I’m wondering if it’s possible to trigger commands on the harmony home hub other than Actions…,
Specifically I would like to be able to pause & play video.
I have a number of years using normal harmony remotes so my experience would tell me it’s not likely but I wanted to ask just in case…,
I am quadriparetic would Limited hand control, so I do use hands-free control of the Harmony for all buttons, including pause, rewind, volume up, volume down.
The short answer is that unless you want to set up your own server and run it, you do have to create a Harmony activity that will do that function. Once you have the activity working on the Harmony side then it’s easy to trigger it from the SmartThings side or from IFTTT.
there are some quirky things about it, and I don’t know that most able-bodied people would want to bother. It’s pretty clunky.
Because harmony will not let you run the same activity twice in a row, for example, I actually have two volume up activities, and two volume down activities. That way I can swap between them.
For something like pause, I have one activity that does the pause. And then I have to immediately activate the regular “watch TV” or “watch DVD” activity so I get back control of the other keys.
So it’s not pretty, but it can be done. You’ll find discussion in the harmony/Alexa project report near the end, including sample screenshots for the harmony activities. Even if you’re not using Alexa, the same activity set up would apply.
There’s also somebody who’s got a project report on running their own server and setting up a CLI to harmony which is more flexible, but requires a lot of technical sophistication to set up and run. So I don’t know if that something you be interested in:
I appreciate the help…
I had actually found these posts before, but was hoping someone found a means of sending single commands without breaking the existing harmony setup…
Having used a handful of different harmony remote models over the years, I’m already familiar with the existing limitation…
I was hoping I could send commands such as turning an IR based AC off and on via SmartThings, or being able to tell my amazon echo to pause the TV without having to create special modes to trigger commands…
If you’re willing to run your own server, there is a CLI for harmony that you can use for this but that’s a really technical solution.
There is one forum member who has a project report on doing it that way:
So the CLI approach definitely seems promising.
I’m definitrly a tech but I also consider myself quite lazy in that area (I write code for a living so I don’t always enjoy doing it in my off hours).
I’ve got two other home automation projects on my back burner already – using an Amazon dash button with smartthings and setting up a sever to allow automation of my August lock. I’ll have to add this one into the mix…
Thanks!