Syntax for using this with Alexa?

[wkearney99]

How are these devices/activities controllable using an Alexa?

[sirmeili]

You can add what I call voice control devices to start and stop activities (there is a section on the settings to create them). Devices are a bit more complicated, but could probably be done via virtual devices and events.

How are these devices/activities controllable using an Alexa?

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[wkearney99]

Right, but how does the Alexa system know how to treat them? As in, turning on/off a TV versus dimming a light?

Pardon me if it seems like a stupid question. But given the number of hoops being jumped through to make this work I'd like to get a proper understanding of how it's supposed to work (and not just how I might happen to mis-configure it!)

[sirmeili]

Not a stupid question.

You create an activity "voice control device". ( It's really just a device that will only control one activity instead of the default one that has all of them). Then you set it as "voice control" and Alexa will pick it up as an on/off device.

For instance we normally just watch rokus so in mine I have 2 voice control devices for the activity "watch rokus". One called TV and one called Roku so I can said "hey Google, turn on the living room TV" and it will start the watch Roku activity. I also have Roku because some in my house will ask to turn on the roku instead.

You can create as many voice control activities per activity that you want and name them what you want.

*I use Google homes but this should work with Alexa as well. Google home let's me assign devices to a room so in any room you just say "hey Google, turn on the TV" and it turns on the TV in the room with the Google home.

**Sorry if this doesn't make sense, I'm trying to type this on my phone.

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[wkearney99]

I have a hub in an exercise room. There's two TVs; "treadmill TV" and "gym tv". There's several input devices and an HDMI switch. There's activity selections for "Watch Gym TV", "Watch Treadmill TV", "Watch Gym Chromecast", "Watch Treadmill Chromecast", "Play Gym Xbox" , "Play Treadmill Xbox" and "PowerOff".

So what are my Alexa verbal commands going to be? That and is it possible to give verbal commands to affect just one device independently of the Harmony activity that's currently active? It's been a while since I tormented myself with the Harmony setup and I remember it being a right pain in the ***.

There's situations where "Watch GYM TV" would also be helpful to turn on the "Samsung TV" that's part of the "Watch Treadmill TV" activity. Or, sometimes more importantly, to TURN OFF the danged Samsung TV when it decides "Oooh! An input just came live! Let's turn ourselves on!" Danged thing won't let me dummy-up it's config sometimes.

I want to avoid setting myself up for a wife-demo-failure if it's configured wrong, if you follow my drift.

[sirmeili]

So, the way I would set it up is I would create 6 Voice Control Activity devices for the 6 activities (You don't need one for Power off). I would call them:

Gym TV
Gym Chromecast
Gym Xbox

Treadmill TV
Treadmill Chromecast
Treadmill Xbox.

Once you create the devices you have to go into each one and tell it it is a voice control device (I haven't figured out how to do this via my plugin). Then sync your devices with Alexa. Now if Alexa works anything like the Google Homes, then you should be able to say "Alexa, turn on the Gym TV" and it will turn that device to "on", which the plugin then knows to start the activity "Watch Gym TV". Now, because of how the harmony works, you can only have 1 activity at a time, so you can't say "Turn on Gym TV" and Turn on Treadmill TV" and have both activities on at once. In that example it will turn off the Gym TV in order to turn on the Treadmill TV. For power Off, you can actually just say "Alexa Turn off Gym TV" and it will run the power off command. As a matter of fact, even if that "activity isn't active" it will turn them off (which might make the part below about your TV a bit difficult). You can also create multiple voice control devices per activity if you want. For instance if you call it the Gym TV but your wife calls it the Gym Television, you can create a device for each one. I do this, as I said above, for our Rokus and just TV in general (since we don't watch normal OTA or cable TV).

Now for your TV that turns on, If it were me, I would go into the Device that the plugin creates for that TV (the plugin will create a device for each piece of equipment you have in your harmony). Hopefully it has distinctive On/Off commands. IF so, set the On to "Control Use: On" and the Off to "Control Use: Off", then set that device as a voice control device as well. It is up to you to rename the device if you want, but likely it is something like "Samsung TV". then you can say "Alexa, turn off the Samsung TV" and it will turn it off. This won't start or end an activity though.

I hope this helps out. Keep asking questions if you have any. I'll check back every now and again and should have snappier responses now that all our guest are gone and I have the kitchen all cleaned up