I set this up last night. Since I don’t have cable, I just wanted a quick way to turn off and on or switch inputs for whatever I wanted to watch. It’s very fast and starts working before Alexa even says ok.
Thanks to whomever mentioned Yonomi in this thread as I was not familiar with it. I set it up last night and was playing around with it. I really like it. My Routines via Smartthings no just change the mode, everything else my routines did are running through Yonomi. The Nest integration was my main reasoning. Sometimes in the Summer, when I’ve set my house really cold at night, I like to switch it to heat to warm up to how I prefer the temp. So I need it to switch from cool to heat and then back to cool again after a set amount of time. I couldn’t do this with Smartthings, but it works just fine with Yonomi. I’m thinking of replaces my motion sensors with the ones from Hue as well. That will basically just leave me using Smarthings as a basic alarm system for my home set up.
I need to check out Yonomi, I hadn’t heard of either until this thread. I will say I too noticed how much faster the direct integration is vs Alexa -> Smart Things Virtual Momentary -> Harmony. I’m liking it so far and have migrated to only using SmartThings as a middle man for volume controls.
I really didn’t expect this to work out of the box given harmonys track record in my world.
In any event it does, yes it’s still activity based, but it does import any channel favorites that you have set up in your harmony account…
Probably the coolest part of this integration is being able to create edit and delete the key word aliases for the configured items. Very nice.
I was pleasantly suprised.
Agreed. Wish they would add in single commands for volume, mute, channel up and down, etc. I hate that they are so stubborn with their activity-driven automation.
It’s not the integration. I bet you cannot turn your TV on the favorite you pick either, right (without Alexa). It’s most likely a delay issue. Try changing channels (with Alexa) after starting your activity. Does that work?
It’s changing channels good on my end. I turned the activity off then said “Alexa turn in ABC”, and it turned on alli of my devices and switched the channel.you have to have alexa discover your devices then you just say “alexa turn on______” . the thing I like is the same channel can have multiple names and Harmony activities don’t change.
There are some words alexa doesn’t play well with. I had watch tv and fire tv as Harmony activities but having tv in both baffled her so I changed watch tv to cable. I also changed it in the harmony app although since alexa was going thru ST I think I could have edited the watch tv activity in ST to cable under things and kept it watch tv on the harmony app but for simplicities same - That’s a good one- I made cable across all. Now when I say “alexa turn on cable” I don’t know if it’s firing thru 1st or the direct integration.
OK got it to work. It’s under skills rather than smart home. Some are useful some not. I could already say ’ Alexa turn on the TV’ so saying ’ Alexa tell Harmony to turn on the TV’ isn’t an improvement but I am happy for the play/pause and volume adjustments.
)