[HOW TO] Control Harmony hub using Google Home (individual button presses, not activities)

Turns out the method or whatever it’s called to replace the space with the underscore is not necessary, the correct functions will still be called when they contain spaces. I removed it from server.js and changed the commands in remote.js to match. You can re-download just those two files from github and replace the ones in your local folder. Another thing I added that wasn’t necessary :scream:

I updated the instructions and removed the stuff about modifying CoRE. Thanks for helping me test @Brett_C.

2 Likes

Thanks for putting this solution together. I will be giving it a shot over the next couple of weeks. From reading the posts, it looks great.

1 Like

Thanks for this great solution!

I got this working great using a local LAN server and added bunch of other commands and now I can control everything via Google Home! I even used this method to create a separate Sonos playback control via Google Home and that’s working great now too!

Your post inspired me to go even further with this to create even more custom Google Home control/command via IFTTT for all kinds of stuff.

One example:
Use Google Home to add items to different shopping lists on Wunderlist. “add milk to Costco list” or “add soap to Target list”.

I just wish IFTTT didn’t have the inconsistent lag (1-3 seconds).

Thanks again for putting this together!

1 Like

Damn…I just do not have time to get this up and running, but I’m more and more tempted every time someone posts here to order a raspberry pi and slog through it. :slight_smile:

1 Like

this is great.

Shame there is no OOTB way to control harmony hub via google home considering both are supported by Smartthings?

1 Like

You can run activities out of the box. It’s just the individual commands that aren’t supported. Amazon just recently implemented limited device commands using custom Alexa skills, maybe Google will do something like that on the future. Fingers crossed :slight_smile:

1 Like

thanks - what is the main diff between activities vs individual commands?

i’m hoping that activities can control volume (like volume on sonos)

Activities are groups of commands that are typically run when you first turn on your entertainment center or switch from one source to another. I’ve heard them called macros on previous universal remotes. In that sense, activities aren’t really compatible with things like changing volume, because an activity is turned on when you start watching a source and turned off when you either turn your system off or switch to a different source.

1 Like

thanks for that. sounds like it being able to control commands on harmony will come to google home eventually

I realise I’m 6 months late to the party, but I’m using Google Assistant (which Google Home uses) on my phone. Harmony integration has been added to the Home Control settings (you may need to have your primary language set to US English).

So you can now say “OK Google, ask Harmony to increase the volume” and Harmony will perform the action based on the current activity.

More details are available at myharmony.com/google-assistant

Unfortunately we can’t leverage this in Smartthings because there’s no way (that I know of) to run a Google Assistant action unless you want to go down the “Use a Sonos speaker to activate a voice-controlled device in my home” which is a bit too meta for my liking

1 Like

Hey man.
First of all, thanks for this guide, this is the most comprehensive guide to allow controlling Harmony as we all expect it to work.

I am somewhat of a noob when it comes to SmartThings and CoRE, and I am a little stuck at this point.
So I got everything up and running, and all the tests are showing the same results as in your screenshots. But when I issue a command to google, I don’t see the variables update, and nothing happens.
I know the IFTTT gets the command since google responds with the correct response.

Any help here would be appreciated.

Thanks!