Anyone have any experience here with using the Harmony Hub with SmartThings? If I understand how it works (and I may not) I can send signals through the Hub to my TV/Receiver/Other Media devices the same way I now use my Harmony remote, and I can program these through Smartthings based on switch status, etc.
Is that the way it works? What I want to do, ultimately, is issue an Echo command like “Switch TV On” that uses a logical switch “Switch TV” to execute a series of commands made by the Rule Machine (or whatever I have to use) to turn on my TV and set the appropriate inputs on the receiver (mostly because I’m really sick of having to pick up my Harmony remote and shake it for the screen to come on and then carefully select the right touch screen button for what I want to watch). Also, I could then issue a command to shut it all down, the same way I just say “Echo Turn Off House” (again, with a logical switch) when we go to bed.
If this is even somewhat reasonable I’ll go ahead and order the Harmony thing. But if I’m completely off base with what I can do please let me know.
However, it works a bit differently than you have described. You do not get control from smartthings that substitutes for the keys on the remote.
Instead, it essentially works the same way as the IFTTT integration with harmony: SmartThings can ask the harmony home hub to Either start or stop an existing harmony activity. You must have already created the activity in Harmony, and you authorize SmartThings to access your harmony account.
Originally this was done as a cloud to cloud integration, but the current official integration does run over your local area network, although it still has to access the cloud to get the permissions.
You also do the reverse to get control the other way. You authorize harmony to access your SmartThings account. Then your SmartThings devices will show up on your harmony accounts list of “home control” devices and you will be able to add them to harmony activities.
This is what allows you to, say, have the lights go down in the living room when you start a harmony activity called “watch movies.” It’s also it allows you to start a harmony activity based on a smart things – controlled motion sensor.
But the whole concept is based around the idea of harmony activities.
There are two Harmony remote models, the harmony home companion and another one that has “home” in the name that do have an additional five buttons that let you control “home control” devices from those buttons on the remote. Like changing the dim level on a specific lamp. But this is the exception to the way the integration usually works.
Harmony is used in several different ways with smartthings. It’s a good “man in the middle” for use with Serena shades or some other devices that don’t integrate directly with SmartThings.
Before the Yonomi and IFTTT Alexa integrations were available, SmartThings was also a very popular way to allow for echo control of harmony.
Okay, so let’s say I create an “activity” in Harmony that sets everything with my media set I need it to do. Can I then attach (or somehow trigger) the activity with a logical Switch from SmartThings?
If so, then I can create an Echo command to do what I want (which would be to set the lights as well as activate the right Harmony stuff). I don’t want to do ALL of that in Harmony, just the media stuff, even if I can (because I’d rather keep everything other than the media control in ST itself).
(Oh, and thanks for all the info – there is a LOT of information on this forum and hard to track it all down. I did read 5 or 10 messages here about Harmony but still didn’t get a clear idea exactly how it worked).
(Ah, shoot – I’m reading the one you quoted and it does seem to explain it all. Nevermind (but thanks)).
I’m unable to connect my harmony hub to smartthings, when I try using the it just keeps search and never finds the hub. It works find with the harmony remote. Any idea how I can get the harmony hub connected to smartthings?
Sorry I took so long to get to you – holidays had me busy.
It’s a bit difficult to get connected but you can. First things first – make sure you have the latest ST software on your device (I use it on my iPhone). There was a new release a month or so ago that added a lot of functionality, and it also added more support for the Harmony.
Make sure you can see Harmony on the same device as the ST software is running – there should be a Harmony app you can use for this (again, I’m running an iPhone but I’m pretty sure there is Android equivilents). You MUST see the Harmony there so you can tell it’s attached to your network properly. If you can’t see Harmony there, then ST can’t find it either.
If you’re sure Harmony is on the same network as ST but you still can’t see it in setup, then I’d call the ST folks. They were VERY helpful in getting my THREE Harmony devices to all be seen and recognized by ST (believe me, that wasn’t an easy thing and this was back before the Harmony devices were officially supported). They should be able to get you squared away.
And in the official support documents.