Not sure if this has been discussed before or if anyone else is having this issue. I followed all of the instructions in setting up the harmony hub. I then added the hub successfully in ST. However, I already had ST setup in Alexa, and when I went to ‘discover new devices’ the harmony hub nor any of it’s activities showed up. Additionally, when I unlinked ST from Alexa and readded it, none of the harmony activities still showed up. Any advice?
Seriously, check out Yonomi. It’s integration with Echo and Harmony is far superior from a performance and configuration perspective.
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Speaking from personal experience 
, did you add the harmony activities to the Amazon Echo smartapp? ‘marketplace / smartapps / Amazon Echo’ add harmony activities to switches group then have Alexa discover devices. I wasted a couple of hours before i remembered that step i the process.
Hi Jack:
Can you explain your anymote setup? I assumed you had to have an anymote blaster for this to work unless you have a phone that has IR correct? Otherwise how can you connect to harmony and or Alexa?
All of my home theater equipment are connected to my wifi, so I don’t need to use a blaster. Anymote can send signals through wifi and/or IR. If you need to IR blast you can either use your phone (if it has one) or Anymote sells a blaster.To connect Alexa to Anymote you go to the skills tab on your alexa web page. Search for Anymote and check the box. You then go to your anymote app and it will give you a password to say to Alexa. Then they are connected.
thanks for that detailed explanation. I already have 2 harmony hubs that I’m not very pleased with due to the fact that you can’t enter individual channel numbers through alexa, and do simple things like changing inputs
I wish the anymote app could connect directly through a harmony hub to control my tvs and cable boxes…there’s an option to connect directly with an ip but couldn’t get it working
I have both the Harmony Hub as well as the Harmony Smart Control, which also contains a Harmony hub although they do appear to be different part numbers (they look identical). Based on as much research as I can find, it looks like I can integrate the first but not the second with ST.
Is this correct? I don’t want to be spinning my wheel trying to get the Smart Control Hub to work with ST if it can’t.
I have the same scenario, my question is will smartthings use two hubs?
I would ask support. It’s an official integration, but I just don’t know what the current status is regarding multiple hubs.
Poltergeist situation with my goodnight routine, I have it set to turn off all devices yet turn on master bedroom tv. It was working for a while, and now as I run it now, it turns the tv on, and then before I get upstairs I hear it turning off. Anyone know what is going on?
Hmmm, sorry I didn’t come back here to wrap things up. First things first – got everything working just great with all three of my hubs.
Now, Derrek, as to your situation – can’t say for sure, but here’s what happens for me, on our of our hubs. We have it in the Kitchen and I have it controlled by a logical switch named “Kitchen TV”. I also have “Kitchen” as a group for Echo to respond to (so I can just say “Turn Kitchen Off” and it will turn off all the lights in the kitchen). The “Kitchen” group does NOT contain the logical switch to turn off the TV – are you with me so far?
If I say “Alexa, turn off Kitchen TV” she invariably turns off both the lights in the kitchen as well as activates the Harmony to turn off the TV. If I say “Alexa, turn Kitchen TV off” she will ONLY turn off the TV. My guess is that she hears the “Turn Off” and then starts matching up what to turn off and runs into “Kitchen” first and does that, and then hears “TV” and finishes the whole thing. It’s not right, but it is oddly convenient (so I can either turn off everything or just the TV depending upon how I phrase it).
Something similar might be going on in your situation. You might just experiment with phrasing.
I just Got harmony today and integrated it with alexa. I am confused on how the activates are shut off. If I say to Alexa to turn on history channel then say turn on discovery channel then say turn off the TV won’t the history and discovery activities still be on. How will I activate them next time,
Thanks
Only one activity can be active at a time. Telling it to shut off will turn everything off, starting another activity will turn all of the relevant items back on-
Thanks for your reply. I just started to mess around with it and it is working pretty well the issue I am running into is trying to control my air conditioner. If I say Alexa turn on the tv it turns on that activity. Then if I run turn on air conditioner it turn off the tv and turns on the air conditioner. I can fix this by adding the tv to the air conditioning activity so it leaves it on . But then I am unable to turn off the tv through Alexa because the tv activity is already off. Also how long does your activity take to start mine is about 6 seconds of the loading ring on Alexa for the tv to turn on. Do you have ideas on how to fix this thanks.
From what I have read there are 2 Harmony hubs, 1 older (non smart home) and 1 newer (smart home). This will only work with the newer hub.
You need to have the activity setup on your Harmony, like Watch Tivo, Watch Apple TV, ect…
Then they need to be allowed in to ST. You will need to change the names to take out the extra junk on the ends in ST. I shortened them to just Tivo and Apple TV.
Then Alexa sees them as Tivo and Apple TV.
I then just say, Alexa, turn on Tivo, turn on Apple TV, turn off the TV.
Hope this helps
I would suggest you have ST control the AC instead of the Harmony hub, then you can turn on the TV, that would be the only “activity command” Harmony would care about.
Then you could say turn on AC and ST would issue the command.
You have to think about the Harmony commands like your pressing the buttons on the remote. If your switching activities on the remote it will in turn turn off things that are not in that activity.
Thanks for your replies
I got it to work with Alexa controlling my tv. I am still having issues with the air conditioner. When I say turn on the air conditioner it turns off the tv. When I say turn on the tv it turns off the air conditioner due to only one activity allowed to be running at a time.
I would hook the air conditioner directly to smartthings. but it is controlled via ir so I need some type of ir blaster to send commands to it. Is there anyway to control harmony devices directly bit through an activity through smartthings.
Harmony only allows one “entertainment” activity to be running at a time, but will allow as many “home control” activities at once as you want. The problem comes with how they define “entertainment activity,” which turns out to be anything which uses an IR remote! That’s what can throw things off.
There are various ways around it, but many require buying a separate controller device and that’s not always a good cost effective strategy. Just as an example, if the current official integration is working to harmony hubs ( it was for a while, then it wasn’t, I don’t know where it is now) you could put the air conditioner on a different harmony hub. But again, that requires investing in additional hardware. (you could also just set the second harmony have up as its own harmony account, not connected to SmartThings, and just use the IFTTT channels or the Yonomi app to allow voice control by echo of that harmony without involving smartthings in that at all.)
I have heard in the past of some people asking harmony support if a device like an air conditioner could be moved to the Home control category, but I don’t know if they still do that. You could always ask them and see if the device can be reclassified for your account, as that’s the simplest solution.
Brought over from another thread:
JD: Can I ask you a few quick questions. When you set up the simulated switch to power off your “entertainment”, do you: 1) Start sequence = power virtual switch on?
2) End sequence = power virtual switch off?
Or just have the start sequence as power off?
I understanding inserting this power virtual switch in every Harmony activity with the start - on and end = off, but when it converts to smartthings, is this embedded now in the smartthings activity?
Lastly, when you have your new smartthings activity set up such as: “Turn on the TV”, do you just have the start switch but no end switch since you are powering off your “entertainment” with another switch?
Thanks for answering if you can! I’m sorry to bother you again!
I guess I’m confused with the command line. Doesn’t this automatically apply it without additional input? So, will the TV mute automatically as part of the turn on process?
I saw a Harmony employee suggestion to add this as a step to each device that needs it, then add a a Mute activity separately. I tried this, but if I was “watching TV” and tried to activate Mute, the Mute worked but I couldn’t get it to unmute. I tried setting the Mute as a binary switch, but that didn’t seem to help.
What am I missing?
Thanks to any response!