I am trying to figure out how to integrate my Harmony with Smartthings/Alexa in a way where it will turn off whatever activity is running. Right now, I have configured a “Good Night” routine through smartthings. I created a virtual switch called Good Night and passed that over to Alexa. In the Alexa configuration, I have “Alexa, Good night”, which toggles the momentary switch.
This switch is tied to a piston in WebCoRE. If it changes state, webcore executes the Good Night routine. It works great! However, I would love it if when I issue the good night command, besides shutting off lights and verifying door locks, if it would turn off the AV setup too! From Alexa, I only see ways to turn on and trigger activites, not end them. Is there a way I could somehow leverage this thorough smartthings so I could add it to my WebCoRE piston or the ST routine, natively?
Why not create a second Harmony activity to switch everything off?
That way you could connect it to the virtual ‘good night’ switch with webcore so that when the switch is turned on, Harmony switches everything off
For some reason, this has come up a bunch lately, yours is the third or fourth question on it. Maybe because of the new echo routines? I don’t know.
If you are using the official SmartThings/Harmony integration, the one that generates a virtual switch for each activity, then go immediately to post 10 in this thread for the quick and easy solution:
If you are not using the official SmartThings/Harmony integration, but are just using the echo/Harmony integration, then there are two methods. All 3 work, but the one using the official SmartThings/Harmony integration is more elegant.
The simplest and most logical of the remaining two is that for whatever reasons the IFTTT channel for Harmony does have a “Turn activity off” option for the “that.” So you can just set up a virtual switch as the IF and use Harmony for that and that should handle it.
We use this at our house, so I can say “echo, trigger shutdown” and the home theater equipment turns off.
If you don’t want to use IFTTT, but you’re not using the official SmartThings/Harmony integration, you can create a Harmony activity which only has one device in it and make that device something that won’t actually turn on. In my case, I have it be the fire TV stick, because it has to have the television on. But I don’t include the television in this activity.
The way Harmony works, when you shift to a new entertainment activity, it turns off any devices which are not included in that activity.
So by shifting to my fire TV stick only activity, it will turn off anything else was on, it doesn’t matter what the previous entertainment activity was. It could be the DVD player, the Roku, it could even be the fire TV stick because the television is going to turn off.
So turning on this “ghost device” activity will turn off all the other devices. It’s hacky, but it should work.
Then it’s just a question of what to call the ghost Device Harmony activity that will feel comfortable. If you make it something like “bedtime,” or “quiet time,” or “blackout,” or anything that makes sense to you, then saying “Echo, turn on quiet time” Will work. Because you are turning on the activity even though that activity is going to shut all the devices off.
I hope that makes sense. Once you use it it all becomes a lot more intuitive.
Actually, Harmony works great with the skill at my house. I can simply say “Alexa, turn off the TV” and no matter what Activity I’m on, everything shuts off. I’m trying to incorporate this as a step in my Good Night routine/WebCoRE piston so I don’t have to say “Alexa, turn off the TV” and “Alexa, Good Night”. The problem is I see no way to leverage whatever Alexa is using for the Off statement in Harmony’s skill. Inside Alexa routines, they only allow you to turn things on. Therefore, I figured I’d need to link this to ST in order to access a turn off function.
Unfortunately, I don’t have a device that requires TV power to be on, so the example with the Fire stick won’t work
You can use any IR device, even a device you don’t actually own. Harmony doesn’t care. You just add the device, then add an activity with the device. Each time Harmony asks you if the device turned on, just answer yes. Because IR devices don’t give status feedback, Harmony doesn’t know the difference.
As far as the IFTTT method, you can use a virtual switch coming on as the Harmony activity as the that. Include the virtual switch in your piston, and you have a way of turning things off without going through echo.
So both ways should work for you, it’s just up to you which you prefer.
From the SmartThings app, link Harmony to SmartThings: https://support.smartthings.com/hc/en-us/articles/205653834-Logitech-Harmony-Home-Hub.
Once everything is linked/synced Harmony activities will show up as switches in SmartThings and any other smartapps you grant access. Set your “Good Night” WebCoRe rule(s) to turn off all of the Harmony activity switches along with all your others, boom, done.
I did something very similar to what @Goofball suggests. In my case, I added SmartThings to Harmony bi-directional integration. I then created a SmartThings Routine which turns off every Harmony Activity (which show up in ST as switches after you add the ST-HARMONY integration.) Once I had the new ST Routine added, I had Alexa re-scan for devices. This new ST Routine showed up inside the Alexa app. I was then able to add a new “Alexa Routine” called ‘GoodNight’ which turns off a bunch of light in my house, and then runs the new ST Routine which turns off all of the Harmony Activities.
It is annoying that the Alexa to Harmony integration doesn’t allow a simple way to turn off all Harmony Activities, but this workaround seems to work very well.
Ill check my setup when I get home… my good night routine does exactly what your looking for with harmony hub, lights turn off and makes sure the garage door is closed and the front door is locked. I do not use core, webcore or IFTTT at the moment so there is no need for it to achieve this functionality.
In your smartthings app go to your good night routine and add all of your harmony activities to the area "Turn off these lights or switches"
After that go to the alexa smartapp in the smarthings app and ensure these are listed in your switches section.
Now when you run the good night routine it will turn off whatever is on, on the harmony hub.
The “Logitech Harmony Trigger” app which can be found in the classic app under Marketplace -> SmartApps -> more also has a turn off option that can be triggered by a number of different things. I use it when the mode changes to “Away”.
