How to control TV volume with Alexa, Harmony Hub & Smartthings

Sorry I misunderstood that you meant that even for Logitech folks this may be a non starter. I will put my question in the core forum. Reason for putting here was that I thought, folks in this thread will be more interested. Thanks.

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I’m sure once you have it working people in this thread would be very interested. It’s just the discussions of troubleshooting piston details tend to make a lot of people’s eyes glaze over. :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye: Core is very powerful, but it’s still only a small minority of people who are using it. So the peer assistance thread folks can help you work out what the issues are with why it’s not working – – they love stuff like that. :sunglasses:

Makes sense. Thanks. Btw, I see you very, if not most, active so for me you are the biggest expert :wink:

Thanks for the thought, but Definitely Not on code. Or core. I rely on text to speech, so I can’t read groovy or follow piston discussions.

Not sure why mine isn’t working. I set up a piston for when my Mute (momentary button tile) is pushed. Problem is it will not start my Mute/Unmute activity on my Harmony Hub.

For testing purposes, I made it simple: If Mute (momentary button) changes to ON, then send sms. That works just fine so I know the button works. However, when I add a ‘then using Harmony Hub, start Mute/Unmute activity’ it doesn’t start. No other conditions used…simply button pushed. The Recently tab for my Harmony Hub shows the CoRe piston firing, but no results.

I have the same issue. Using start activity does not seem to work. The way to get around is to configure harmony app to add activities as switches and then in core instead of start activity use turn on switch TV Mute.

ddovidio–it seems like you’ve figured this out for controlling sound for your TV. I recently got the Hub/Alexa setup, and my TV sound comes from my Vizio sound bar (which Harmony/Alexa turn on and off fine). Do you have any insight as to how I can accomplish the same thing you did but instead have the sound bar volume go up and down?

Thanks.

My Samsung sound bar is paired directly to my Samsung TV so I don’t know if
this will work: the Vizio has a remote, so if you create an activity called
"Louder" in your Harmony remote hub, pair your Vizio remote with the hub,
code it to “push the volume up button” 3 to 5 times, it might work. Do
the same for “Softer” except opposite and only down 2 times. Add activity
to Alexa as before.

Thanks, David. One other thing I should have asked—I assume this is all predicated on having a Smartthings device/outlet hooked up to the actual device I want to control, right? So in this case I would plug the sound bar into the Smartthings outlet?

One other thing–since my Hub is controlling the sound bar okay now I’m guessing the remote is paired with it already, but how do I “code” the Hub to push the volume button 3 to 5 times? Sorry to sound like such a noob.

Sounds right but not sure. My system consists of a Smartthings hub
connected to my router, no outlets, a Google Home in one area and an Alexa
in the other and Harmony hubs in each area.

There Harmony hub is providing the commands to the sound bar. Smartthings is just providing a way to use CoRE or another smart app to tell harmony what your want done.

I’m on my phone away from home right now, so I can’t provide specific details or pictures.

Basically you want to edit the start portion of the volume up harmony activity you created. You’ll have to edit the activity, select the start portion, select the add a step, select the soundbar as the device, select volume up as the command. Add this step again as many times as you want volume up pushed. Save the activity.

Now when you start that activity it will select the sound bar and push volume up as many times as you told it too. You will be stuck in the volume up activity you created so you will have to start your TV Activity again.

You can do all this is CORE, I did it last night. I just made the mistake of using “sound up” and Alexa doesn’t like that. I’ll have to fix it tonight.

I could turn on the sound up button in smartthings and it would raise the volume 3 times. Then core would see the sound up button on in smartthings and run to switch my active activity to Watch TV.

I just need to find a good phrase for my activities that Alexa will like and isn’t a mouthful to say.

Hope that helps.

I can help more later when I’m closer to my hub so the harmony app will open. Just tag me or something if you need help.

The Harmony Skill now has the ability to increase/decrease volume

“Alexa tell Harmony to increase volume”

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Um…you sure about that? Doesn’t work for me.

You need to add the “new” harmony skill (the icon is red).

I saw the story mentioning that but I don’t see the “new” Harmony Skill, just the blue icon “Harmony - Optimized for Smart Home”

LMAO…so (speculating here), the previous “Blue” Harmony skill got RIPPED to shreds in reviews. To initiate consumer amnesia, they’ve created a new skill named “Harmony”, but this one has a red icon, which is probably an appropriate color to warn users. It’s already rated just half a star higher than the “blue” one.

Edit: You also have to go to the generic “Skills” section in Alexa, not the Smart Home section, to find it.

It’s more complicated than that I think.

The older blue Skill is “optimized for home automation,” meaning you get to say “echo, turn on HBO” without having to say the name of the skill. Just like the way you use SmartThings with Echo. It was all based on activities, so you needed to have pre-created any activity you wanted to use this way.

The new red skill requires you to say “echo, tell Harmony to switch to HBO” but as long as you’re willing to do that you get granular access to the voice equivalent of a lot of the buttons on the remote, including volume up and down, pause, play, mute, and switching to a channel by channel number. And you don’t have to pre-defined as much stuff.

They each fit different use cases.

Probably with the new one you have to say “tell Harmony two” because you’re using a lot of commands which are reserved words for echo itself, like volume up.

The new skill is working really well for me, I’m very happy with it. I didn’t use the older blue skill because I use IFTTT for basically the same functionality.

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To be honest, for me, the original “blue” skill added nothing but the “friendly names” and extracting Favorites as Alexa devices (thus, crowding the Alexa devices view) over what could already be accomplished with the ST Harmony integration. Don’t get me wrong, it was cool to tell Alexa to turn on the TV and have her know what activity you meant by the alias.

You’re probably right that the two apps are viewed to resolve separate use cases, but the functionality overlaps significantly. It’s difficult to see what the intent is, especially when a company as popular as Logitech is significantly missing the mark with such a trivial task.

They basically took the same functionality (i.e. underlying code) from the “blue” skill and created the “red” skill with a different method of instantiation and only vol up/down added. No FF/Rew is supported, though “Pause” is a recognized command that seems to do nothing.

This just doesn’t seem like the best work from a fairly top-notch peripherals and accessories major brand.

Edit: Oh, and the volume increases/decreases by 7 units each time, with no way to tweak it (that I’ve seen). This could lead to some pretty nasty situations in some households.