Over the last few months I have integrated our multi room audio video, lights/blinds and heating/air conditioning into home assistant. I’m very happy with the setup, but am still looking for a nice solution to control all of this. We are currently using our phones for this, but that’s not always very comfortable. The “role model” for me in terms of usability would be a Crestron/control4 system, where youd have various dedicated tablets or smart remotes. I’m not sure if that’s possible, but that’s something I’d like to aim at.
In terms of smart remote, I guess a lot of people here are familiar with the logitech harmony, but that one is no longer maintained. I also read about the YIO remote, but it’s some waiting time until the next release and the price is also quite steep? Does anyone know about other smart remotes.that could be integrated with HA?
Another alternative would be a tablet. I’m not a big fan of integrating this into a wall - I’d rather be able to move it around. The Google home tablets look like they come in a nice frame that would look quite nice on a coffee table or desk.
The main requirement would be that it is very fast and easy to use, even if it’s just for turning on some lights or changing the AC. Id like to get rid of these huge ugly daikin remotes we have for the ac and only use my HA intrgration instead. I don’t want to wait for 5 seconds for the tablet to start, then launch the app, scroll somewhere etc. Ideally the tablet would become active if someone stands in front of it or tips the screen and the home assistant app would always be open automatically. Ideally the tablet would have a charging station, but I can live without that. We have a very old ipad lying around somewhere that could be used for this ,but am also considering a Google home tablet, amazon fire or one of those lenovo tablets. Does anyone have experience running HA this way? Would it support the features I listed above and would it be simple and smooth enough so that my wife or guests could easily use it? I guess I could also link my HA to Google home, homekit or alexa and then use the smart home apps within their systems, but I’m not sure if this makes any sense.
Please feel free to comment on any of the solutions I wrote about, or other solutions, and I’d be very interested in reading about your experiences in putting together sleek control interfaces for HA
I have the Harmony Companion and a Sofabaton X1 and an old iPad mini beside the TV. I backed the X1 on Kickstarter as insurance against the Harmony dying, but the Harmony still works, so the Sofabaton is still in its box. In either remote case, most of the integration is HA to remote, not the other way around.
The Harmony only has 4 buttons that can be used as ‘home control’ (unless there’s a way of responding to the other buttons). However, HA can respond to selecting an activity (eg. watch Apple TV) and do ‘stuff’. Also, the Companion version can only control 8 devices, and I have more, so I’ve added the HVAC controls as ‘missing commands’ to the amplifier. Same with an HDMI switch.
From what I can tell, the X1 cannot control lights (unless they are IR, which seems unlikely), and does not yet have an API to be able to integrate it with HA.
By far the most functionality comes from the iPad mini. I’m using one of those magnetic USB cables with a lightning adapter, so it can easily be unplugged/plugged. However, it’s beside the TV, and I’m on the couch, so most of the time I use the Harmony or Google Home. And I don’t have to deal with multi-room.
Not a remote perhaps, but NS-panel can be configured to do what you want it to do.
It takes time to get it up and running since it’s a lot of configuring and creating the layout with icons and all that.
But when it’s done, it just works very well.
Requires some work on your part, but I’ve repurposed old cell phones as remotes. Just need to build the views you want and you’re good to go. As I upgrade the families phones, I wipe their old ones and upgrade my remotes.
Many thanks for the answers so far. Interesting to see how popular the harmony remotes still are.
I’m now thinking that maybe the best solution would be to integrate some of my home assistant components into Google home and then get a few nest hubs. I think they would look good on a nightstand, coffee table or desk. This way I can leverage the UI and the device. I will put those in some of my rooms to select input source for media, control the media player, ac and lights in that room. Also maybe some buttons for scenes or actions I have defined in HA. I will play a bit with the Google assistant integration, but as I understand it that should work. For more complicated stuff I’m happy to still use the tablet or phone. Or I could chromecast the HA UI to the hubs - not sure if that would work better…
If anyone has any experience with this type of setup please let me know if you think I’m doing something stupid here.
I have a Nest Hub beside the bed displaying a Home Assistant dashboard. However, I find after a while the screen goes white, and then sometimes (or always?) it goes back to the default clock display.
I sort of solved this by butchering an existing custom component (lovelace-digital-clock) to use the HA API to update a binary sensor with document.hidden. And then in HA, if it reports as hidden but it thinks it is still casting, I stop the cast and do it again. Sometimes it will go half a day without becoming hidden, other times only 5 minutes Pretty annoying.
I haven’t seen others reporting the same issue, so ymmv. Historically people were re-casting every 9 minutes, but I don’t think this is necessary any more.
Regardless, if you ask the GH to do something (eg. turn a light on), it takes quite a while before it returns to the cast screen, so you might find that annoying.
Thanks for the answer. That would indeed be annoying, in particular if I want to use that to control the TV or change the playlist in a room. The idea was to have something faster and easier to use than taking out the phone.
Have you ever tried integrating the HA components into Google home and then controlling them via their UI? That might of course bring other complications, but I’m wondering if it would work better
What about YIO remote? V1 started as a semi-DIY project and now V2 is at Kickstarter. They have home assistant in mind and said they are have some working integration.
for now I find the Ikea symfonisk gen 2 (zigbee) to be the best remote for HA, which has 7 buttons.
If only there was an actual old-school tv remote you could connect to HA…
You could take any old IR remote and learn all the buttons on an IR receiver like a FLIRC usb stick or roll something with ESPHome then hook them up to anything you want in HA.