thought it might make a suitable replacement for my Harmony. It didn't. I am returning it. This is the great product that wasn't.

The idea is neat - use your iPhone to control your home entertainment center. Trouble is - it is very limited in what it can do. It has all the functionality of the basic universal remote control that you can buy for $15 at any retail store. So you are paying $70 to may your iPhone work like a $15 universal remote control. Not much value there, eh?

First - programming it is a pain. Rather than simply enter the product make and model it goes through a wizard that tries out a handful of per-programmed profiles - which produced limited and disappointing results. It choked on the heart of my system; my Denon receiver. Forget about Xbox, PS3, Apple TV or other media. You are stuck with the 'old school' devices only here. (TV, cable box, dvd)

I tried to teach it the commands for my devices - but it couldn't get past that my Denon receiver has both an 'on' and an 'off' button... and 'teaching' it the commands off the old remote was certainly frustrating.

I did like the interface with the program guide and Netflix. That is a promising feature. The only reason it gets an extra star.

The device runs on batteries and must constantly be 'recoupled' with your phone. Lame. I had planned on mounting it on the ceiling behind the viewing area so as to get the widest signal distribution - I can forget that now.

Oh, and if you aren't standing directly behind it then it won't read your bluetooth signal.

Overall this product grossly under-performs it's potential.... To make this a worthwhile addition to a hometheater it needs a complete redesign;

1) Network - not bluetooth. No 'coupling' every 60 minutes.
2) AC power - not batteries
3) Internet library of devices and codes indexed by model number.
4) Functionality for PS3, Xbox, Apple TV, HTPC, etc.
5) MACRO setup. (Turn multiple devices on/off with one command)

It would probably add $100 to the cost - but I'd be willing to pay $170 for something useflul ; not $70 for a useless piece of junk. Read more ›

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars For the price, nothing better, must be technical to use this product October 2, 2012

By Robert Klaproth

Amazon Verified Purchase

If you're retired and can barely figure out how to use a computer, you should steer clear of this product. This product is for techies, those who can pick up any piece of technology and figure it out easily. I suspect all the negative reviews are from people who don't have the patience to figure it out, or are trying to replace a $200+ dollar Harmony remote with their iphone, just not going to happen. The first clue, the price tag. I'm giving this product 5 Stars because for under 50 bucks it can't be beat. If it was $100, I'd probably do 4 stars.

So, onto my setup. I have a Samsung 46 inch LED TV, Sony PS3, Wii, Onkyo TSXR receiver, AppleTV, Sony Blu Ray player, WDTV Live player, and an HDMI switch box, all hooked in through the home theater receiver, so I only have 1 HDMI cable going to my flat screen TV because it's wall mounted. Everything is either plugged into individual inputs on my receiver or into the HDMI switch box.

Out of the box, the product only works with basic functions. I.e. when you add the Samsung TV, you're only going to be able to turn the TV on, turn the volume up and down, change channels, etc. However, this product has one key function, which is LEARN, that allows you to memorize all the other functions of your remotes. For example, on the Samsung TV, one key button left off is the SMART HUB button which launches the Samsung media center which has all your apps such as NetFlix. No biggie, I added this button in about 2 minutes.

My biggest gripe with the setup of remotes is rather then pick from models, i.e. Samsung 6900 TV, you pick "Samsung Remote 1" or "Samsung Remote 2", until you find the remote that turns your TV on and off.... This basic setup isn't too difficult to work with, it just results in a far less "customized" remote for your product, i.e. the SMART HUB button missing from my Samsung remote. So, anyway, this just means that you're spending a lot more time on the initial setup of the product, time well invested once you get it all dialed in.

My other gripe with the product is that it is a bluetooth product, that means it pairs only to ONE device at a time. So if you have multiple people in the house who want to use it, each time someone launches the app they have to tap the top of the Beacon to unpair it from the previously used device and pair it with theirs. Not too big of a deal, but just a minor inconvenience. Once you get it paired with all of your devices, it works flawlessly for the most part, just a quick tap of the beacon and you're back in business. I have an iPad and an iPhone, both running iOS 6. I should note that if you have a lock code on your iDevice you will have to unlock it every time you want to use the remote. Generally speaking though, most of the times the Digit app does come back to where you left off after you unlock the phone, although it does occasionally crash. If you want a dedicated remote while watching TV, I'd recommend temporarily removing the unlock code from your phone and having it stay awake for 10 minutes rather then going to sleep so quickly.

The activity buttons are really handy. You can rename the button to say something like "Play Wii" and it will automatically turn your TV on, turn your AV receiver on and switch it to the GAME input. NOTE: It will NOT turn on a PS3 or a WII because they both use Bluetooth remotes, and this device only does IR, not Bluetooth or RF. No big deal since when you play PS3 or Wii you need to use their remotes anyway, so you can turn your PS3 or WII on from the gaming remote. Also, if you want to use your PS3 as a DVD/BD player, you'll need to get an IR receiver to plug into one of the USB ports of the PS3, and then program the remote in the Digit app that the Beacon uses.

As other reviewers have said, the Netflix integration is very nice, you can add movies to your instant queue from within the app. Unfortunately, it doesn't have the intelligence to actually start playing the movie with your preferred Netflix play back device, so you still have to manually fire up Netflix on your TV or media device and navigate to your queue to play back the movie. Maybe in future versions of the Digit app they will figure out how to make that work.

Overall, I'm very happy with the product. It was under 50 bucks, and it allows me to control all of my devices in the living room from multiple iDevices. It does have a "room" function in the app, so you could program a bunch of stuff from your bedroom TV setup, and actually move the beacon to your bedroom and select bedroom from the rooms to control the stuff in your room. I haven't tried this since I prefer not to have a TV in my room, but many of you may enjoy trying that functionality.

Haven't had much experience with the battery life yet. It's on Bluetooth so it will use more batteries. I already have a AA battery charger and rechargeable batteries so I'm not too worried about it. It does come with 4 cheap AA batteries to get you started, that may last a month or less.

Feel free to shoot me an email here on Amazon if you have any questions about the product, I think most people will enjoy using the product if you take the time to properly set everything up when you get it. Read more ›