[Release] Logitech Harmony Hub Driver v0.1.20230311

So as a complete newb to HE and in depth home automation...this will allow control of the activities in Hamony as well as have that activity work as a virual switch/trigger to further automate something else correct? This does not give control of the individual devices right?

Correct. However, individual harmony device control is a possibility, if someone were to add that functionality. My focus was simply on Harmony Activities.

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I just got my HE today but don't have any of my devices yet. Thinking of playing with this tonight to keep me occupied until Monday!

Any reason this can't eliminate the Alexa Harmony skill and then use Alexa to control Harmony through the HE? This would allow multiple hub control maybe??

Ok so that was super easy to setup! Thank you so much for all the work and instructions!! I presume you want to use the "switch" template for those activities to be able to properly turn them on and off.

I might try turning off my harmony skill in Alexa and enabling the hubitat skill to see what functions work through that...I presume just the on/off.

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Oh gosh no! So many more capabilities with Alexa and Harmony. We don’t use HE to control Harmony.

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Yea, I just removed the Harmony Skill from Alexa myself, as I have 3 Harmony Hubs active in the house. I am just exposing to Alexa the Activity “Switches” that are needed via the Amazon Echo Skill App in Hubitat.

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That is what I was thinking of doing. I am adding a second Harmony hub in my living room and am thinking for my basement theater just having the activity turn on and off through HE and Alexa would be enough because I still have to use a remote for navigation anyway. Also then I could trigger lighting rules from that child switch activity.

Upstairs I could use the Alexa Harmony skill for my living room Harmony hub for more control as that setup is more basic than my theater.

I noticed when I discovered devices after linking the Hubitat to Alexa it added the activities as a light and a switch within the Alexa app. When I gave Alexa the command "turn on basement hub youtube tv" it worked but she came back with "I am sorry that device is not responding" even though it did. Did I set something up wrong?

I kept the skill enabled for my main tv. It only supports one hub anyways.

I can turn on and off the activities with the skill or with HE but we also use voice commands such as pause or play the tv. Turn up/down the volume. These actually come in handy.

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I do the same thing using Google Home. It's linked to my Living Room hub, so I can do device commands there using GH -> Harmony integration. Can also turn on or off activities from either hub using GH -> Hubitat integration.

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I don’t think you did anything wrong. I am experiencing the same thing. It seems like Hubitat’s Alexa Skill doesn’t wait very long before timing out.

The Child Switch Driver does not immediately change the switch attribute from on to off (or vice versa.). It waits for the webSocket response that the state has actually changed. If the Activity takes a while to complete, the Alexa Skill will time-out.

I believe that I may know how to fix this, as there is an intermediary webSocket response that indicates the Activity is changing. I will look at using that to decrease the response time, to hopefully make Alexa happy.

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Gotcha..that makes sense. I know when you use the Harmony physical remote and start an activity it does take awhile before the remote shows it is ready to use even though the devices are all on and ready. Must be in the Harmony's response time.

Take a look at the activity startup routine. It can be a bit confusing but there are delays for device startups and routine startups.

Some of the delays are in there on purpose for startup changes. For example, it may press power on the tv, wait 10s and then press hdmi 1. However, you could adjust it if hdmi1 is the only imput you use. Then you can cut out the changing and delay and cut the start time.

I've tweaked mine to startup up pretty fast by skipping a bunch of unnecessary things a startup.

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I will check that out a little more. I knew that was there for the device startup in an activity. I have adjusted some of those. Thanks!!

@overanalyze & All,

I have released v0.1.20190104 of the Logitech Harmony Hub Parent Driver. This new version improves the response time of the changing of Activities. I am using an extra message sent from the Harmony Hub when an Activity change is initiated, versus waiting for the new Activity to be fully complete. This has fixed my Alexa "Device is not responding" warning messages for Activities that take a while to complete.

Please give this new version a try and let me know what you think.

BTW - A very quick way to update this driver is to simply open the existing code on your hub, copy the GitHub URL I have left at the top of the driver, paste the URL into the IMPORT window, click IMPORT, and click SAVE. This saves you the step of having to open up GitHub in another window to copy and paste the source code.

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You rock!! that worked!! Now I think I can modify the hub I want HE to control and then group it in with my basement group and basement Echo. Then hoping adding the Living room Harmony to the Living group and Echo will give me the control I want. More testing of that tomorrow. Thanks for the quick code update!!

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Everything is working with this code nicely. Alexa and multiple hubs with one account just doesn't work all the time. i do think keeping my living room Harmony as the one linked to Alexa and my basement hub operated by Alexa through HE is the best for now. The other thing you have to watch is the labeling of the hubs and activities when split with HE controlling one and Alexa the other...she can get confused.

I agree that the activity naming is the hardest part when using multiple Harmony Hubs. I am changing the Label field of the Hubitat Activity devices before adding them to the Alexa Skill.

I still don’t have a very good plan. I may use a Google Home for one and Alexa for another Harmony Hub. That would at least allow the activity names to be the same.

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I ended up prefacing all of my activities with the room name in HE. So there's "Living Room Fire TV" and "Master Bedroom Fire TV", "Living Room Broadcast TV" and "Master Bedroom Broadcast TV", etc. The actual activities on each hub don't have have the room preface. My living room hub is hooked to Google, so if I say "Turn on Fire TV", it's the same result as if I say "Turn on Living Room Fire TV", just the former goes through GH to Harmony, and the latter goes through GH to Hubitat to Harmony.

This fits with the naming convention for the rest of my house...I have Overhead Lights and Ceiling Fans in every room, so each is prefaced with the room name.

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I only have the one HH as I only have one complicated multi-input system in the living room. We use Xfinity and their universal remote is quite good and eliminates the need of HH in any other room as those rooms only have a tv and a sound bar. Also don’t like talking to Alexa or GH in the bedroom to watch TV.

Do you all have complex systems in multiple rooms? I know some of you have the family room and home theater setup which makes sense to have (2) HH but was there a huge $20 sale on HH I missed or are you really sold on HH controlling every room with IR for its high cost? Just curious as I am ignorant on why I would want multiple HH in my home without multiple complex IR systems.

I'm sure there are multiple scenarios. I have 2 hubs, one in the family room and one in the master bedroom.
I didn't consider the second hub prohibitively expensive at $50. I already had an extra smart remote (kept for the in laws because it was the simplest remote to use) so all I needed was the extra hub.

Definitely not "needed" but it comes in handy with my exit automations that shuts off everything. My goodnight automation that shuts off all lights in the bedroom, the hallways and the tv with a pico button held event. This is convenient for when my wife falls asleep watching the TV (I was already asleep) and I need to shut down everything easily. The remote is usually someplace I cant get to easily. One button press and I'm back to bed. I also have an "I'm Awake" automation that gets me my morning info, fades the lights on and after a delay turns on my TV to my preferred news station.

Edit: Forgot to add the primary reason I bought the hub in the first place. It let me control the fire TV on the bedroom TV without the need for a second remote...that always got lost. Tiny black remote = PITA.
Alexa, where is the !@$& remote again?

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