Have smartthings and harmony turn on the stereo when I leave?

[paul_peters]

I have been able to get the harmony hub and smartthings to turn on the home theater system and tune to a specific channel when I get home. Anyone able to get smartthings and harmony to turn on the fm radio when you leave the house? I do this for my dog. I turn on classical radio when I leave the house and he seems to react positively to it. I have been able to do this with my sonos and siriusxm, but then I can’t use siriusxm online when I leave the house. Any ideas?

[jotto]

Do you have the receiver or whatever you use to play FM radio connected to your harmony hub?

If so should be able to do this. In Harmony you will need to go to you activities page -> edit activities -> add activity. From there you will create an activity to turn on that receiver or FM radio.

On the SmartThings side of it, go to Things -> Harmony Hub. On that you will have a few tabs, go to SmartApps and you will see Logitech Harmony Hub Control, click it and go to Next (top right button in app). Then from there crete a new trigger for system change mode, add the activity you created to turn on the FM radio. That should do it.

[afewremarks]

Three approaches to this:

1. The easy way would be to create an activity in the harmony app/remote then just leverage IFTT sense you’re presence device and then run the harmony activity.

2. Use the existing “when i leave” function to run a routine. You could use virtual switch here and tie that to harmony more on that here:

[DEPRECATED] 2015 Voice Assistant Run Routine FAQ--see 2017 FAQ instead

On October 1, 2016, Amazon added the ability to turn on a " routine" from Alexa. If you want to use that method, see the official support article. Note that the official method will not allow you to use echo to run any routine that includes a lock or a Smart Home Monitor armed state change or another device class that Alexa does not know. The method described below in this FAQ will, but it does require that you create a virtual switch. Although at present echo can only request that smartthings turn devices on, off or dim, by using a virtual switch, you can tell echo to turn that switch on or off, and then have all kinds of things happen in smartthings. For example, if you want to have echo turn on Party Mode, you would create a virtual switch in smartthings, authorize echo to use it,…

3. Write a custom app for this.

[paul_peters]

Thanks for the suggestions I will try. Yes the AV-Receiver is loaded up into the harmony app. It is the core of the whole home theater. It is a Denon 7.1 receiver with HDMI switching. I will let you know my results.

[paul_peters]

I am missing something. I don’t see harmony hub in my things menu. I know I added it since I had to put my credentials in and added all my switches, sensors and lights to it. Ideas?

[paul_peters]

Hmm. I am in the logitech hub in the smartapps menu. I click next and it brings me back to the smartapps menu. something isn’t right with that. App issue?

[JStock]

1. Open the SmartThings app.
2. Click on the Marketplace (last icon on bottom right).
3. Click on SmartApps (top right).
4. Scroll down and click on More.
5. Scroll down and find “Logitech Harmony Trigger”.
6. Install this smartapp and configure it to do what you want.

[paul_peters]

Wow do I feel stupid. That was great JStock. Afewremarks thanks for turning me on to IFTT. Powerful stuff. I am impressed on the responsiveness of the community here.

[JStock]

@paul_peters No problem. Glad I can help. Just ask if you have a question. I’m sure an expert will chime in. I don’t know a whole lot yet. But to your question I knew where to go. So good luck.
SmartThings, Echo, Harmony and IFTTT can do a lot as far as voice control.

[JDRoberts]

Most people used to use IFTTT to control harmony activities, but now that the full two-way harmony/SmartThings in a integration has been released to all members, you actually don’t need the IFTTT step. So it’s a little simpler with a little bit less lag.

Here’s the step-by-step FAQ for that:

FAQ: Help with Logitech Harmony (Connect) and Triggers (SmartThings Classic)

Hello, New user switching over from Vera. Go most everything back up except my Hub. I’ve installed the app, signed in and the hub is found. I select my hub, click next and nothing happens. I’m pushed back to the last screen. Under “things” I can see the hub and it will show me the current activity, but that’s it. IS this normal? Do you not get any control of activities and/or devices. Maybe I;m expecting too much. Thanks

And here’s the FAQ for using virtual switches to have echo change modes or run routines. You can use exactly the same approach to have echo trigger a harmony activity.

[DEPRECATED] 2015 Voice Assistant Run Routine FAQ--see 2017 FAQ instead

On October 1, 2016, Amazon added the ability to turn on a " routine" from Alexa. If you want to use that method, see the official support article. Note that the official method will not allow you to use echo to run any routine that includes a lock or a Smart Home Monitor armed state change or another device class that Alexa does not know. The method described below in this FAQ will, but it does require that you create a virtual switch. Although at present echo can only request that smartthings turn devices on, off or dim, by using a virtual switch, you can tell echo to turn that switch on or off, and then have all kinds of things happen in smartthings. For example, if you want to have echo turn on Party Mode, you would create a virtual switch in smartthings, authorize echo to use it,…

The IFTTT channel is still very useful for a lot of things, I use it all the time, but with echo and harmony it’s just a little simpler now to use the built-in harmony integration.

[paul_peters]

I tested it tonight and it worked fine turning on the fm classical channel when I left. Although it broke the turn on tv station when I arrive so I think I need to set up the same thing in smartthings and not in the harmony hub. I will let you know.

Again, Thanks all for the help. I am getting better at this stuff. I wish I could write my own apps but it doesn’t look like it supports vbscript or powershell so I need to learn something new.

-prp

[JDRoberts]

@paul_peters

I tested it tonight and it worked fine turning on the fm classical channel when I left. Although it broke the turn on tv station so I think I need to set up the same thing in smartthings and not in the harmony hub. I will let you know.

Assuming you do have your harmony hub successfully connected to SmartThings, creating controls for any given activity takes four steps:

1) create an activity in the Harmony app that launches exactly the devices that you want

2) create a virtual switch in SmartThings

3) use that virtual switch as a trigger in the SmartThings harmony trigger smartapp

4) Have something turn on that virtual switch through SmartThings. The something could be echo, it could be the smart lights smart app, it could be a routine. Whatever it is you’re trying to accomplish. But something will control the virtual switch going on, that will trigger the Harmony activity, harmony will do whatever you specified through the Harmony activity

So make sure step one is working exactly how you want first. That makes a big difference.

Details for all of the above in the FAQs previously linked to.

[paul_peters]

Thanks for the suggestions. Do any of you own a roomba? I have 2 and found this http://www.thinkingcleaner.com/. It is fantastic if you have one compatible with their system.