Official Harmony integration

I've recently got a Harmony Elite & Hub. There have been a few threads about integrating this with Hubitat, and various unofficial options, one of which I'm already using succesfully to access activities. I'm now looking at the options to allow the 6 home control buttons on the Elite (2 bulb icons, 2 socket icons and up/down dimmer) to control Hubitat devices. One option maybe to get a Hue Hub to use as an interface, but before I invest any money, I thought I'd just check if there is any update on an official Harmony Integration, especially with Harmony's recent U turn on the API access. I'm not expecting a "Yes, it will be ready 3 weeks on Tuesday" type answer, just a clue as to if it's worth putting time and money into a workaround solution.

There probably will never be “official” integration as Harmony has publicly stated they have no interests in any more future collaboration with new home automation systems.

Ah, OK, I didn't know that. I thought Harmony Integration was on the Hubitat roadmap. Thanks for that. Looks like a Hue Hub is incoming then!

My understanding, from various posts over the past year, is that Hubitat has reached out to Logitech to request an official integration. However, Logitech's response was that they are no longer accepting new integration requests. Hopefully this will change in the future. Until then, we have community developed solutions to hold us over. :slight_smile:

I choose to remain optimistic. You don't show all the cards in your hand. It's not good business. BUT .. let's talk about the existing integration. Let's be honest. IT ROCKS! It's easy to install and so so easy to import the updates. Give it a try... just for now. Then the wait for harmony to make up their minds on a business move won't seem so painful. :wink:

I totally agree about Dan's integration and I am using it to control routines in Hubitat when activities run on Harmony. But It is purely designed for activities and the way Harmony have set up the remote, you need something that Harmony accepts is a compatible Home Control product to be able to link to the Home Control buttons. Patience may be a virtue but my problem is that when looking at a remote with 6 home control buttons, every fibre of my being needs to have them working!! :grinning:

Broadly speaking... I've got more faith in the wider HA community to reverse-engineer APIs than I have in Logitech to manage to decently secure their perimiter, and there's really no incentive for them to go out on a limb to make it tough.

Their recent withdrawal of the local XMPP (I think) API wasn't motivated by a desire to stiff the community - it was motivated by the fact that it's implementation was a gaping security hole and somebody had publically pointed it out to them. Fixing it's security problems was clearly harder than just withdrawing the API, and generally speaking, I suspect they correctly assumed there was no money in officially supporting stuff. There's just not enough of an upside to them.

On the flip-side... there's no upside to making it hard for community support, either. Their chosen approach isn't exactly community-friendly... but they get to spend exactly $0 on looking after 3rd party integrations, don't have to accept the limitations of a 3rd party wanting your APIs to be frozen, and every time they break something, somebody else fixes it. For Free.

Unless they actually thought their market was DIY HA enthusiasts rather than a more mass market 'anybody who can't bear having 4 remote controls', I can't say I'm surprised they adopt the position they've taken.

-- Jules

PS. I've got two harmony's. The current 'unsupported' implementation kicks arse. I can't imagine it would get any better with Logitech's blessing.

3 Likes

I myself prefer device level control, but kudos on your work.

Device level control could easily be added. Just needs someone motivated to add that capability.

I agree. I'm the same way. there has to be a work around to get them to work. A little imagination and the community and you have something. You should post it out there. Even two heads are better than one. Here, there'll be more than 2. But I could see someone coming up with a slick solution for you. A workaround, but a solution.

OK, so here is my plan to get those Harmony buttons working actions in Hubitat

I've ordered a Hue bridge and a single Hue bulb. This is going to act as an interface between Harmony and Hubitat so I will pair the Hue to both.

I will create scenes on the Hue that set the Hue connected bulb to 5,10,15,20, etc % dim level. One level for each command I need.

In Harmony I will set each of the home control buttons to action one of these scenes.

In Hubitat I will set triggers for that bulb being at the different dim levels and then do whatever actions I want for each button press.

I've tested the theory with a dummy dimmer in Hubitat and it works well. Set the dummy dimmer to 5% and lamp A turns on, set it to 10%, and it turns off.

Modesty prevents me from calling it a genius plan, but I do feel an evil laugh coming on!

Hmmm. I've not actually TRIED this... but my understanding is that the old 'Alexa Echo App' actually emulates a hue bridge for Alexa to talk to. If that's the case... then it might be possible to simply turn that skill on, expose a virtual bulb device from it, and pair harmony to that. No hardware, no physical bulb, and you can do the rest as you like.

How's that for sneaky?

-- Jules

I thought that too, and tried it, but unfortunately although Harmony finds the virtual Hue bridge on Hubitat it wants you to press the button on it to authorise the pairing which you obviously can't do with a virtual bridge. So near but yet so far!

This seems like another brilliant version of @halfrican.ak's Lutron dimmer hack. I may have to test this out when I get home.

Damn it! Should have applied for a patent! :rofl:

2 Likes