Harmony Remote + SmartThings -- What will you do with it?

I did a quick search and didn’t see a topic like this for the Harmony - SmartThings Integration. They all looked like troubleshooting posts. So, I thought it was time for one to see what people are using it for or plan on using it for. This is a “show me what you got” kind of thread.

For me, I think I’ll create a new action specific to watching movies and lower some lights. If TiltMyBlinds ever ships, I’ll add their motors to our blinds and “hopefully” integrate that with ST to close them as well.

What fancy stuff will you be doing?

Pretty much this :slight_smile: haha

I’m thinking tv on, lock doors, turn off downstairs living room lights, turn on bar light…ya know…so I can see to make myself a drinkie drink :wink:

Nothing at all. :slight_smile: How many devices/apps do we need to turn on a light, TV etc.

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All. I need ALL the things!

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Ours has been working for awhile (Harmony Home), has a very high xAF factor, and honestly all we needed to be happy was a one button (or one voice command) option to dim lights and turn on entertainment center to either TV, Roku, or DVD. Plus an excellent universal remote and the ability to toggle a couple of individual lights on and off from that remote.

Nothing magical, but the kind of thing that bugs you when you don’t have it. Switching to Roku used to be a 7 button press sequence. The Harmony is 1. :blush:

Me too… That’s why I got the ultimate home at the first place… :wink: But these days I have found serenity.

My latest projects all relate to real world problems like fixing bald spots in my lawn, watering the plants, getting up the attic crawl place to attempt fixing AC ducts (if that’s what it is called) without getting my head nailed by roof nails and stuff like that. I have so changed! Instead of spending that 89$ on a sensor, I now hand it over to Rob, the plumber! :wink: I can only now listen to all you guys about latest gadgets and stuff… Let there be peace! Amen!

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My wife uses the Harmony Home remote as a stick/extension to reach back and physically press the switch on the wall. I’ve tried to tell her that the remote has a button that turns the light on and off, but she seems to prefer her way. :smiley:

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I hear you Ron. I have so many things that I “put up on the shelf” because they just weren’t reliable. Just seems SmartThings is stalled. Most of the advances are coming from others such as Harmony, Amazon Echo or the community at large. I remember back when Ben indicated things would be accelerating, but I see only the opposite. But then I never really believed it anyway once he announce Hub v2. Such an architectural shift inevitably results in a few steps backwards.

Sorry for hijacking thread…

Back to original thread.

Though I originally wanted the SmartThings to Harmony interface to turn on and off TV/Security camera, I realize this is probably not practical. However, I like being able to control lights from my Harmony remote.

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Don’t forget you can automate that Frank Sinatra album… cause… you know…

To be frank and quite honest, I’m not planning anything else for the integration.

The current Harmony eco system suffers the obvious short comings of having HA device control jacked into the IR system schema as an after thought. IR devices and HA devices are treated differently everywhere along their path.
You get a block of HA control at the beginning and another at the end of the IR segment, with no way to insert HA actions within the IR section or IR within the HA…
Further, the ordering of IR sub activities is limited, with no way to reorder them, or control beyond power on ordering. I find this to be completely unacceptable.

And don’t even get me started on the IR lag, the only reason this isn’t a deal breaker currently is because I don’t have to point the remote at the AV stack for 10 minutes…
It still rears it’s ugly head in volume adjustments though…

None of these issues are short comings related to ST or the integration, they are all on the Harmony side, and personally I see no attempt from Harmony to integrate IR and HA the way it should be done.

For me the Ultimate is just itching to be replaced…

Sorry to be a bummer, but that’s where I’m at with the dang thing.

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My use cases:

  1. when I power off tv in bedroom at night, put house in sleep mode (lock doors, shut off lights, adjust thermostat, etc.)

  2. use of physical harmony remote to turn on and off lights in surrounding rooms

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I have it set to turn on the appropriate lighting for the family room when certain activities are activated. I then have it light my way when it’s turned off (one of my switches is really inconvenient so I use it to turn it off and light my way to the other end of the house - my usual pattern).

Use Ubi voice recognition to start and switch activities, Use Ubi goodnight phrase to shut off A/V system, check doors and windows, turn off lights and lock all doors.

When doorbell is pressed, trigger my camera activity on the main tv.

I currently do something similar to this, but without the ST Integration. I have a widget on my homescreen that when I tap it, turns off all the lights in the house using SharpTools and turns off my TV/AVR using Harmony Tasker.

I am looking forward to the ST > Harmony integration working as the Harmony Tasker plugin only works over WiFi and sometimes I leave my phone disconnected from WiFi.

I notice it says it supports individual device commands. This is more than SmartThings only using Harmony “activities”. Any idea how Harmony Tasker can do this and SmartThings can’t?

I’m pretty sure the individual device command is a relatively new feature for Harmony Tasker (within the past few months) and I haven’t tried it out yet. I think it was added around the same time the app removed the need for authentication, so it seems to be hitting the hub directly over the local network and is somehow able to enumerate devices and their commands.