Hi! Has anyone does this? I bought Harmony and I bought Roomie to see wich one was compatirble with smartthings to turn off/on my TV with Hello Home actions, but I havnt been able to do so.
Any ideas? Thanks!
What model television?
If it uses IR commands, did you also buy the Roomie IR blaster?
USING IFTTT TO TRIGGER HARMONY
Right now, the official integration for ST and Harmony allows Harmony to control some ST devices, but not the other way around except for triggering from a motion sensor. ST is working on extending the integration, but that’s still in beta test, so not yet available to most people.
For now, you can use IFTTT as a “man in the middle.”
Method A: very flexible, but may have some lag
A1) create a virtual switch in SmartThings. Authorize it for use by Harmony.
A2) create a Harmony activity that turns your TV on.
A3) Create a Hello Home action to flip the virtual switch
A4) use IFTTT to tell Harmony to run your harmony activity when that switch is flipped
Once this is set up, triggering that hello home action will run that harmony activity. The only question is how much lag before IFTTT checks the switch.
Method B: You can reduce the lag by using the text method instead of a virtual switch. IFTTT will process texts very quickly. But because hello home actions don’t send texts with hashtags, you have to set up a separate IFTTT account for each hello home action. It’s not difficult, just tedious.
I recommend trying Method A first and if the lag is acceptable, using that. It’s a lot easier to keep track of everything when you only have one IFTTT account. Method A does mean you’ll have one virtual switch per Harmony Activity, but I find that logical.
If your audio/video components use IR, you’ll need a network to IR device, but skip the Roomie Blaster (a rebranded iTach Flex) and go with a standard iTach. They can be had for the same cost and are more versatile, providing up to three rooms of control.
SmartThings can send commands to an iTach natively using sendHubCommand.
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The SmartThings to Harmony integration is in beta and is working great for me. The ST > Harmony integration allows you to start Harmony activities or end activities (eg. power everything off).
I have a Hello Home Action (Phrase) that turns off all my lights and turns off the home theater system. It’s nice for when I’m going to bed and forgot to turn things off as I can turn everything off with one tap of a widget on my Android homescreen.
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I have ST trigger the Harmony activities based upon individual arrivals (along with specific lights and such). When turning the TV off in the family room for example (using the remote or ST for that matter), the appropriate lights are turn on or off as defined to light the way to bed. For me, I can trigger it both ways and it works well.
How you did this? I can control ST devices with Harmony APP but no the other way arround.
You would need to request to be part of the ST > Harmony beta:
I would reach out to April directly as it sounds like they already processed the second round of beta testers.
I use virtual switches and the Harmony Hub Control smart app. It’s worked great for me. It really does work well both ways. It’s been very reliable.