Can a virtual device reflect the state of another device?

[ando1]

As the title sates, I am trying to figure out if this is possible. For example, I have an event that turns on my TV, AVR, and Tivo using the MeiHarmony skill. The event is triggered by a virtual device called "Watch TV - Master Bedroom" The MeiHarmony skill runs the "Watch TV" activity from my Harmony hub. This all works fine when I trigger the event by telling Alexa to turn on "Watch TV - Master Bedroom", the problem comes when I turn on the TV with my Harmony remote. I want the virtual device to reflect the state of the MeiHarmony device. I am not sure if this is possible or not, just wanted to put the question out there.

Thanks,
Andy

[sirmeili]

Are you using my "Voice control" devices in MeiHarmonyHub or did you create your own and use events?

If you did the former, I will have a solution to keep them in sync for you, but I haven't released it yet. The problem with using events with my Voice Control devices is that they not only turn on an activity, they also turn the hub off if any of them turn to off. To prevent this you would have to use a script to adjust the Voice Control activity. If you just use a normal event, then as you turn one device off to keep it in sync, it will turn the hub off even if it is because the activity changed to another.

If you are using the latter, just use a set of events to sync them up.


I hope that's not too confusing

[randy]

As the title sates, I am trying to figure out if this is possible. For example, I have an event that turns on my TV, AVR, and Tivo using the MeiHarmony skill. The event is triggered by a virtual device called "Watch TV - Master Bedroom" The MeiHarmony skill runs the "Watch TV" activity from my Harmony hub. This all works fine when I trigger the event by telling Alexa to turn on "Watch TV - Master Bedroom", the problem comes when I turn on the TV with my Harmony remote. I want the virtual device to reflect the state of the MeiHarmony device. I am not sure if this is possible or not, just wanted to put the question out there.

Thanks,
Andy

The Harmony Hub does not report the status of devices, only activities. If you turn the TV on with a Harmony remote command instead of a Harmony activity, the hub is not updated with the status of the TV. If you use an activity Watch TV, the activity device will reflect it, but the TV device will not. As Frank wrote the MEIHarmonyHub now supports devices (ostensibly for voice control) that will remain synchronized with activities.

[sirmeili]

...As Frank wrote the MEIHarmonyHub now supports devices (ostensibly for voice control) that will remain synchronized with activities.

Note that currently the Voice Control Devices are not kept in Sync. I am working on it though. I will try and get that update out soon.

[randy]

Note that currently the Voice Control Devices are not kept in Sync. I am working on it though. I will try and get that update out soon.

My bad. I thought they did. In my implementation I don’t need the virtual devices to be in sync as I set their value with voice and events are triggered by the device being “set”. They are kept in sync by additional events, but it doesn’t matter since the devices are only used for voice control.

[ando1]

Thanks all for the feedback. Frank I was not aware of the Voice Control feature, but just tried it out and I like it! I was using a manually created virtual device before. I will keep a look out for the update that will bring voice controlled devices in sync.

Thanks!