Introduction

VITO Remote 4.4 is a remote control application designed for Windows Pocket PC devices produced by VITO Technologies.  It is sold for $15.95 USD. Its features include: 

I am a gadget nerd.  I have TVs, DVD players, VCRs, Portable DVD Players, AV Receivers, and more.  My goal in life is to grow my list of gadgets as large as possible.  With my ever expanding collection of gadgets comes a mountain of remote controls, a “batteries” line item in my monthly budget, and a daily ritual of searching for where my toddler son has stashed the remote that I happen to be looking for at the moment.  The allure of a true “universal” remote application to use on my Axim is obvious, is it not?  So, I set out to evaluate how well VITO implemented their various functions and determine if this piece of software could really replace all those remote controls.  Read on to learn the answer. 

Installation and First Impressions
Installation went smoothly.  VITO offers a cab or an exe file for installation.  I like cab files, personally, so this nets them a few cool points for giving the option.  During installation, I browsed around the webpage and notice something that is a bit concerning:  they don’t claim support for WM5.  Since I’m currently installing it on my Dell x51v running Windows Mobile 5 this could be a problem.  However, I have had success in the past running programs that were designed for WM 2003, so I don’t worry much about it.  That will prove to be a mistake.  I choose to install directly to my device and the install goes normally.

Following installation, I’m greeted with the registration screen.  This comes as no surprise.  I see the text box where I’m being prompted for my activation key and my keyboard is waiting… for a few seconds.  Then, it promptly disappears, with no icon available to bring it back.  I have absolutely no way of entering my activation key.  After a restart and changing my keyboard from TenGO to the default keyboard, I finally managed to enter my activation number.  I’m still not sure if this was a TenGO problem, WM5 problem, or something else…  but the first impression was a bit annoying.

 Detailed Experience

 Once registered, I was greeted with the default VITO Remote interface, shown here:

The brightly colored buttons are the actual remote commands and the small icons along the bottom allow you to interact with the actual application.  VITO comes with a few device codes pre-installed, but it would be amazingly good luck to find that your personal device is among the twenty or so that are included.  That means that you will have to somehow supply the IR codes yourself. One of the primary features of VITO is the ability to import CCF files.  CCF files, or Command Configuration Files, are files that are developed in the universal remote community (primarily for other commercial universal remotes like the Phillips Pronto) and contain all the information you need to control a given piece of equipment.  In theory, you can go to the website that VITO recommends, browse around for your component, download the CCF file, import it to VITO and PRESTO!, you can control your component.  The collection of ccf files available was quite impressive.  They are organized according to which remote control device they are designed to use.  I found that the Phillips Pronto section had the most files with over 6,000 available.  However, even with the large number available, I wasn’t able to find one for any of my available components.

Just to test the process, I did download and install a few CCF files for various components and I found that, like most freeware, the quality varied wildly.  So, while the CCF option is nice, it is far from the magic bullet you might hope that it is.

With the CCF option eliminated, I was left with only one other option for teaching VITO how to mimic my remotes: brute force, button by button, learning.  This method is very simple and is guaranteed to work, but it does take some time.

The basic idea is this:  you create a new device with a unique name (such as “basement tv” in the picture above), you assign it a button template (choices were limited to “player” and “receiver”… with player being something like a DVD player and receiver being something like a television), and then you teach it each command that you want it to learn.  To teach it commands, you have to use your existing “real” remote and you put a certain software button in VITO in “learning mode”.  Once in learning mode, you point the PDA and the “real” remote at each other and press the desired button on the “real” remote.  The VITO software listens to what comes in on the IR port and then assigns that as the control signal for that particular device for that particular function.

After I created my default template and put the software in learning mode, VITO grays out all the buttons that don’t have an assigned command, like this:

Then, as you add commands, buttons that have assigned commands return to color even in learning mode.  Here’s a screenshot of what learning mode looked like after I added a few commands:

I thought this was a nice touch that made it very easy to keep track of which buttons you had assigned.  I did encounter another glitch here though… after each button was learned, the axim would power off.  I have absolutely no idea why.  MemMaid reported that I had a little over 19 megs of RAM open, so I don’t think it was a memory problem.  The problem persisted after a restart as well.  I suspect that the lack of WM5 compatibility is to blame.  The good news here is that once you have worked your way through memorizing a certain remote, you won’t ever have to do it again.  Nevertheless, it was a bit annoying. 

Once I had a few basic functions memorized, it was time for the moment of truth.  Could I really control my TV with my axim?  I pointed it at my tube and pressed the power button.  It worked!  The TV came to life and all the functions that I had stored into it worked perfectly.

Encouraged by my success, I decided to dig into the features of VITO a bit more.  One of the downsides of a touchscreen interface is that navigating by “feel” is tough.  On a real remote with separate hardware buttons, you learn what the volume and channel controls feel like and can control them without even glancing at the remote, but on the Axim screen, there is no way to know when your finger is above that portion of the screen.  This is why most remote control applications allow the user to map functions to the hardware buttons.  I opened up settings to look for a way to map channel up/down to up/down on the d-pad and volume up/down to left/right on the d-pad.  Here is that portion of the settings dialogue:

Notice anything missing?  The d-pad, perhaps?  For reasons that I don’t understand, the d-pad was not available for hardware mapping.  For the 6 hardware buttons there were available for mapping, there were only three button assignments to choose from!  The lack of button assignments seemed to be a problem with my using a custom device because I noticed that if I switched to one of the devices included by VITO, more options were available for hardware mapping.  Nevertheless, I could never discover how to increase the available functions and I never could access the d-pad for hardware mapping.  That is a terrible oversight in my mind.  In my experience channel and volume up/down are the most commonly used functions on a TV remote and the d-pad is perfect for mapping that functionality to.  However, you just can’t do it in VITO Remote.

You will notice that voice recognition was available for mapping, so I decided to give that a whirl next.  Here’s the menu for enabling the voice recognition feature (note the graphical glitch on the bottom menu bar):

Using this menu, I was able to capture my voice saying “power” for use as a voice command.  However, the feature seems to have been aborted halfway through implementation because I could never find a way to associate my voice saying the word “power” with the remote control IR command for the power button.  Consulting the VITO manual yielded nothing.  Perhaps I missed something, but I would like to think that between my own ability with software and the documentation for the product I should have been able to find the function if it was available.  I wasn’t able to.  Scratch voice commands off the list of reasons to purchase VITO remote. 

Digging through the features some more, I found that you could enable a small “tap” sound to be played whenever a remote control button was pressed.  That is a handy feature to give you an audible clue that the command has been sent, just in case your aim missed.  This way, you aren’t left wondering if your axim is locked up for some reason or if you just missed the IR port.

 I also discovered that you could skin the application somewhat.  I was able to easily enable one of the included background pictures and select transparent buttons to make the somewhat plain interface look a little more attractive, like this:

However, when I tried to use one of my personal backgrounds I found that the transparent button engine gets a bit confused and produces this:

The buttons aren’t actually transparent.  Instead, they are just a dark color close to the main shade in the background image.  In fact, only small portions of the background image can be seen, such as around the outside of the circular channel and volume buttons. 

Finally, I decided to test the overall range of the IR signal.  From a position looking directly at the television I was able to control it from up to 25 feet away.  Further than that and the signal was not strong enough.  I suspect this is primarily a function of the hardware (the x51v) rather than the software, but I thought that I would include it as anyone considering an application of this sort might be interested in that figure. 

Just as a final test of the robustness of the “learning” functionality, I attempted to get VITO Remote to learn a few button commands from my Wii Remote.  I was unable to do so. 

Conclusion
The core functionality of VITO Remote, learning IR codes for basic functions of multiple remotes, works.  This software would allow you to replace a number of remotes if you wanted to, but I can’t say that it would completely replace them because the number of available buttons is limited and less than the number of buttons on a typical remote control, especially for something like an A/V receiver.  So, it could be a nice item to have for convenience, but it would never be a true replacement. 

However, it does have a number of problems, many of which may center on the lack of WM5 support.  I recognize the VITO never claimed support for WM5, but I have never seen a WM2003 product work so poorly on my x51v.  Furthermore, WM5 has been out for quite some time now.  Lack of support at this point suggests to me that VITO is no longer pursuing development of this product.  

Other flaws appear to be basic design flaws, such as the lack of the d-pad for hardware mapping and the partially implemented voice command feature. 

All in all, VITO could be a good product for someone who is looking for basic remote control commands with a solid “learning” function.  It is less expensive than many other remote control products so it could be a good value proposition for some users. 

I, personally, have uninstalled it and I will continue looking at other potential remote control software applications.

Pros:

• solid learning mode that is easy to use
• competitive pricing
• use of CCF files 

Cons:

• a few bugs, possibly related to lack of WM5 support
• poorly executed hardware mapping
• poor documentation
• incomplete (or EXTREMELY un-intuitive) voice mapping function