I need some help please

What I want to do is turn off all of the lights in my theater room when I hit play on the main remote and bring my wall lights on at 35% if I pause a movie or program then when everything is done turn the lights back on.

Devices that I have for this are a Roku, DirecTV box and a PS3. For the media.

I have a Harmony hub and companion remote to control the entertainment devices and a Yamaha adventege receiver for the sound.

Lights use lutron dimmers for the ceiling and walls lights.

Does anybody have any suggestions on how to achieve my goal.

Thank you
Tom

maybe try this intergation out?

I have this driver, but can not find a way for it to report if play or pause buttons are pushed.

Thank you for the reply

That is correct. There is no data sent from the Harmony Hub to Hubitat when a user presses buttons on the physical Harmony remote control. Thus, there is nothing I can do to enhance this integration to add this functionality.

I cannot get this information from any of my devices Directv, Roku PS3, Harmony. Is there maybe another device that I could add to make this happen?

This is one way you could go:
-Buy one of the WiFi-IR Remote IR Control Hub flash it with a modificate firmware I don't know if one of the device on the HubDuino from @ogiewon could get you there GitHub - DanielOgorchock/ST_Anything: ST_Anything is an Arduino library, sketch, and Device Type that works with your SmartThings ThingShield to create an all-in-one SmartThings device..
You could also use tasmota @markus [RELEASE] Tasmota for HE - Auto-detecting Tasmota drivers + Tasmota firmware 7.x/8.x for HE (for use with Tuya, Sonoff and other ESP devices)
this 2 firmware speak directly to the hub and are very reliable I use them both at home.
-then teach the hub one of the ir commands that the harmony produce to control the devices.
If this won't work I know you could flash regular tasmota on the IR Control Hub and connected to an MQTT broker but you require a broker if you don't have one, and I promess make a driver that talk to that broker and generate events on the hub for you then [Rule Machine] from there.

This is the beauty and the reason why we ran from ST to Hubitat here we have many options
and @tlinsenmeyer welcome to the family

You have Lutron use a Pico!
:upside_down_face:
Program a 3 button R/L Pico to control the harmony activity play/pause while setting light levels via RM. You can program other buttons to take care of most of what would be needed while viewing the activity.

OK not the "all in one remote" solution we're looking for but it's creative, and you don't have to get up! :rofl:

And welcome!

I was not able to do this using the physical harmony remote. My work around. Get the Roku device drivers off github. Then create a dashboard mimicking the Roku remote. Then you can control the lights when pushing buttons on the dashboard.

If your main goal is to use the Harmony Remote (this is always my goal too) is to use one of the home control buttons to set a scene. So it would be two button presses instead of just hitting pause. Even that is a little tedious, and a bit easier if you have SmartThings as well.

Works like this:

  1. Add SmartThings to Harmony
  2. Create a Virtual Switch in ST
  3. Use HubLink so that the ST Virtual Switch also flips an HE Virtual Switch
  4. Set Harmony Home Control Button to flip the ST Virtual Switch
  5. Setup a Rule to do whatever you want

The only way I can think to do this without ST is to use another service that integrates with Harmony (like Lutron or Hue), but you'd have to "waste" a device. For example if you got a Caseta Plug-In Dimmer, but dont plug anything into it, you could trigger that with the Harmony, and use it's status to trigger an HE rule.

(and now that I think about it, you could probably have that Rule "push pause" for you on the harmony using the Harmony Drivers hahahah)

1 Like

Alternatively to ask this above, you could definitely use node-RED, if you're comfortable with setting up a server somewhere. Raspberry pi, container in a nas, old computer lying around, etc.

There is a Harmony integrator in there that allows Hubitat to interact with every single control on your remote, including multiple hubs and devices you teach it. I have it running on 2 hubs, controlling an oscillating fan, a celling fan with light, even some fake candles! In my case, I'm using it to control Harmony devices from Hubitat, but everything is there to work in the opposite direction, as far as I know. Look into Harmony node-RED and you'll be able to find what you're looking for.
Gfd
I also have NODE-RED downloading and backing up the nightly backup off my Hubitat onto my NAS. It really opens up a lot of possibilities.

Good luck, and share progress!

1 Like

One more idea: I think I've recently seen someone talking about a Plex listener that they were running on Nvidia shield that keeps track of the state of their playback/Harmony. I don't believe you had to be actually using Plex for it to work. Just that it needed Plex to have the proper port (so to speak) to listen to the state of the playback on the machine?

Not 100% sure if it was for Nvidia shield ONLY, or if it required plex to be in use, but it's another set of search terms that might get you some ideas! It sounded simple, and iirc, they person was using it for pretty much exactly what you are after--changing the lights based on playing/pausing.

1 Like

Wow I didnt know node-RED had that much access to Harmony. I'm so on the fence about diving in.

On the one hand I want ultimate flexibility, especially for trigging things directly from Harmony.

On the other hand I dont want to add a bunch of complexity and failure points. After all, I switched to HE 2 months ago to get away from ST requiring too much care and feeding.

1 Like

I feel you on that 100%. I moved away from ST for the same reasons--particularly the hacky ways they have of dealing with picos.

That said, yes, node-red has very granular control with the proper Harmony libraries installed, and I can say it's been absolutely hands-off rock solid for, not sure how long now, whether it's many months or over a year. I have it running in a docker container on my QNAP. It starts up when I restart the NAS, and it's never hiccuped.

I will say, I believe the idea of running the smartthings hub JUST for Harmony integration, and using hublink... That sounds elegant and much less hassle than figuring out how to set up a node-RED from scratch. But the good news is, as with practically anything, what you want is definitely possible, and there have been a couple of solid solutions mentioned here! :+1:

Edit: here's my setup right now, with the harmony libraries sitting there. I have some fairly complex flows to work out the fan speed and light dimming on an old Lutron fan controller, all controlled via IR through the harmony.

1 Like

You know it is kind of sad how with all "Smart Home" stuff, IR devices and home entertainment is kind of lost in the shuffle. Harmony is the only good option out there, and I've heard they dont accept new integration partners.

1 Like

I will have to learn node-RED, but this sounds like a good option. Thank you everyone for your suggestions.

I used GitHub - AShifter/harmony-span: A Node.JS application that allows you to trigger external webhooks from your Logitech Harmony Hub and compatible remotes.
This Node.JS application allows you to trigger external webhooks from your Logitech Harmony Hub and compatible remotes by creating a virtual IP connected “Roku” device that you can add as a device and integrate into sequences.

So my play button runs sequence play on AppleTV followed by play on HarmonySpan, same for pause.

Harmony span can then kick of a webhook for IFTTT or as I did use the Hubitat Maker API and I use that to issue scene on controls and when I press pause, lights come up to a dim level, and play turns them all off.

You will need a Windows or Linux machine running Harmony Span, but I wonder if this same technique could be built into a hubitat harmony driver.

This topic was automatically closed 365 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.