I am trying to figure out a way to mute my tv or set top box when my phone rings.
I have the following hardware components:
Smart Things Hub
Harmony Hub
Samsung Smart TV
Amazon Echo Dot
LG Stylo V2 Smartphone
and was wondering if anyone can help me find a way to mute my tv when the phone rings so that I can use an app (Voice Answer Free) to voice answer my phone. Right now the tv is usually on too loud of volume for my phone to hear me and correctly answer the phone an place it on speaker phone.
I am trying to set this up for my Aunt who has little to no manual dexterity and needs to control everything by voice.
Since thatās an android phone, I would think there would be a way to do it with some combination of Tasker and SharpTools, but @joshua_lyon should know.
Youāll need to set up a harmony activity that just does mute, which can be done, but itās sort of a pain. Itās what we used to do before the official harmony/Alexa red Skill came out just this month.
I myself am quadriparetic and so rely on hands free options.
One more option to consider would be just to get the $49 Amazon Dot and then you can just tell it āAlexa, tell Harmony muteā and it works perfectly and almost instantaneously. Saying mute is like pushing the mute button so you just say āAlexa, tell Harmony muteā a second time to unmute it.
This option is also the easiest way to get volume control by voice over the television. āAlexa, tell Harmony volume up by 5ā or whatever. I really like it a lot, although obviously it would require also buying a dot.
Of course the dot option also requires that the person be able to hear the phone ring, or that you have a light set up to blink when the phone rings so they can tell the dot to mute the TV, so it might not work for you. But I did just want to mention it.
As I mentioned above I already have the Echo Dot and she can use it to mute tv but as you mentioned the volume of the tv is usually up so loud that she does not hear the phone until too late for her to answer it. Having the phone mute automatically will help insure that she hears the phone ring.
You can definitely do it with Tasker and SharpTools or even Tasker directly to a Harmony plugin. Use the āphone ringingā trigger and then either have SharpTools send a command to start your desired Harmony activity or use the Harmony plugin to send the pause command directly.
I downloaded Tasker and ShartTools but still need help to figure it out.
There is no āPhone Ringerā icons. I found 2 identical "call"s, 1 āphoneā, and 3 "Phone mode"s all with the same green phone icons but am not sure which one to select.
In SharpTools I could not find out how to link Harmony.
The Tasker profile is Event - Phone - Phone Ringing.
I donāt have a Harmony, but Iām guessing the Harmony plugin has a mute function. That would be the associated Task. It should respond relatively quickly.
EDIT: I should be clearer, since you are obviously not well acquainted with Tasker yet.
To do this, the first thing you need is to establish the conditions under which an action should occur (that is, run a task or series of tasks). Those conditions that must be met in order to start a task are collectively called a Profile. So open Tasker, then click the + sign in the lower right of your default Profiles screen to create a new Profile.
Then go to the sequence above. There are options, choose Event as the option. In that screen, choose the Phone groupā¦ and in that group, choose the icon called Phone Ringing. You donāt need to add anything to the screen that comes up; tap the upper left corner, the ātaskerā icon. That will bring up the Available task list, at the top of which will be New Task +. Tap that. Give it a name (such as āMute TVā), and tap the check mark.
Now click the + at screen bottom to add an action. Choose PlugIn, choose Harmony if itās there.
Others will have to give you the specifics from this point as I donāt have a Harmony device to refer to.
FURTHER EDIT: As a bonus, you could have it automatically un-mute when you hang up the phone! After you get this together, play with it a bit and see if you can figure out that process.
My apologies! I thought I had linked to the post where I better explained the steps for a different example showing how to flash your lights when the phone rings which also has a video in it:
Since you want to pause a Harmony controlled device directly, I would consider using the Harmony Plugin rather than SharpTools. I havenāt personally tried that particular plugin, but it looks like it does what you want and seems to be well reviewed.
The Harmony plugin interacts directly with Harmony and has nothing to do with SmartThings per se. This means it can implement itās own protocol and in this case has implemented the capability to directly send remote commands in addition to starting activities. This means it can directly send the pause command.
So following the concept from the video above, you would first download and setup the Harmony plugin, then:
Create a new Tasker Event profile for Phone ā Ringing
Create a new Task with an action for the Harmony plugin
Configure the Harmony plugin to select your Hub, then Send Command, then your Device, then Pause
Save and fully back out of Tasker, then test it!
SharpTools can definitely do this, but since it is controlling SmartThings devices and the Harmony ādeviceā in SmartThings only supports starting an activity, this would mean you would have to create a whole Harmony activity dedicated to just pausing your devices.
And to answer your question about linking the Harmony, SharpTools is designed to control your SmartThings devices, so you would have to link your Harmony to SmartThings first (instructions) and then authorize that device in SharpTools.
And SmartThings requires you to pass in an activity ID to the startActivity() command which adds one more more step/complication to getting this running - see this thread for more details and screenshots showing how to set it up if you choose that route.
While this would work, it seems a bit hacky compared to just directly controlling the media device (via the Harmony) using the Harmony Tasker plugin.
If the tv volume is high, as it might be for someone hard of hearing (or for any other reason, or for no reason at all), Alexa might not hear that command. Hence automations such as this.
Only reason itās hard is because the poster is unfamiliar with Tasker. Someone familiar with the program would do this, Including the second profile to un-mute, in two minutes.
My Echo sits about 3 feet from my towers and sub. The volume is always up loud because of working in the concert business for 17 yrs, my hearing isnāt what it used to be. The Echo still hears me over the volume. I would t want it to auto mute the tv because half the time I just hit the FU button on the phone because I donāt need to listen to a recording for a credit card scam call.
My Echo canāt hear me when Iām watching a loud movie, unless I yell. Even then, it usually gets the command wrong, or simply doesnāt understand it.
So, itās not the same for everyone, especially since Alexa cannot distinguish our voices from A/V system dialogue.
Nevertheless, I think the point is that using an incoming call to trigger automation will be more reliable than requiring the Aunt to first hear/notice the call (I still miss like 80% of calls because I donāt hear them or even have my phone on me) and then perform some action to mute the TV.
This discussion has actually prompted me to consider a mute plan. My landline has a āfind meā feature where it rings up to three other phone systems, and the first to pick up receives the call. Iām gonna direct the landline to my google voice account - and when that rings on my android control tablet, it will mute my networked sound system IF that system is being played above a certain level. AutoVoice deals with ambient noise levels, they can be made part of the context/profileā¦ alternatively I can simply obtain the volume level report from the sound system upon phone ringing
For what itās worth, I bought the Harmony Tasker plugin and it was super easy to use. The hardest part was logging into my router to find the IP address of the Harmony hub so I could configure the plugin.
Open Tasker and create a new Event ā Phone ā Ringing profile
Create a new Harmony plugin action with Send Command, AV Receiver, Mute
Profit
I called my phone and as soon as it started ringing, the task kicked off and the receiver was muted.
Different things work for different people. Choice is good.
I personally donāt use an automatic mute because I get a lot of spam calls which I can tell are spam just from glancing at the caller, and I donāt want my television to mute every time one of those comes in. But my echo hears me just fine over the television, so itās very easy to give the verbal mute command when I want to. So at my house I rely on my watch to tell me a call is coming in and then I decide whether not to pause or mute the TV. But itās all about whatever works for you.
In Tasker, you handle that by specifying which number(s) will fulfill the condition of the profile (using something like AutoNotification). So a call from your brother will trigger the mute, while a telemarketer will not. Or alternatively, you can exclude what you specify.
