Tie in with other devices?

[chewie]

So I have been looking for something like this for a long time to use in my media room. Let me run through what I want to do and if you do not mind telling me whether or not I can do this?

1. HS FC200+ Fan controller on the wall that when double tapped up runs an event that sets up lighting in the room and activates the Harmony activity to fire up my media devices
2. A couple of buttons either on the harmony remote or within an HS interface app like Imperihome or HSBuddy so that when I press Pause it brings lights up to 25%, when I hit Play it takes them to 0%
3. Double down tap the same FC200 on the way out of the room turns everything off, waits a couple of minutes and takes the lights to 0%

Nothing to complicated, but I have not ever had a reliable way to using my Harmony remotes in there to trigger the Pause and Play functions out to my Z-wave dimmers.

Thanks in advance guys!

[ts1234]

This is basically what I want too...seems like this would be simple. I only want my Harmony remote turning on my TV to turn the lights off. It does not seem to either log or update the device change Time stamps for anything 99% of the time. Is there a setting I am missing?

[sirmeili]

You can do 1 and 3, but not 2. The harmony does not track when buttons are pressed. I am using the same communication method as the phone app, so if the phone app isn't notified of a button press (it's not), then it won't work.

You can do this in a round about way if you are using IR devices. You can use Jon00's plugin for FLIRC and teach it your pause and play buttons then trigger events off that. Unfortunately, this won't work for devices like a Roku where 1) they are not IR, and/or 2) they had a single button for play/pause which makes it harder to reliably detect what is actually going on.

Now, I use Insteon keyPadLincs in all our rooms and when double pressing off, I do similar to yoru 3. I have it turn off all the lights (z-wave and insteon) and also turn off the TV in that room. It works great.

[chewie]

Thanks for the response man.

If I add the Z-wave expander to the Harmony hub can I accomplish this?

[sirmeili]

Thanks for the response man.

If I add the Z-wave expander to the Harmony hub can I accomplish this?

I'm not sure exactly what you could do within the hub itself, it might be possible I haven't checked. I do have an extender that I"m playing with (though they seem to be going away as they aren't even on the logitech site anymore), but I don't currently allow control of any of the HA devices via my plugin. It might be possible (I have controlled a light via it, but not released that code).

That said, the extender still doesn't make the hub report when button presses are done so unless you can do that kind of logic in the hub, I doubt it.

Like I said you might be able to use Jon00's plugin with FLIRC to get it to work if you are using IR devices. Thread here:
https://forums.homeseer.com/forum/3r...-of-homeseer-3

[chewie]

OK, I had forgotten about the HA-Bridge. I have an Unraid box and it took about 3 minutes to install the docker container for that and add the devices with the JSON commands into it. That will do everything I need.

Thanks again!

[sirmeili]

OK, I had forgotten about the HA-Bridge. I have an Unraid box and it took about 3 minutes to install the docker container for that and add the devices with the JSON commands into it. That will do everything I need.

Thanks again!

Can you explain how you use HA-Bridge to accomplish #2? I'd be interested because not even HA Bridge (using Restful Harmony) should have access to what buttons are pressed on the remote.

[chewie]

Sure. I configured the HA bridge and then added a couple of my devices into it using HTTP command to access the JSON API within Homeseer (EX: http://192.168.1.240/JSON?request=co...f=34&value=255 turns the Fan on) and then I can discover them with the Harmony hub and add them into Macros through the Harmony software.

[sirmeili]

Sure. I configured the HA bridge and then added a couple of my devices into it using HTTP command to access the JSON API within Homeseer (EX: http://192.168.1.240/JSON?request=co...f=34&value=255 turns the Fan on) and then I can discover them with the Harmony hub and add them into Macros through the Harmony software.

Thanks

I missed that you said "via hsbuddy or imperihome", in which case this would be possible as well because my plugin CAN trigger an event based of controlling a device via HS, just not from the remote.

Either way, it looks like you have it figured out

[chewie]

Well unfortunately I just remembered what the issue is with the way I am trying to do this. Harmony does NOT allow for adding light control (In this case a fake Hue device) to buttons. This means you cannot automate it using simple sequences within the Harmony system. Back to square one.

[sirmeili]

Well unfortunately I just remembered what the issue is with the way I am trying to do this. Harmony does NOT allow for adding light control (In this case a fake Hue device) to buttons. This means you cannot automate it using simple sequences within the Harmony system. Back to square one.

If you are willing to do it through HS (either via Imperihome, HomeSeer Mobile, etc), then you can do #2 with my plugin as my plugin does know when you send play/pause to the hub. However if you use the Harmony remote itself it won't work.

In my plugin I temporarily set the devices' value to the button you press so you can merely trigger an event off of "Device changes and becomes...." to see if you've pressed that button through homeseer.

[mterry63]

Certain Harmony Home Control remotes do allow mapping hue devices to buttons, but only the 6 home control buttons. I do this today with the hue bridge.

Well unfortunately I just remembered what the issue is with the way I am trying to do this. Harmony does NOT allow for adding light control (In this case a fake Hue device) to buttons. This means you cannot automate it using simple sequences within the Harmony system. Back to square one.

Sent from my Pixel 2 using Tapatalk

[chewie]

Certain Harmony Home Control remotes do allow mapping hue devices to buttons, but only the 6 home control buttons. I do this today with the hue bridge.


Sent from my Pixel 2 using Tapatalk

Which remotes have those?

Edit: Nevermind, it looks like only the Elite. And it still does not allow mapping of those commands to things like Pause.

[mterry63]

Which remotes have those?

Edit: Nevermind, it looks like only the Elite. And it still does not allow mapping of those commands to things like Pause.

Technically you can map any Homeseer device or event to one of those buttons using the Hue Bridge emulator, so pause is certainly an option. Why do you think it's not possible?

The biggest issue is the button doesn't relate to "pause", they have icons of outlets and lights.

[mterry63]

The remote I have is called the "Harmony Companion

Smart Home". The buttons to hue devices are in orange at the top of this picture https://www.logitech.com/en-us/produ...mony-companion