An update to my Pronto Professional contest entry with changes made to the buttons transparency so they work correctly. The buttons worked perfect in the emulator, but not on the actual remote as 100% transparent areas are ignored. This caused 90%+ of the buttons in Aura to not respond. All have been fixed and tested to work perfectly. If you have any questions, please let me know.

FIFTH RUNNER UP! Most small systems consist of only a few devices like a receiver, cable/sat box, DVD player, CD Changer and a video game system. There are included pages for lighting control, audio, and video adjustments as well. You can quickly program this template for your own system or for one of your customers and is self explanatory using activity buttons that are highlighted on each source page so you will always know where you are.

By placing the activity buttons on every page, this design takes advantage of systems that may not include an RF base. If you choose an activity and the IR command didn't get to the device, you can simply choose the activity a second time without having to back to the home page and select the button again. This design is very customer friendly and was intentionally designed to have less buttons on the source control pages by using the only the most commonly used commands for each device. There are additional sized buttons to copy and paste in case you need to include more functions or change a device page.

THIRD PLACE WINNER! Aura is a very flexible design that can be used for personal projects as well as professional programmer’s clients. You can create any background you like to customize the template or choose one of ten different colored backgrounds I made especially for this design. There are extra pre-made pages for Blu-ray, HD-DVD, QWERTY keyboard, plus an alternative to the Lutron page for lighting control for those who like to use the IR codes.

Adding buttons or creating new devices is very easy, there are eight pages of different size, dual state buttons and extra device icons which are pre-arranged that you can simply copy and paste into the correct position for a newly created activity. This design uses as much of the page as possible while minimizing the negative space between buttons and the need for multiple pages.

An update to my Pronto Professional contest entry with changes made to the buttons transparency so they work correctly. The buttons worked perfect in the emulator, but not on the actual remote as 100% transparent areas are ignored. This caused 10% of the buttons in Simplify to not respond. All have been fixed and tested to work perfectly. If you have any questions, please let me know.

What makes my design unique:

• Designed for visual interest as well as visual simplicity and consistency.
  
  
• Designed for a minimal amount of screen changes when in use (e.g. network channels as punch throughs, cable channels and redirection to transport buttons all appear on the same screen; the page up and down button has been converted to cable channel up and down to facilitate these “multi-use screens”).
  
  
• Whilst the device is designed for US users in the first instance, baseplate masters (each with national flag and corresponding local networks) have been created for 25 other countries and can be used to change over the system page elements and network punch-throughs - Argentina, Australia, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Russia, Spain, Singapore, South Africa, Sweden, Switzerland and the UK. Each element on the alternative masters is readily movable/removable.

The basic concept for this configuration is to mimic drop-down menus. Any device can be accessed and controlled from any page on the remote. This method is very straight forward and universally understood by anyone who used a computer making it very easy for friends, family, or children to pick up and use with little instruction.

As the rules suggested, I focused on graphics and navigation rather than making sure it had working codes and macros everywhere. All graphics were done with Photoshop and with a couple of master PSDs, adding or changing graphical elements is very easy. I attempted to place the most commonly used commands on hard buttons to avoid using the screen as much as possible.

I had planned on using recorded voice-overs instead of text for “HELP” prompts, but ecided to skip this for now as the simulator will not play them back. I also no longer think it’s necessary, as this configuration is “Drop-Down Simple”!

I completely overhauled my interface (previously XPronto SCUBA Edition) in an attempt to make the remote easier for my wife to use.

I've modeled my Home/Splash screen after the HTC Hero phone with a large digital clock and current weather conditions. You can go to the full 5-day forecast (located in a different activity) by pressing on the weather icon area.

The main activities page incorporates large icons to quickly and easily navigate to the device you wish to control. I have incorporated both device and state tracking. This allows you to navigate to settings (audio and video) or weather sections and quickly return to your current device. The device state tracking will keep track of witch inputs you are using for both the display and receiver. If you navigate to either the display input section of receiver input section, a blue light will be displayed on the input button for your current device.

The animation for the 'Making system adjustments' and 'Shutting the system down' sections turned out quite nicely. There is both a blue ball that travels from the remote icon to the screen as well as a fuzzy white pulse that travels along the progress bar as commands are being sent... (more)

SECOND PLACE WINNER! The following file is based on my SCUBA-themed configuration that I use for my Marantz RC9500. However, all of the graphics have been completely redone to accommodate the Pronto TSU9600 graphics capabilities (when importing the PCF file into the Pronto Professional program all the graphics became very tiny). Because the remote uses a widescreen display, I decided to base the page navigation within each device on the XBOX 360 dashboard. You navigate the tabs (or also known as ‘blades’ for those familiar with the XBOX 360) by using the page up and down buttons located to the left of the screen. The ‘blades’ themselves are currently not active (i.e., cannot be directly accessed by pressing on them), but will become so at a later date when I have more time to complete the file.

I am an avid SCUBA diver and so the background pictures are themed after this. However, with not too much difficulty, the pictures can be changed to whatever you wish.

The Home page will allow you to: 1) power the entire system down, 2) access power for all devices in the system, 2) access to lighting control and drapes, 4) the remote setup page – for... (more)

v1.3 Updates include: tabs/blades are now active, added custom sounds to suite my scuba theme. Plus many other enhancements. The following file is based on my SCUBA themed configuration that I use for my Marantz RC9500. However, all of the graphics have been completely redone to accommodate the Pronto TSU9600 graphics capabilities (when importing the pcf file into the Pronto Professional program all the graphics became very tiny). Because the remote uses a widescreen display, I decided to base the page navigation within each device on the XBOX 360 dashboard. You navigate the tabs (or also known as ‘blades’ for those familiar with the XBOX 360) by using the page up and down buttons located to the left of the screen or by tapping on the tabs themselves.

I am an avid SCUBA diver and so the background pictures are themed after this. However, with not too much difficulty, the pictures can be changed to whatever you wish with the accompanying Photoshop templates. As with my Marantz RC9500 and Pronto TSU7000 Scuba design, I have included all the original Adobe Photoshop templates for all buttons, text frames and dialog boxes so that you can easily create new ones based on this design. Please see the readme file for further information.

EFE - "easy for everyone". After downloading to your 9400 press "start", lay back and enjoy all the macros. Use the home key to reach the main page of selected device, press the arrow key to get to the macros for this device. With the small direct keys on the top of most pages you jump to other devices without using the macro. Pressing the book key (looks like two opened pages) you'll reach the amp if you want to select a source manually. From the amp page you reach the home page with the 5th hardkey (house symbol). All the buttons will remind you a little bit of the iPhone. They are designed with PaintShopPro and optimized for best readability and nice optics in crystal style. Each Device has its typical colour for best clarity. Hope you like it, its made with German Gruendlichkeit ;-)