With a single app Blumoo gives you control of your entertainment system

It’s happened to the best of us. You’ve just settled into the couch for a night in front of the TV and the technology struggles begin. Whether it’s the combination of three different remote controls or the routine of stretching and bending to get the remote control to communicate with the receiver box, the process…

It’s happened to the best of us. 

You’ve just settled into the couch for a night in front of the TV and the technology struggles begin. Whether it’s the combination of three different remote controls or the routine of stretching and bending to get the remote control to communicate with the receiver box, the process is daunting. 

If any of that sounds familiar, you’re probably in the target demographic for Flyover Innovations

“It’s a pain in the ass to set it all up,” co-founder Jason Carman told SPN of the struggles with in-home music and entertainment systems. “My phone is with me all the time so we’re adding the connectivity piece.

“We always have these devices on us, so why not use them to control this?”

And Flyover Innovation’s first product, Blumoo, aims to do just that. As both a piece of hardware and a mobile app, Blumoo brings together users’ existing entertainment platforms—TVs, DVD players and sound systems, to name a few—and allows them to be controlled through a single smartphone app. 

After a soft launch at CES in January, Blumoo was officially released in May and has already garnered some national attention. The product, available for $122 on Amazon, was included on Father’s Day gift lists compiled by the Huffington Post and TIME magazine

This isn’t Carman’s first foray into hardware and technology. He and co-founder Mark Vogt, as well as a number of their team members, came to Flyover Innovation with years of experience designing GPS equipment at Olathe, Kan.-based Garmin.

“One of the big things we focus on is simplicity,” Carman (right) said. “You can take the product and change as much, or as little, as you want right out of the box. You select which devices you want to control and it’ll populate generic remote interfaces, and you can use it like that or customize your controls.”

One of the those customizable controls is Blumoo’s multi-function, single-button presses. For example, if every evening before you go to bed, you set the TV to a certain channel, a lower brightness setting and sleep timer Blumoo will let you condense all of those separate functions into one single command. 

If you think Flyover Innovations sounds familiar, you’re probably right. Last summer the startup launched an Indiegogo campaign and exceeded their $30,000 goal by just over $1,500. 

Since their campaign, Carman says their product has changed direction slightly. Initially Blumoo focused on controlling music streaming and stereo platforms, but after the Indiegogo campaign Carman says Flyover Innovations had lots of requests for the app to be able to control other platforms as well.  

As Flyover Innovations expanded its focus, Carman says the team built out even stronger Bluetooth connectivity. While most Bluetooth signals have a radius of about 30 feet, Carman says Blumoo’s is closer to 150 feet. 

“There’s a lot of times where whole home systems are in the basement or a closet somewhere,” he said. “You want to be able to maintain connection to Blumoo’s home base from wherever you are in the house, so it made sense.”

Blumoo is the first in a set of Flyover Innovation products Carman says will hopefully contribute to a more connected home. While all of the products will be compatible and able to work together, he says they also will function independently.

 

Read more about Flyover Innovations through our previous coverage: “Still time to tip Blumoo on Indiegogo, turn phones into universal remotes.”

This story is part of the AIM Archive

This story is part of the AIM Institute Archive on Silicon Prairie News. AIM gifted SPN to the Nebraska Journalism Trust in January 2023. Learn more about SPN’s origin »

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