No, I use the harmony/smartthings integration to activate virtual switches (watching move/watching game) to set lighting scenes in my theater room based on current activity. Maybe there is a better way to do this and finally ditch ST all together?
So, you want to have a harmony remote action trigger something in Hubitat? Yeah, just have Harmony discover Hue Bridges, it should find Hubitat and set up your actions in Harmony to do just that.
1 Like
If you're having issues with Alexa discovering Hubitat, send a message to @justin.bennett. He finally was successful in getting it working in his environment, but didn't confirm what he did to resolve.
OK, so harmony is seeing the hubitat as a hue bridge, but when I try to pair it the app just sits on the page waiting for me to hit the center button that doesnāt exist on the hubitat unless Iām missing something.
Have you looked at simply integrating Harmony directly with Hubitat? This would provide you with essentially the same integration between Hubitat/Harmony that exists with ST/Harmony today.
Here is a great post at a method to do exactly that.
Note: This method assumes you have an existing ST/Harmony integration already as you'll need to 'borrow' the keys from it. I'd recommend leaving the integration on ST as removing it would probably break the Hubitat/Harmony integration as well.
I have been using this for a few weeks now, and it works very well for my simple use cases.
2 Likes
Yeah, good catchā¦ Forgot harmony needs authentication, but Alexa doesnāt. Sorry for the fire drill.
I forgot the last item on the checklist...SONOS
ST lives to fight another day but it received a hell of a whooping today in any case.
2 Likes
@ogiewon Yes, Iām using that method now to control harmony activites from hubitat. However, unless i have something setup wrong the ācurrent activityā states takes a long time to update (maybe long isnāt the correct word, but itās far from realtime). Basically I want to be able to tell hubitat that Iām watching a movie based on current harmony activity and have it change the lighting scenes. I also have different seems for when the kids are gaming.
@halfrican.ak Gotcha. I assume that means you are changing the Harmony Activity using something other than Hubitat, correct? Like a Harmony Remote Control? Or Alexa-to-Harmony direct integration? These will result in up to 5 minutes of delay before the Hubitat devices for these Harmony Activities are updated due to the polling refresh.
If youāre using Alexa, you could expose the Hubitat-Harmony Activities to Alexa, instead of direct Alexa-to-Harmony. This should make sure the Hubitat-Activity devices are kept up to date in real time.
Not ideal, for sureā¦
Yes, ST is what causes the delay. Iāve always had issues with the refresh, so the method I described in my post is good for initiating the activity, but not for monitoring its state. If you need to do that, you might have better success with the port @mattw did. I was using that, but as @stephack noted, it seems to have resulted in weird slowdowns on the Harmony, which was a problem for the WAF. Iāve removed it, but Iām still having problems I havenāt totally resolved. Might be unrelated, but my Harmony Touch is frequently re-syncing since adding that.
Iām actually more interested in controlling devices directly via Harmony because they support Insteon and August Lock among others and I really donāt want an Activity for every Insteon bulb I have and Activities mess with the state of other activities, so thatās definitely not a preferred method for me. I donāt have a free computer that is capable of running Docker, so I have not tried the port @Keo did of KuKu Harmony yet.
The ideal scenario is of course going to be when we have direct local control of Harmony and the completed Hubitat Alexa Wizard and Alexa Skill.
Yes, I am using the a harmony remote to control activities. And yes, the delay you describe is definitely there. Perhaps I should just buy an Alexa for the sole purpose of allowing the harmony/hue integration with hubitat that @patrick was mentioning? I am open to this if it is a reasonable āwork-aroundā until native harmony integration is available?
If you just want to discover Hubitat virtual switches in Harmony, you should be able to do it without purchasing an Echo. Thereās a free app called Roger for iOS, and one other (canāt remember the name) for Android that gives you a AVS (Alexa Voices Services) on your phone. If you configure one of these, it adds them to an Alexa account, just as if you had a physical device. That Alexa account is all youāre looking for to accomplish the Harmony bit @patrick was mentioning.
Using a Pico to control Hue bulbs via Hue Bridge with 4 sec faster response than ST ā¦ priceless.
This is fantastic, thank you Hubitat!
3 Likes
A note about controlling Hue groups in Hubitat.
Itās handy that you can access groups, but groups always default to their previous level. This is good, but might not be the result you are always looking for. For example, if you turn ON just one light in a group to a different level, and then turn it OFF, when you turn the entire group ON, that one light will be at the previous level. This is Hue behavior Nothing wrong with the Hubitat Hue Integration.
Access to Hue scenes would resolve this, but of course, RM and Virtual Switches are a viable workaround until that is possible.
I had to press the hue button while detecting the habitat devices.
Thatās odd. How long did you wait before you made the decision to try pushing the button for the devices?
I had the same issue. I was able to resolve it by running through the setup process (after hub linking) without doing anything else. Basically, my goal was to get the app installed before it decided to refresh. That worked, and once the app was installed I went back and added bulbs and groups. With the app installed and in the apps list, I no longer get 404's when the Hue integration app refreshes.
Scenes are on the agenda, just didnāt make this initial release. We debated on how to handle groups. We decided to follow the way Hue Groups works and try to stay in sync.
1 Like
Should the integration be keeping track of light state? I noticed that the Hue device states in Hubitat donāt seem to be updating if I do something outside of Hubitat (e.g. turn off a light with the Hue app), at least not reliably, and not very quickly.
I could create a polling rule like I have for some of my zwave switches, but apparently thereās a more efficient way to get status info directly from the hub. Whatever the ST hub is doing, it shows state updates within a second or two when a light is updated outside of ST.
