[EDGE DEVICE] Simple Harmony Bridge **Alpha Testing**

@wags1 It’s slow for me too, nothing to do with this driver though

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It’s interesting, I have seen other folks reporting a slow down since the most recent Harmony FW upgrade but I have experienced no change in behavior. Not sure why.

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It seems that you are confusing the community Edge driver by @lmullineux with the official integration by Logitech. The driver being discussed in this thread does not add Smartthings devices to your remote. The only way to do that is via the official Logitech Harmony integration, which has recently been updated to force selection of all devices.

The device by @lmullineux being discussed in this post allows SmartThings to see Harmony Activities and Devices, but not the other way around.

Hi all. New here, just exploring the possibilities of this exciting-sounding driver. I just have a couple of questions - forgive me if these are stupid or newbie, I’m just trying to get a handle on things.

I use the official SmartThings integration with Harmony to add a few virtual switches to my harmony activities, which when they are activated change my TV picture mode from Filmmaker Mode to Movie Mode or Game mode depending on what I’m watching/doing. This was working great until a few weeks ago, when all the smarthings addtions to my activities disappeared. I did a refresh/relogin via the MyHarmony desktop app today and they are all back and are working as they should - I start an activity on my Elite, the virtual switch in SmartThings changes state, and my TV picture mode changes. So I guess my first question is: have I not yet migrated properly, or has the new Samsung update not broken this kind of functionality?

My second question is the most important one (for me): does this driver have the capability to send a WOL command across the LAN in response to a switch or trigger from Harmony? I had functionality like this with a virtual dual switch/sensor written in the Groovy IDE that, when Harmony turned on the virtual switch in SmartThings, my Alexa device picked up on that switch’s change of state and sent a WOL command to my HTPC. Thus I could power on the HTPC as part of my ‘Start Kodi’ activity, which was ace. However, the functionality of this dual switch has now been lost as part of the move away from Groovy. It would seem to me - not a coder, so don’t shoot me down! - that something that runs entirely on the LAN could be able to send the WOL command itself, removing the need for a SmartThings → Alexa trigger…

What do you think? Or is there any other clever way anyone knows that I could achieve WOL from my Harmony Elite?

It looks like controlling smartthings from Harmony in this way will continue to work, as Harmony have updated to the new smartthings API - although thats a bit off topic for this thread as it has no dependency on this community driver

Again, this is a question about controlling ST from harmony, so off topic for this thread but…

You need a WOL virtual switch to do this, @TAustin has one here [Edge] Wake-on-LAN via Alexa command - Devices & Integrations / Community Created Device Types - SmartThings Community

As it’s a switch, you should be able to control directly from Harmony with the official integration, or you can attach with a routine to an activity in ST using the driver in this thread.

Driver Update just released 24/03/23

  • Activity devices now have an additional capability that will show a more fine grained last status update than just on or off, Possible values are ‘starting’, ‘on’, ‘stopping’ and ‘off’. On and Off are bound to the status of the switch still, but starting and stopping messages could be missed for various reasons, and because they are fleeting statuses they will not get picked up by the poll that happens every 60s. This will be useful for people who wish to trigger automations on the starting or stopping of an activity regardless of whether it actually fully starts or stops. Thanks for the suggestion @VVicked let me know how you get on
  • Activity specific state digest logs will now be logged directly against the activity device log history (if you have verbose logging turned on at the hub device the activity is associated to)
  • Bug fix for the device list, for some devices the devicelist was showing the wrong commands, particularly number buttons i.e Number9 - this has now been fixed. This bug has been there since day one of the driver - thanks for flagging @Babar_Khan
  • Better connectivity logging, both in logcat and in logger history
  • Better disconnection handling
  • Improvements to initial connection, especially if the harmony hub is not yet online (hopefully this will fix the issues some users had after a power outage). If the hub starts up st before the harmony hub, an attempt to re-connect will be made every 60s

The update only applies to V2 of the driver, I will not be backporting any of the changes. If you want the update ensure you are already on V2.

If you are already on V2, the update should install within 24 hours automatically, or you force through the app or CLI.

Any questions please let me know,

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Thanks that’s really kind, and sorry for going off topic.

I guess the only thing for me to clarify now is that the “hub” in discussion here is the SmartThings hub, right, not a Harmony Hub. I don’t have a SmartThings hub, so this driver and the WOL switch you kindly linked to are of no use to me… right?

Yes, you are right @bertie_bassett

All edge drivers require a hub - i assumed you had one

You are not going to be able to send a WOL without a device inside your network that can send it. If alexa device will send it, you could probably still achieve this with a cloud based virtual switch in ST, that triggers an alexa routine to send the WOL (but im way out of my arena here)

Thanks so much for confirming.

The problem with what I’m trying to do is that the migration away from the Groovy IDE broke the functionality of the cloud based virtual switch I was using, which was customised so it could be seen as a trigger by Alexa and used to trigger the Alexa routine that sent the WOL packet. With the new Edge IDE this doesn’t work anymore, and AFAIK nobody has yet come up with a way that it can work.

And if you think you’re out of your arena, you have no idea how far out of mine I am!

I think I know how to solve this @bertie_bassett, I’ll drop you a DM

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I hadn’t really thought I would use this new functionality, but I changed my lighting automations to respond to “Starting” instead of “On”, and it’s actually a significant improvement. It causes the lights to turn on and dim instantly, rather than the full time it takes Harmony to report the Activity as fully “On”.

I also have a Routine that changes my receiver HDMI input (via GET, Harmony didn’t deal well with my receivers method of switching inputs) based on what Activity is being run, so this causes that to switch faster. This is great. Thanks!

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Thank you so much! It works perfectly, instantly and better than the official smartthings/logitech integration ever has.

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People who don’t have a smartthings/aeotec hub, and therefore cannot use any edge driver can still use API Browser plus (another community project that only requires a web browser ) to create both simple on/off virtual switches and virtual locks.

The on/off switch created there won’t work to trigger an Alexa routine at this time, but the virtual lock will. So those without a smartthings hub can use that virtual lock in place of the old groovy “Alexa switch“ devices.

And if you find it confusing starting an automation with a lock, you can create an extra smartthings routine, so that turning on the virtual switch unlocks the virtual lock. That keeps the lock invisible to the human, but still useful for the Amazon integration.

I apologize, I know that’s all off-topic for this thread, which is about an edge driver, and therefore requires a SmartThings/Aeotec hub, but I figured it was quicker to just respond in one post and get it over with.

Here’s the link to the thread about API browser plus.

SmartThings API Browser+ ... Now Available to All

And here’s the community FAQ on virtual devices after Groovy. This includes information both for people with a ST hub and without, so might be useful to some of the readers of this topic as well.

FAQ: Creating Virtual Devices with the new architecture (Without the IDE) (2023)

Please start a new thread if you have any further questions that would be off-topic here. :sunglasses:

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Thanks, I’ve gone ahead and implemented since this post.

I went with a custom capability on a second component so we still get the convenience of a simple switch for on/off States.

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I already talked @bertie_bassett through doing exactly that ( just using simple device viewer instead)

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Thank you everyone - I really do appreciate it. Glad I commented (off topic!) on this thread in the first place. There’s lovely people here!

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NM - I figured it out. Had to go into the bridge settings and enable Get Config on Connect in order for it to pull in the new stuff. Thanks.
I’m on V2 of your Bridge but when I try to edit my Routine that watches for any of my Harmony Activities to turn on and switch that to watch for starting instead I don’t see that as an option. I only still see on or off. Is there something else I need to do?

Changing my power on lighting Routine to watch for my Harmony Activities status to switch to “starting” rather than “on” is a great change. Now my lighting Scene initiates almost instantaneously when I start any of my Harmony Activities. Thank you for adding the more fine grained last status update. Nice improvement!

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I doubt the config on connect would cause/fix this, it’s more likely your phone hadn’t yet downloaded the presentation files for the new custom capability. It’s happened to me before.

It will fix itself, but if you ever need to force it - clearing the cache on the smartthings android app fixes the problem ( forces all cached presentations to be deleted and redownloaded), I presume there is a similar thing on iPhone but not sure.