Steerpike:
This is my first post here, forgive me if I’m asking a dumb question. I’m considering buying into the ST ecosystem; as an IT geek with time on my hands, I could use some new technology to play with.
I understand I can use ST to implement home automation; turn on lights when motion sensors trip, turn on the coffee machine when it’s 7am, etc. And I would start out with such simple tasks to get my feet wet. But could I, ultimately, do the following: I have a cable box and remote that uses the ZigBee protocol to communicate. Could ST somehow ‘see’ that traffic, being ZigBee aware, and ‘learn’ the commands? And could I program some actions into ST to control the cable box, ‘simulating’ the remote?
If the answer is ‘no’, or ‘only with great difficulty’, is there a better way to approach that challenge?
Thanks!
Unfortunately no, because they won’t use the same zigbee profile. See the FAQ (this is a clickable link)
Zigbee is always zigbee, but the standard allows for different "profiles,"including manufacturer proprietary ones.
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These are not all able to communicate with each other, they don’t even use the same addressing schemes.
SmartThings uses the Zigbee Home Automation profile (ZHA 1.2) and part of the Zigbee 3.0 profile. Devices using other zigbee profiles may be able to join to the network, but their communications may not be understood, or they may frequently drop off because they don’t receive a handshake message they are expecting.
There a lot of different ways to explain this, but I think one of the easiest is to think of zigbee as a post office and the different profiles as different languages. The outside envelope for different messages may look similar, have a specific format…
Nor will they operate on the same zigbee network, as each Zigbee network can generally have only one primary coordinator.
That said, if the Logitech Harmony hub will work with your cable set top box (and if you are in the US or England, it probably does), then there is an official harmony integration which works quite well. That’s what most people use for integration with home entertainment equipment.
https://support.smartthings.com/hc/en-us/articles/205653834-Logitech-Harmony-Home-Hub
https://www.amazon.com/Logitech-Harmony-Control-Entertainment-Devices/dp/B00N3RFC4Q
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