I have a home theater in my house. I've been using an old Lutron dimmer that has an IR remote control. I then use a Harmony Hub stashed away in the equipment closet with all the audio gear. Using a dumb IR repeater the harmony can send commands to the Lutron to turn the lights on and off. I've had this setup for years and absolutely love it because when I pause a movie the Harmony automatically fades the lights back on and when I press play they turn back off.
But I really want to add either motion or a door sensor to enable lights on when entering, but I don't want to lose what I have above. So what are my best options?
Some type of zigbee/z-wave IR transmitter?
If I convert the light switch to z-wave is there some way to control it via harmony?
This is very interesting... Can you please share the Harmony Hub configuration that allows it to send lighting commands based on PLAY and PAUSE being pressed? This is very intriguing... 
Sure, so a Lutron IR switch is compatible with Harmony out of the box, just add it as a device. Then edit your activity and choose customize remote. Then select the play button for example. Change the command to sequence and create a new sequence. At this point you can add multiple devices to this button. So for my Fire TV activity for example, the sequence is the ok/play button for the FireTV and the lights off command for the Lutron remote.
Thank you very much! I did not realize that a physical remote button could be changed to a 'sequence'. I'll have to give this a try as I have both Lutron Caseta and Philips Hue lighting which should be easily integrated with the Harmony Hub. I also use Hubitat for motion based lighting automations. If I come up with a solution that works with both at the same time, I'll let you know.
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That would be awesome! Thank you!
So I figured out a way that works for me. I added a door sensor to kick the lights on when we enter. Then because my Denon receiver can report a couple of basic things I have it setup so if I press mute on the remote the lights come on and if I unmute they go back off. My goal was to use a harmony sequence so that mute and unmute would be tied in with play and pause but the harmony remote only has a single toggle for mute and unmute, but that's ok. This works for now until I come up with something better.
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