I confess, I sometimes make really stupid mistakes. I backed a Neeo back in the day. At first it looked like a nice device, but after broken promise after broken promise, they suddenly wanted more money (‘oh, btw, the original price was without taxes’ (and to the US readers: no, that is not how it works in Europe)), and I was stupid enough (fell for the sunken cost fallacy) to pay up, even though I had the option to get out, and get my money back.

Anyway, 300 Euros later, and 2 years later than expected I have my Neeo. But instead of it being the center of controlling everything, it turns out just to be a (nice looking) universal remote. It does that job properly, and we mostly use the app (and when that breaks, the web interface through a mobile phone) to control our TV/Receiver.

But because of the time bomb of pulling the plug completely, I start looking for alternatives, and I found it in the Tuya ZS06. For 12 euros (incl. VAT, and shipping) it arrived earlier this year. Connected it using Zigbee2MQTT to Home Assistant, and created a small script using AppDaemon to create a fully working remote control, controllable using the Home Assistant frontend, or through REST.