Whatever happened to 'Compound Devices' ?

OK, it’s an old page that hasn’t been touched since April 2010, but here:
http://wiki.micasaverde.com/index.php/LuaUPnP#Compound_devices

it says:

[b]Compound devices[/b]

We are creating a visual web page within Vera to merge actions from different devices into one device. For example, let’s say you have a PVR, a TV and a Receiver. All 3 will be exposed as UPnP devices. So with the UPnP control point you can pick the PVR as the device you want to control, and you’ll see the actions the PVR supports. However, even though you’re controlling the PVR, you’ll probably also want to be able to control the volume, on, off, and input select on the receiver, as well as the on, off and maybe brightness on the TV. So in Vera’s devices page we’re adding a “Compound” button that shows you the actions for the PVR, lets you uncheck any actions you don’t want to see on the control point, and lets you add other commands from other devices, like the on/off from the TV, so that when the control point shows the actions of the PVR, it will include the on/off for the tv, and volume for receiver, etc.

This seems like a GOOD IDEA. I assume it was never implemented. Does anyone have any more information or ideas about this? Or does some other functionality that I’ve missed completely simply make this obsolete? Having written some different A/V component plugins, I’m feeling the need for some sort of ‘Virtual Universal Remote’, and this idea would seem to come close.

You could use the image map remote plugin if you know a bit about programming. You would draw an image with the buttons you want on it and assign ProntoCodes to them. One slight problem!! They must all use the same IR blaster.

Thanks for that @a-lurker. I will take a look. But I may have misled by using the term ‘Universal Remote’. I’m not after any user interface (since I don’t believe that Vera and UI5 is the right place for that) but a smooth way for a ‘master’ device to ‘punch through’ some commands to other devices and handle some itself.

For example, volume handled by an amplifier, but channel up/down by whatever player device is currently selected - just as described in the quote from the wiki I pointed to. Really to be a single API to a bunch of related devices.

I suppose that I can do this with a judicious application of master/child devices, but I didn’t want to start from scratch if there was a better way, or something to start from.

I should also mention that I’m not using any IR blaster, all the devices I’m controlling are either serial or IP, using either plugins I’ve downloaded, modified, or written from scratch.