These days when it comes to controlling a new integrated system your customers are looking for a plenty of functionality, yet they want it to be simple to use. You might find that this is not always an easy task.

Customised remote controls are one method of providing such control over their equipment.

You might also find that the older generation of users are very set in their ways and are more than likely used to a remote with many hard buttons which they don’t know how to use.

You will even come across the old crusty remote that they have had for five years which has had the lettering worn off and then been circled with an indelible pen so they know what they are pressing.

Funnily enough, those few buttons that have been branded with an indelible pen, or even Whiteout/liquid paper, are usually buttons that are used quite frequently and I bet the owner could find that button without looking at the remote.

So when it comes to a modern day remote that has a sexy LCD touch screen and multiple pages you want to be able to maintain simplicity though what I call a “layout convention”.

Put simply, if you have a lot of pages make sure you put similar buttons in the same places throughout the remote. This is the beauty of a hard button…it never moves so you always know where it is. An example of this is the “home” button.

When I program remote controls for my customers I always put the home button in the exact same location on the bottom right of the remote’s LCD.

This way they don’t need to look at the remote to find that particular button. I would also recommend keeping your pages simple.

If you are going to be selling your customers a remote that is going to use infra-red codes you will usually find that you will be trying to squeeze six or seven infra-red code sets into the new remote.

I can’t stress enough how important it is to get discrete infra-red codes for each of your devices. Particularly discrete codes for power on and off and input codes for plasma, LCD’s, amplifiers, etc.

If you cant learn the codes directly from the original remote then don’t stress, there are usually other resources such as www.remotecentral.com or the manufacturer of the original remote. Alternatively, the supplier of the new remote might be able to help.

Having discrete codes means you can provide for a far better user experience when it comes to powering on their system or changing between components such as a DVD player and a set top box.

Discrete codes allow you to maintain the state of the system and make sure that when the user presses the power on button the other components that you are controlling stay off and don’t come on by mistake, or visa versa when powering the system off.

This ends up being a built-in fail safe for your customers.