
Show HN: Turn Touch wooden smart home remote now shipping - conesus
https://turntouch.com
======
conesus
Hey HN, I run NewsBlur and am launching my hardware project Turn Touch today.
Launched last year as a Kickstarter campaign, it is now available for
immediate shipping.

Turn Touch is a beautiful wooden smart home remote and pedestal. It’s designed
to fit both your home and your hand. Use it to instantly control Hue lights,
smart devices, Mac and iOS apps, and more. Turn Touch connects to most smart
devices in your home that speak WiFi, including Sonos speakers and Belkin Wemo
smart plugs. Turn Touch works with your Mac, iPhone, or iPad to control apps
like iTunes, Spotify, and Keynote.

Here’s a few more reasons to buy it:

* Extraordinary design — This isn't yet another plastic remote. Turn Touch is carved from solid wood and worked to a show-stopping, textured finish.

* Well connected — Turn Touch is always on, always connected, and always ready to take your breath away. Once you connect your Turn Touch via Bluetooth it stays connected and always available, even without the Turn Touch app actively running. And there's no delay, when you press a button the result is instant.

﻿* Built to last﻿ — Not only will Turn Touch stand up to drops and shock, its
entire circuit board can be inexpensively replaced with newer, future wireless
tech. You won't have to buy a new remote every time Apple comes out with a new
phone. And instead of flimsy plastic clasps, a set of 8 strong magnets
invisibly hold the remote together.

Plus it’s entirely open source. And good open source projects benefit from
good documentation. Here is a five part series on how Turn Touch was built:
[https://medium.com/@samuelclay/everything-you-need-to-
build-...](https://medium.com/@samuelclay/everything-you-need-to-build-your-
own-turn-touch-smart-remote-1689da664d62)

~~~
brk
You should make sure to mention this on the Indigo forums
([http://www.perceptiveautomation.com/userforum/index.php](http://www.perceptiveautomation.com/userforum/index.php))
given that it looks like an Apple-centric smarthome device.

FWIW, the wood thing does not really seem like a selling point, and also most
likely drives the price up more than a plastic case would.

I like the concept of it though and plan to research the APIs a bit more and
then will likely order a couple.

~~~
fipple
Anecdatum, I wouldn’t even consider this if it wasn’t wood.

~~~
smt88
I'm in the same boat. People's homes vary a lot, and any single wood is going
to clash badly with at a large percentage of homes.

White (plastic or painted metal) is something that could probably blend in to
almost any space.

(It also shows misplaced priorities, in my opinion, when the homepage mentions
the Janka hardness of the wood. I don't care how hard the button is because
I'm just pressing it with my finger...)

~~~
djrogers
Sounds like you and the GP aren’t in the same boat - they want wood, you
don’t...

~~~
smt88
You're right. I misread the comment. My mistake!

------
nicpottier
For those that have a bunch of home automation.. is it actually... good?

It strikes me as one of those things that is fun to set up, but probably
breaks in weird ways every few months and you have to have a special kind of
patience to deal with that. (not to mention a shared sense of patience from
spouses etc..)

How reliable and stable is all this stuff? Can you really set this up and
forget it and have it work reliably, ie, always? How often do these standards
change? Am I going to have to reconfigure all my light switches after getting
a new router for example? Or base my light purchasing decisions based on this?

Just curious, I'm intrigued, but having gone down this path in the past it
feels more hobby than utility.

~~~
stevekemp
I setup my own "internet buttons", but I did it in a cheating way - my buttons
are nothing more than dumb radio-transmitters. There is no bluetooth, no wifi,
and no complexity.

The buttons are dumb, so they are cheap.

Because the aim of the button is to do something "internetty" there is a
single receiver which is plugged into my desktop PC which recieves the radio-
transmissions, decodes the button IDs, and completes tasks.

There is a brief overview here:

[https://blog.steve.fi/creating_an_iot_button__the_smart_way....](https://blog.steve.fi/creating_an_iot_button__the_smart_way.html)

I have two receivers, an ESP8266 based device, and a hacked copy of software
which uses an SDR dongle. Both are reliable and stable.

In terms of functionality though, they're useful. Dotted around the flat they
let me control music, disable lights, and similar.

~~~
gitgud
Cool, that sounds like a reasonable approach. I like the idea of a series of
cheap buttons that can connect to a central hub in the home. Couple of
questions though:

1\. Do these buttons have their own power supply? If so how long does a
battery last?

2\. Is their a secure radio channel of communication?

3\. Is their any feedback on the button that the computer received that button
press. (To avoid multiple presses)

~~~
stevekemp
1\. Yes, the buttons are powered by CR2032 batteries, and when the button is
pressed an LED lights to let you know it worked. (i.e. You can detect when
they're empty.) My batteries have lasted for several months so far, but I
don't know how long to expect them to work.

2\. Not sure what you're getting at here; anybody "local" could probably
overhear the transmission. And probably perform a replay attack.

3\. There is no feedback on the buttons, you press the button and they send a
radio transmission (+ light the LED). There is no facility for two-way
communication.

If I were building the buttons myself I'd probably have them both send and
receive, such that you could use an ACK system. But the whole point is to use
cheap & off-the-shelf parts so ..

~~~
gitgud
Nice, wow those batteries are tiny!!

Replay attacks might be acceptable for insignificant tasks light lights and
Air Conditioning I suppose. Also gives a much simpler architecture to the
system.

------
fredley
I have one of these, and love it. It's so much nicer than the plasticky
remotes that come with anything else, and the system support out of the box is
great. Sam is very responsive on the forums too.

I have written a raspberry pi server component[1] that can be extended to
support any smart device (if you've got an API for it).

You can, if you wish, use the device completely without any supplied software,
it operates via bluetooth only so does not phone home. If you want to class up
your own hacked together/secure smart home setup, this is a great device.

1: [https://github.com/fredley/raspi-
turntouch](https://github.com/fredley/raspi-turntouch)

~~~
antsar
This is wonderful, thanks. I hope to leverage this into a Home Assistant[0]
component (assuming someone else doesn't do it first).

[0] [https://www.home-assistant.io/](https://www.home-assistant.io/)

~~~
conesus
Oh yeah, I would love that! And if you do, email me and I'll add it to the
open source list, where you can also find the API and my email:
[https://turntouch.com/api](https://turntouch.com/api)

------
koube
Is this an intuitive interface for anyone? It looks incredibly frustrating. If
I want to turn on a lamp, I want to turn on a lamp, not spend hours
configuring the optimal way to navigate to a lamp rpg style (north east north
north south).

~~~
conesus
It's pretty simple. Four buttons for four devices. Each button can toggle a
device. You can also hold a button to switch to that button's app, giving you
four apps with four buttons each. So music app has volume controls and
play/pause and next track. Lighting controls has scenes and hue/brightness
controls.

There's no multi-touch or sequences to memorize. Just the four buttons and the
four apps.

~~~
koube
That sounds simpler than what I was imagining, but you just described a
sequence to memorize.

~~~
masukomi
i would expect most folks to just use each one as a simple toggle. I know
that's what i was intending when i pondered getting this.

------
syntaxing
I knew this project sounded familiar! I was following your medium post[1] when
I was setting up my old Shapeoko 2. It's a good read for anyone interested in
how the parts are manufactured.

[1] [https://medium.com/@samuelclay/everything-you-need-to-
build-...](https://medium.com/@samuelclay/everything-you-need-to-build-your-
own-turn-touch-smart-remote-1689da664d62)

------
icoder
I like the design! Very comprehensive built descriptions too (mainly looked
into the firmware part). At first I wasn't too sure about the BTLE choice, but
it makes sense in a power consumption context.

Zigbee would have been nice for my usecase (I'm using a RaspBee module), but
that's not for everyone (I like to try out a lot of different things,
interfacing it myself and have everything meet in the middle via MQTT, from
there it's up to my imagination, currently trying out Node-RED for instance).

Since my house is rather small, I could probably use the BLE on my Pi.

------
jasonmp85
Not a fan of the text baked into your image on the home page… this is pretty
much a solved problem by now…

I did a cmd-F to search for certain technologies and didn't find them, before
I realized they _were_ mentioned in the big grid image, just not as searchable
text.

~~~
conesus
It's not baked in. I can select it just fine in Safari. Also, "Bluetooth" is
mentioned in How It Works.

~~~
jd20
I think he meant the "Works With" image (grid of compatible technologies),
that one does appear to have the text baked in, and is not searchable.

------
heliostatic
Congratulations on shipping! Turn Touch looks beautiful. Do you plan on
extending the platform to other control devices (a larger version that is
fixed in place, or a wall control unit) with the same software backing and
aesthetic?

~~~
conesus
The pedestal (pictured on the site) is exactly that wall control. I built the
pedestal because I wanted my remote to live somewhere. The pedestal holds the
remote in place with 6 hidden magnets, leaving you free to pull the remote off
the wall to use interactivity. The pedestal also works on a table top just as
well, which is where I have a remote situated next to my bed on a nightstand.

~~~
heliostatic
Guess I should check the site and not ask questions based on year old
recollections :P

Very cool

------
gregschlom
Ah I remember meeting Sam in 2015 at TechShop where he was milling one of the
early TurnTouch protoypes. Damn, making good hardware takes time. Congrats on
the launch Sam, and best of luck with the project. It looks gorgeous!

------
Hasz
I'm going to disagree and say I don't like the wood.

Personally, I think glass fiber reinforced nylon -- the kind of plastic you
see in high end power tools -- would be a much better aesthetic, as well as
being far more durable than any hardwood. It's also much easier to scale if
you want to make 100,000 of these things.

Also not a huge fan of the square body. If it's dark, all I have to orient the
remote is those two chevrons. Maybe that works, maybe it doesn't, but I'm
still partial to the rectangle.

~~~
conesus
Don't knock it til you've tried it. It's easier than you think to orient the
remote in your hand without looking. That north ridge (the chevron) is quite
pronounced by feel and you can feel it through clothing.

As for the wood, I agree that different tastes are something I should strive
to accommodate. Plastic is next and I also love the feel of glass filled
nylon. I'll be looking into it as soon as the wood remotes do well enough.

~~~
Hasz
Fair enough. Looking at an item is no substitute for feel in hand.

------
wojcikstefan
“Turn Touch is a perfect match with Philips Hue lights” - I must be missing
something in this prominently highlighted scenario. Instead of walking over to
the lamp and turning it on, you have to find the remote and press its button
to turn on the same lamp. Where’s the value in this?

I understand the advantage of voice control, but operating one physical object
vs another sounds like a simple substitution.

~~~
nugi
I too get up to change the volume on the tv every time, why is there this
redudant control hardware shipped with every television? So wasteful!

/s

Snark aside, the illision of leisure/luxury/laziness is often valued as the
real thing, effective or not. Could an app for your already omnipresent phone
do this? Sure, but this is a sleek tactile button, no apps to futz with. I
wouldn't buy one, but I get the appeal.

~~~
flyingcircus3
What do we want? Change. When do we want it? As soon as we can be convinced we
need it.

The next evolution will be "you know the integrated home is great, but
everyone's wifi still goes out every once in a while. wouldn't it be great if
we could make that more robust with CAT5? What if we could do ethernet over
your existing electical wiring? Then we could do Lights over Voice over IP
over ethernet over AC. The best part is, we soft launched at hardware stores
about 100 years ago". Welcome to the future!!!!!!

------
908087
I remember these other things we used to put on the wall and use to control
the lights. We called them "light switches", and they didn't require secondary
devices to have apps installed in the middle. They were also incredibly
difficult to lose track of.

~~~
conesus
And no light switch in the world is as versatile as this remote is.

------
farrelljohn
Is there any plan to support Android/Windows devices? From a quick glance over
the website, it doesn't seem like they are currently supported. Hopefully I
just missed it though, this device is beautifully made!

~~~
conesus
Eventually I'd like to build an Android app. NewsBlur has a native Android
app, so I would just divert my Android developers attention to the Turn Touch
app. I'm waiting to see if there's sufficient demand for the iOS and macOS
apps first.

------
matte_black
This is awesome, will there be a Gabon ebony version??

------
syntaxing
Anyone else getting a HTTPS certificate error?

~~~
conesus
I would hope not, that certificate is powered by Shopify. The other
certificate on turntouch.com proper is a Let's Encrypt cert.

------
TeeWEE
Cool, but its way cooler to run OpenHAB2 on a raspberry pi. True home
automation system.

~~~
djrogers
This is a nice button - openhab is an entire home automation platform. With no
buttons.

Kinda like saying ‘that’s a nice keyboard, but Linux is cooler’

