Harmony Home Control

We just got the Harmony Hub last week and have it set up. We were able to set up a sensor-triggered harmony activity combining the TV, the Roku, and an ST-controlled dimmer switch. Worked fine although I’m not sure how much we’ll actually use the sensor trigger.

However, this does give the option of using a motion sensor as a touchless switch to power off all the A/V gear, which is nice.

How… I have tried to get this to work and the SmartApp for triggering Harmony from ST, will not discover the hub. The smartapp that harmony controls ST works fine though.

It never will discover the hub, that’s left over from when the integration was lan-based. Now the integration is cloud to cloud. You do all the set up stuff in the harmony mobile app, not in the smartthings mobile app. The smartapp is still there, and I don’t know whether it does anything or not, but you don’t use it for hub discovery.

See the following topic for a detailed discussion of how it works now:

@JDRoberts This is how it “officially” works now ? I thought we were just hacking. I don’t see how they have solved controlling the harmony from the ST app, I tried using IFTTT but it doesn’t work reliably.

I thought ST was still working on the new cloud based integration. I didn’t see any announcement that this was released.

How it officially works now is cloud to cloud communication between the ST cloud and the Harmony cloud. That’s what ST staff have been working on as Gilbert Chan has posted in the forms, and support has sent out in some messages. It’s not finished, but there are some features there now that weren’t there a few months ago, particularly sensor triggers for harmony activities. There have been a couple of official harmony releases that implemented this functionality.

I know you’ve been trying various different custom code options. I didn’t use any custom code, not even a virtual switch. (As detailed in the topic I linked to where we both have posts.)

So I wouldn’t consider anything that I’ve done to be hacking of any kind. It’s just using the existing native integration features. But that discussion is in the other topic. The integration is limited, but it’s there, and what is there seems to work pretty well.

What I meant by “how it works now” is how it works with the native cloud to cloud integration versus the older and now abandoned lan integration.

Sorry for any confusion. I certainly agree that the custom code changes to Force harmony to treat an air conditioner like a switch fall under “hacking.” :wink:. And isn’t something an ordinary consumer should be expected to know about or try.

But even though the smartapp shown in the ST mobile app appears to fail because of the message about not being able to find the Harmony hub, the limited out-of-the-box features do still work, because the integration is cloud to cloud, so not being able to discover the Harmony hub as a smartthings device does not affect that integration channel.

Just for clarity, the ability to see ST sensors in Harmony to trigger (start/end) Harmony actions is not New functionality. Been there for months, only for those who have a working integration. Not a recent change/fix.

LOL, Thanks…I have been the one hacking here :slight_smile: Your clarification makes sense, I was worried this was the finished product but glad to hear it may not be.

Exactly, I do not have a working integration so this doesn’t seem to work for me. I can control the ST from Harmony with a lot of limitations. I can’t control the Harmony from ST at all. I have to use IFTTT to do that again with a lot of limitations.

Right, there have been multiple phases.

There was an initial lan-based integration, which then broke a couple of times.

Then there was a cloud to cloud integration, which apparently went through a couple of iterations on the harmony side based on member reports in the smart things forum about what worked and what didn’t work.

I think the most recent official harmony update was in February? Anyway, work continues to be done but My housemate just bought the Harmony home two weeks ago, so it was a new set up for us, and from the Harmony side, it worked pretty much the way he expected it to, although I found the integration quite limited. But he is able to have the lights dim automatically when he watches a movie, and he is able to toggle a light from the remote. And we can have the TV come on based on a motion sensor.

It’s not a full IR bridge like an iTach would be, but it is more than we had before.

And may I add that even the harmony ultimate home always reflects the correct status of hue bulbs even if switched by any other app?

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Doing some cleanup this week on the Harmony device so that it’s in parity with our previous integration using LAN.

Looking forward to sending this to Harmony in the coming weeks for review.

As clarification. You can control things from both ST and Harmony.
Within the Harmony app, you can:

  • control ST lights/switches
  • trigger activities to start/stop based on ST device (this is what most people seek for)

Also on the ST side (which is being revamped)

  • trigger activities based on ST devices
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As of today, though, we still set up these triggers through the Harmony app, right? Not through the ST mobile app.

Will the next revision include the ability to set up the triggers through the ST mobile app? Or still everything through the Harmony mobile app?

(BTW, we just got our Harmony Home remote two weeks ago, after you posted your last update, and XAF has been really high. Thanks! )

Suddenly my Living Room Hub can’t be Edited for Smart Things activities.
I have two Harmony Home Hubs. One in my Living Room and One in my Office. When I select the Hub in my Office the Harmony App has a “Add/Edit Devices & Activities” option in the Harmony setup menu.

When I select my living room hub this option isn’t there. The living room hub is the only one I have integration with ST so far but now I can’t edit my Home Control Buttons. Harmony doesn’t let you edit these buttons from the desktop and with this menu option missing in my setup menu I am stuck.

Has anyone else seen this issue ?

UPDATE: I Figured out my issue. I have two wireless networks in my home because of a range extender I use. The living room hub setup works only when the app is on the range extended wifi. But here is the strange part. The Office Hub works when I have the app on either wifi. That doesn’t make sense but at least I have my workaround to fix the living room issue.

A new firmware version was pushed to my Harmony Home hub Friday night. It wouldn’t work, however, until I recycled the power. I haven’t tried the SmartThings interface since it broke late last year, though.

After the firmware update, I got a message in the harmony mobile app saying I needed a firmware update. What I really needed was to “synch” the harmony mobile app with the harmony hub. Everything worked fine after that, including home control edits.

A new Android app is available. I like the human interface better.

I like the UI improvements as well.

Has anyone noticed this product ?

Says it adds zigbee and zwave to harmony hub.

“Harmony Home Hub Extender makes it possible to control more home devices than ever with expanded ZigBee® and Z-Wave Plus™ compatibility.”

Sounds interesting !

“Coming soon…” For awhile now. :wink:

This was my original back-up plan in case ST didn’t work out for me, but that was when it was supposed to be out in 2014…Definitely will be interesting whenever it makes it to the light of day, but I doubt it will be as flexible as ST.

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I’ve struggled with Harmony user interfaces for years due to lack of alternatives. The only reason I have a Harmony product now is because I hope to control it with SmartThings. I’m pretty sure I would never ever consider Harmony as an alternative home automation hub to SmartThings. I hope we get some good alternatives for backup if ST goes sour, but I don’t think Logitech has it in them to do anything great. I can’t see them ever allowing custom apps and most importantly building a valuable developer community.

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I have owned Harmony before it was bought by Logitech. When it was it’s own company it was very open and very hackable. Not anymore. Sound familiar :slight_smile: ? Let’s hope this doesn’t happen to ST.

I didn’t get the impression the Extender was intended to replace ST. I assumed it was just going to allow Harmony to send zwave and to be controlled by zwave. That would be amazing. Instead of having to go out to internet and back several times to make something happen.