Can I use the 44 key remote to change colors on FutureHoop Designer?

Short answer: Not yet. But that feature is planned. Remember that Designer lets you install updates from us to unlock new features as we develop them. Continue reading for technical details on why changing colors on Designer is more challenging from a usability perspective than on the original FutureHoop. If you absolutely require this feature, we recommend sticking with FutureHoop Remote or FutureHoop Pro for now. 🙂

In FutureHoop Pro, all of the patterns are no more than 4 colors, and they don’t have specific colors assigned to them. They have color ‘channels’ which can have specific colors, including a rainbow effect, assigned to them via the remote or via random color generation. FutureHoop Designer had to be redesigned from scratch to support programmability on ANY bitmap, even those with thousands of colors. Because bitmaps DO have specific colors.

If you load a bitmap drawing of pizza, that bitmap might have a dozen or more colors in it! It might have 4 different shades of yellow for the cheese, 3 different shades of red for the pepperoni, 3 shades of brown for the crust, and a couple of other colors for outlining or highlighting. When you press a color button on the remote, which of the pizza’s natural colors should be overwritten? That’s the challenge right now. This dynamic color changing feature is baked into the DNA of the original Futurehoop. By contrast, FutureHoop Designer is like a completely different species.

Fortunately FutureHoop Designer was built to evolve! If you buy a Designer, you get free access to feature and pattern updates forever (see moodhoops.com/downloads). We hear you and definitely want to build more dynamic color changing features into Designer. We felt it was better to release Designer now so hoopers like you could help us prioritize the features you want. It’s a hoop that’s designed to grow with you and the community.

If you need dynamic color features NOW, you should get FutureHoop Remote or Pro because those models already have the features you want. If what you care about more is programmability, control of every last detail of your hoop, and the ability to update and access new features over time, and you don’t mind using a computer to set your hoop up how you like it, then get Designer. When we finish developing dynamic color features for Designer we will happily ship Designer customers a 44 key remote for free.

Related Questions:

Does the Designer hoop have the same Motif patterns as the Pro hoop, and can I make them sync?