I'm looking to grab one of these off ebay. I wanted to confirm, are there more then one model? If I get one off ebay can I expect it to work with the latest hubitat driver that's been made?
Just be sure NOT to buy a Harmony LINK hub. Those have been bricked by Logitech.
As long as you get a Harmony Hub (not the LINK), you'll be fine.
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Thanks.
I am trying to understand the benefits of integrating a harmony remote into HE? I am thinking of getting one because I have a multitude of remotes for every little TV addon. But I want to understand how/why I would want to integrate it into HE?
My Harmony hubs are integrated with HE so that I can have activities turn on/off based upon modes and presence. So, if my wife and I leave, I want my office devices and living room devices to turn off automatically. It also allows for voice control of activities like "Alexa, turn [on|off] the living room Roku". I could do that directly through the Harmony skill, but then I couldn't have it react to presence or modes easily.
In the morning, we say to Alexa "Good Morning", which (via the Alexa Skill for Hubitat) turns on lights and the home entertainment system to the correct device.
At night, we say "Good Night" and everything shuts down cleanly and quickly without having to hit light switches or find the remote control(s).
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So give me an example of what devices you turn off and on. Like for instance, I have Rules setup to turn things on and off based on presence and modes and times, etc. But I don't have the ability to integrate my TV's, Apple TV, Roku's, cable boxes, etc. into HE. So I am thinking that having a Harmony hub connected would bring those items into HE? Is this correct?
That's correct. So, in my living room, I have a LG TV, Roku, Chromecast, XBox One and a Vizio audio receiver. I can bring the Chromecast into HE, but the rest of the devices no. So, with the Harmony Hub, I have activities that handle all the devices. Then, in HE, I use @ogiewon's Logitech Harmony app to make those activities into switches. Then, I use RM to turn on or off the various activities based upon mode and/or presence.
Quick example: My wife and I leave the house. All the lights turn off and all the Power Off activities on my Harmony Hubs turn on (which means turn everything off, weird I know).
Another example is when I sit down at my computer between 0700 and 2000, turn on the Office Computer Activity.
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Others use the Harmony Activity "switch" states as events to fire rules. For example, the Harmony "Play Xbox One" activity switch turns from off to on, have a RM rule fire that sets the lighting in the room correctly for optimal game playing, maybe close the shades, etc...
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OK, this might be handy! What remote would you recommend? Which do you use most to communicate with devices connected to Harmony....the remote, app or Alexa?
We use Google Assistant. I was originally using IFTTT as a helper to get the backlight turned on while triggering the activity. This worked, but had a little bit of lag. Using the driver and rule is almost instantaneous (thanks @ogiewon and @corerootedxb).
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Recommendations for remotes?
You want one of the Logitech Harmony Remotes that come with the Harmony Hub. The Harmony Hub is the real brains of the system, and is able to control devices via IR (blaster(s) included), Bluetooth, and some LAN devices. The Harmony Remotes communicate to the Harmony Hub via RF, thereby alleviating the need point the remote at your home entertainment devices.
I have the Harmony Elite/Harmony Hub as my main remote control. I also have the less expensive Harmony Companion/Harmony Hub for two other systems in the house.
There have been some pretty good deals in the past on these Companion Remote+Hub combinations for about $60, new. I'm not seeing these deals any longer. The remote that came with those was actually a little smaller than the one I linked above.
This looks like a pretty decent deal from Amazon... The description says it comes with the Harmony Hub, which is critical to the Hubitat integration.
IMO 2 best options are ones with real buttons:
If you have a SmartThings hub too, then Harmony Companion. It has smart home buttons that can be tied back to Hubitat via hub linking (various methods, apps)
A similar remote with no home control buttons and normally cheaper is Harmony Smart Control
@pcgirl - Just to make sure it is clear... The Home Control Buttons mentioned by @bill.d above are not supported by my Hubitat Harmony Hub driver. Some users have found creative ways to use these, but those methods are not really generic enough to be included in my driver. Ideally those buttons would just appear within Hubitat as a Button Controller device, similar to a Pico remote. However, it is not that easy to get those buttons to send a webSockets update to the Hubitat hub when they are pressed.
What do the Smart Home Buttons do? The cheaper remotes don't look like they have many buttons. Unlike the Elite model which seems to have a lot of ways to visual see special channels and routines (Movie Time, etc.) Or do you use the app or Alexa more? Just trying to think of my family and how they would use it. They are a bit behind the times 
! Trying to pull them along!
I use the physical remote control more than anything, when channel surfing, adjusting volume, etc... The less expensive Smart Control remote can control up to 6 Activities using the three gray buttons near the top of the remote (pushed and held.) The Elite does allow more Activities, and visual feedback of the current activity. It also allows you to control individual devices (like the Receiver, Television, etc...) outside of the context of an Activity. It can be a bit confusing at first if you've never used a Logitech Harmony remote, but the learning curve is worth it IMHO. We never used the device specific remotes for anything. They collect dust in a drawer with their batteries removed (to prevent leaking.)
The Smart Home Control Buttons are able to be mapped to devices that are supported by an official Logitech Harmony Integration. So, for example, if you have Philips Hue, Lutron Caseta, or SmartThings, the devices from these systems can be exposed to the Logitech Harmony Hub. Then these devices can be mapped within the Harmony app to the Smart Home Control Buttons.
Since Hubitat does not yet have an official Logitech Harmony integration, we cannot easily expose Hubitat lights to Harmony, and thus those Smart Home Buttons buttons are usually not used. If you're creative, you could use one of the integrations that are officially supported by both Logitech and Hubitat (e.g. Lutron Caseta or Philips Hue) to tie the three systems together to use those extra buttons.
I do have hue bulbs. So if I wanted to dim the lights and change them to a special colour when I turn on the TV, I could set that up within Harmony or do I need to set it up in HE?
You can control Hue scenes with Harmony activities directly if you want.
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Can I ask for some clarification of this:
By this, do you mean that there is some sort of way to expose all types of Hubitat lights via one of these integration or only those types of lights? I have a bunch of z-wave switches which I used to control with Harmony via Smartthings, but now I cannot connect to the HE to get those from Harmony unless I use HubConnect and keep my smartthings lights going on smartthings just to service the Harmony Remote's needs for lighting control.
LJ
