Harmony Home Control

Devices & Integrations
41

I went with the Home Control and the layout on cheap remote is really good in the Home version with dedicated light/switch buttons. I don’t need backlit keys because it’s easy to get used to the feel/layout. I have a much simpler setup than in the past, so I can manage within the 8 device, 6 activity limits no problem. And I found the setup much easier and effective than for the older remotes. I was coming from an 890 that could do zwave and RF. My wife was even surprised how fast I could get the setup done. We got a 2nd one for the bedroom and my wife loves it. The macro/sequence feature is really easy to use.

Frankly I’ve been very impressed with this round of the software and because of that I’m very interested in their zwave/Zigbee hub when it’s released in case ST doesn’t go Homekit and/or it’s easier for the wife. I know it won’t have the community and the ability to develop, which are the best parts of ST for me; but hopefully two hubs could coexist if necessary.

1 Like
42

I should have gone with the home control too rather than the home ultimate. :frowning:

43

I also avoided Ultimate. To me the Ultimate looked like the phone interface instead of a remote and I could always use the phone for that. I also prefer the smaller form factor and more robust feel of the Harmony home (kids drop these things all the time).

44

I have two harmony home hubs. One I have had for about a month, the other for two weeks. I am fine with the limitations of the simple home remote, in fact , I find it to have a very nice feel in the hands. If I want a touch screen, I have one in my pocket. The integration with Smart Things needs a lot of work from both Harmony and ST. I am disappointed with the smart things integration at this point. It is fine if all you want is a couple of buttons to turn on lights and switches. Being able to adjust the thermostat from the harmony smart phone app is not really something I ever wanted to do. If you have multiple harmony hubs, there is no way to separate the devices they can control.

Pros

  • Fairly straight forward setup on the harmony side
  • Nice remote

Cons

  • Poor integration on the ST side
  • Single smart app for multiple harmony hubs
  • Very much a pre-beta experience
  • Harmony desktop app is not linux compatible
  • The ST integration that does work is not really useful
45

Will the harmony home send hello, home commands? i know it can control devices but i’d much rather have it send a hello, home command and let smartthings handle the device changes.

46

ah ha it looks like i could just make a virtual switch to send a state change and hit that switch with the harmony

47

You mean to say that your harmony homes are working with ST? Hmmm…

48

nope i was thinking of getting one if I could eventually get it integrated the way i want it. are they not working at all right now?

49

This is what happens when I try adding devices using harmony connect.

image.jpg750×1334 83.8 KB

50

I have several virtual switches published on the harmony side, these are included in various activities, I can confirm that this does work.

51

Even though I could add ST devices from Logitech App.

52

this is good news! what i am envisioning is the harmony hitting a virtual switch as a front end to Big Switch to set my “watching TV mode” which turns the lights off and won’t use the motion sensor to turn the lights on when I am watching TV in the basement. The only rub is I think i would want Big Switch to select modes based on sun state for the “off” mode. For example: turn on goes to watching TV mode. Turning off goes to home - day before sunset and home - night after sunset. I don’t think it does this currently. i’m going to poke around the code and see if I can make it happen.

53

i would only really want the harmony remote to change states of smartthings, not necessarily for smartthings to initiate harmony actions.

54

from Live log:

**5ae35bf9-da03-4056-afd8-13caf9edd528 ‎11‎:‎40‎:‎35‎ ‎AM: error physicalgraph.exception.UncheckedException: com.netflix.astyanax.connectionpool.exceptions.BadRequestException: BadRequestException: [host=54.161.226.141(54.161.226.141):9160, latency=15(15), attempts=1]InvalidRequestException(why:(String didn't validate.) [smartthings_prod][DeviceData][port] failed validation) @ line 157** 

5ae35bf9-da03-4056-afd8-13caf9edd528 ‎11‎:‎40‎:‎35‎ ‎AM: trace Home and null provided...creating subscription 

5ae35bf9-da03-4056-afd8-13caf9edd528 ‎11‎:‎40‎:‎35‎ ‎AM: trace Logitech Harmony Connect is attempting to unsubscribe from all events 

5ae35bf9-da03-4056-afd8-13caf9edd528 ‎11‎:‎40‎:‎35‎ ‎AM: debug Updated with settings: [switches:[Holiday Lights Front Patio Switch, Holiday Lights Tree Outlet, Holiday Lights Garage Switch, Holiday Lights Back Porch Switch ], presenceSensors:[Ron, Ann], selectedHubs:[000420EE90D2]]

5ae35bf9-da03-4056-afd8-13caf9edd528 ‎11‎:‎40‎:‎29‎ ‎AM: debug Found hub with mac: 000420EE90D2

55

As I said, harmony --> ST does work with virtual switches.
Harmony does not control ST dimmers directly very well as a group, so creating a scene in harmony of various ST dimmers is a no beueno. I mean it works, if you don’t mind all the dimmers going full bright first, then having their configured levels set…

56

Yea, this log is ST trying to control Harmony, we know this doesn’t work.

57

so kicking off scenes using a hello home command/state change would probably be okay if driven by a virtual switch. that seems like the course i will take.

i’ve gotten a little proof of concept going, i should be able to have it select the “off” phrase based on sunup/sundown.

58

Harmony - > virtual ST switch -> Big Switch app -> change to “watching TV mode” -> watching TV mode turns off lights etc.

59

Maybe I’m unique, but ST CAN control Harmony. I can use ST to trigger a Harmony activity if I press the Harmony Connect SmartApp directly, so the cloud-to-cloud functionality is working for me. It does not work with whatever state trigger I use in the Harmony Connect SmartApp, so if I tie it to a virtual switch turning on in ST, nothing happens. The event trails all look right, but Harmony is never triggered. It’s like they don’t have the simple subscription trigger working properly.

60

Yea, that Is the issue exactly. I wrote a test smart app that subscribes to the harmony hubs “activity”, one would expect this to fire when harmony changes/initiates an activity… And it doesn’t, in fact it never fires at all.