I started doing it with two volume up and two volume down activities in August 2015 about two weeks after the first SmartThings/echo integration. It’s posted in the forum in one of the Echo FAQ topics.
As I’ve been saying for over a year, it’s clunky, but it works. For someone like me who can’t use a button remote, it’s definitely useful. I expect that most able-bodied people would rather just use the regular remote.
Because my voice sometime slurs a little, I wanted the commands to be very distinct, so I use lion, tiger, mouse, and moth. I also find it a little easier to remember when switching back-and-forth.
I use a similar method for mute, unmute, pause, unpause, and rewind.
I haven’t had the problem that others have mentioned about having to specify that the devices like the television don’t turn off. As long as the next activity includes the same device, it will stay on.
I think the difference is probably that I don’t have a sound bar, so the sound is always coming through my television anyway.
The more devices that you have, the more complicated these individual button controls activities become.
I’ve been really hoping that the official harmony/echo integration would deliver simpler volume control but maybe in the future.
Here are some of the posts on the other buttons:
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Step by step screenshots
A lot of the stuff in that thread is really old (more than a year at this point) and integration discussion doesn’t really apply anymore because that’s changed. But the setting up a harmony activity to just work one key is still valid.
