Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Culture

Craving God-like control of your whole home? Meet NEEO

Ryan Waniata
By

looking god like control home theater room meet neeo
Image used with permission by copyright holder
It seems like just about everyone is looking for a smarter way to control their growing collection of devices these days, spurring a host of ingenious new methods to help you take the reigns of your electronic empire. Most of these new creations utilize the smartphone or tablet you already own. But if you’re looking for an even more comprehensive smart universal remote system, you may want get down with a new device currently making a Kickstarter push called NEEO.

Related: Hi-Fi Corner: Hands-on with Samsung’s new multi-room speaker pods

Recommended Videos

NEEO adopts a dual-front attack to give you ultimate control of everything from your stockpile of home theater gear, to smart light bulbs, thermostats, and window shades. At the heart of the system is (of course) an app for iOS or Android devices, which allows easy setup for control of more than 30,000 home theater and smart home devices. The company says the database is comprehensive enough to include “all major AV products produced in the last 10 years.”

Related

NEEO BrainBut the real bones of the system comes from the aluminum-clad NEEO hardware, which begins with a sleek disc that fires Infrared signals in 360 degrees called The Brain. The Brain is partnered with our personal favorite component of the system, a real-life control wand featuring a simplified selection of tactile buttons, and a touch screen with a resolution claimed to be higher than that of Apple’s iPad retina screens. But that’s just the start of the features on board this “thinking remote.”

The wand is embedded with patent-pending “hand detection technology” that is able to recognize who you are when you pick it up to call up your favorite content and devices, and also allow for locked-down parental controls. The unit also includes a stand and a rechargeable battery that NEEO says can go months without charging, four antennas featuring dual Bluetooth protocols (including low-energy BLE) and Wi-Fi connection, and an SOS feature that allows you to summon a chirp from the wand via your smartphone when it inevitably gets lost in the couch cushions.

Still not convinced? NEEO also repeatedly calls attention to the remote’s “insanely easy” setup, claiming the system will work right out of the box with Google’s Nest devices, set top boxes like Roku and Apple TV, Philips Hue lights, DVR boxes from Cablevision, Verizon, Time Warner, and Comcast, and just about every other remotely controlled device you likely have rambling around your home.

As of publication time, NEEO has raised over $640,000 of the company’s initial $50,000 goal, so no worries about this thing vaporizing into the ether due to lack of funding. If you’re interested in grabbing a NEEO to help simplify your setup, you’ve got a shade over two more weeks to jump onto the NEEO Kickstarter page and put yours on order. It’ll cost you around $220 for the whole system at this stage in the game, but what’s a little money in comparison to smart home omnipotence?

Editors' Recommendations

Ryan Waniata
Ryan Waniata
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Ryan Waniata is an audio engineer, musician, composer, and all-around lover of all things tech, audio, and cinema. Hailing…
How long should you let new cigars rest in a humidor?
Cigar humidor

Looking at those beautiful, oily cigars you've just unboxed or unwrapped, the calling to light up is real. I get it. I always want to smoke my cigars right away, too. But you shouldn't. Mail day is always exciting after you've ordered a slew of new cigars. When they arrive, the real fun begins. You'll probably need to organize your humidor to make the new sticks fit or arrange them for optimal humidification. As you're handling them, it's difficult to resist the temptation to crack open the cellophane or boxes and smoke one right away. While you can do that in most cases, I would recommend against it. Depending on where those cigars came from, where you live, and how they traveled, they might need a little time to rest in a humidor. They'll need to replenish some humidity and moisture or dry out a little.
How long should you let your new cigars rest?

When you put cigars in a humidor, especially one that's filled, they'll soak up and release humidity over time until they reach the average RH (relative humidity) that you have set inside your humidor. If you have a device like a that does this automatically, it will produce moisture and humidity to keep the levels optimal. You can also achieve the same thing with in smaller humidors, which release and soak up the humidity to match the levels on the label. Boveda packs come in a range of RH levels, from the low to mid-60s to the mid-70s.

Read more
The 11 best Kevin Costner movies, ranked
He has a full resume of films, but if you're a Costner fan, then you must see these movies
Kevin Costner in Dances with Wolves

An all-American, blue-collar working man turned Hollywood essential, Kevin Costner has lived a life full of experience and dreams that some can only imagine. Starting out as a small kid -- 5'2" at high school graduation -- who moved around a lot, Costner was fond of things like poetry, writing, and singing in his Baptist choir. Outside of the arts, he was also very interested in sports of all kinds, which is reflected in his film career to this day. Also a man of the outdoors, Costner built his own canoe at 18 and paddled it through sections where Lewis and Clark ventured. Fun facts aside, Costner had a full and interesting life before the world got to know him as the charming and eloquent movie man we know him to be today.
From his past life, accomplishments, and hobbies, Costner was fully prepared to write, direct, and act for the screen as he fulfilled yet another lifelong dream. A man who was once called "The King of the Sports Movie," Costner has been able to act in films of a subject matter near and dear to his heart that became the films he is best known for. And that doesn’t include his many other successful movies having to do with politics, crime, and romance that also make for some of his best roles. Luckily, we’re here to talk about all of those films at once as we celebrate the man who has accomplished more in one lifetime than some could in many. Here are the best Kevin Costner movies of all time.

11. Open Range (2003)

Read more
The best Quentin Tarantino movies, ranked – Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, and more
If you haven't seen these films at least one time, you need to ... and then watch them again and again
Scene from Pulp Fiction, John Travolta and Samuel L. Jackson

Of all the contemporary film auteurs, perhaps no one’s work has permeated pop culture as thoroughly as Quentin Tarantino's. This director’s hyper-stylized, retro fantasy worlds have come to define cinematic coolness. His clever mashups of genres, exquisite sense of aesthetics, impeccable editing, uproarious suspensefulness, and impossibly quippy dialogue have been endlessly imitated.
Given the current political landscape, Tarantino’s work has undergone a serious critical re-evaluation from Black and feminist critics and scholars who point toward both his allegedly abusive behaviors and the offensive politics and rhetoric of his films. It’s true that in this new light, for many, there may be nothing redeemable about his entire oeuvre. 
However, to discard all Quentin Tarantino movies would discount the impossible talent of his frequent collaborators and stars, such as Sally Menke (who edited all of Tarantino’s movies until her death in 2010), Uma Thurman (who not only played the protagonist of Tarantino’s most iconic movies but was also credited as a co-writer on Kill Bill), Samuel L. Jackson (a frequent Tarantino star), and many more.
With that in mind, here’s our (subjective!) ranking of the greatest directed Quentin Tarantino movies of all time.

9. Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood (2019)

Read more