Pause Plex or AndroidTV through Harmony/St and Alexa

Devices & Integrations Device Ideas
1

I would like to have the ability to have voice commands to pause.

I currently have

  1. Alexa
  2. Harmony smart hub
  3. ST
  4. All apps live

Is this possible?

2

Here you go. Once setup just say Alexa tell harmony to pause, play, mute, volume up/down

Setup Alexa and Harmony

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3

Either Ask Alexa via a Macro or Echosistant directly, can do it. It depends greatly which app, based on what other automation needs you might have in your home.

Ask Alexa

Echosistant

4

The issue is since Logitech only supports 1 hub I cannot use this on Hub #2. The workaround for Hub # 2 is running through Yonomi as a work around.

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5

Volume works but not pause. Odd.

When I say Alexa tell Harmony to pause it doesn’t work. IT says Pause is not a valid command for the current activity.

6

Can’t help you there, works on my DirecTV and Roku without issues. Did you try Play? On my Directv there is just a play/pause command so play also pauses. If that makes sense.

7

And did you add both Skills?

8

yes, that is correct.

9

I was finally able to get this to work. Because it was a pain i’ll outline what I did and the other issue.

The first issue is on AndroidTV boxes such as the Mi Box and Nexus Player, the remotes do not have a dedicated play/pause button. Because of this, when I had Harmony set-up through Alexa and I told it: Alexa, tell Harmony to Pause it wouldn’t do anything.

This was further compounded by the fact that the play button on the harmony remote (used with Flirc on the NP, and direct on the Mi Box) was also the pause button.

So i hooked up the harmony hub to a computer and taught the pause command. But what I had to do was use my harmony remote as the original remote and use the Play button. Once it leanred the command i was able to sync it to the hub. After a few minutes and a device discovery on alexa I am now able to pause the Mi Box.

Shortcoming = The pause only lasts a few seconds. That is odd and frustrating. I am not sure why it reverts back to play after a few seconds.

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10

Sounds like you have a bad box. I have Android box running Kodi & Plex. Harmony controls it fine for play, pause,FF,RW stop. Obviously no mouse actions, although I have never actually tried " Alexa tell harmony move cursor right "

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11

I’m not so sure. The harmony remote pause works. So something else is turning it back to play status from the harmony skill or something.