Control Home Assistant devices with Logitech Harmony Elite buttons

Since macOS shifted to full 64-bit support the Harmony Desktop software no longer works, as it’s 32-bit. Essentially from macOS Catalina onwards you can’t use it.

Ah…yes, anything after Mojave is best avoided if possible. You could always run a Mojave VM but it probably won’t give any advantage over the Windows one you’ve already got.

There’s some questions here about docker and UPnP - if I remember correctly the discovery mechanism in UPnP uses Simple Device Discovery Protocol (SDDP) which is broadcast based. This means the Ruko and the Laptop with the Harmony software on it must be on the same subnet for discovery to work.

If the emulated Roku is running in a docker container, then the container must use docker’s “Host network”, else it resides on a docker virtual network in a different subnet. This network isolation is part of docker’s security model.

The other way around this is setup a proxy in the docker virtual network and advertise a route to enable discovery to work.

Hope this helps.

For anyone else who googles their way to this thread like I did: I can confirm this method works. I am running HA in a docker container with host networking. I set up the emulated hue in HA to run on port 1080. I connected the Harmony Hub to my server machine with a USB cable I had laying around and then passed the USB device through to a Windows 10 VM. I installed the Harmony desktop software on the VM and told it to add a Hue device. It then found the emulated hue and paired it. All of my existing lights and switches were automatically added, and I was able to program the Harmony’s home control buttons to use the emulated hue lights.

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Good to hear. I am trying the same thing, however it is not working on my end. I get to the point where the Harmony Hub discovers the emulated Hue Bridge and I can pair the device just fine, but it cannot find any lights or scenes. Any tips?

Edit: Solved it myself. My emulated_hue was not set up correctly. I had “expose_by_default” set to false which then means no devices are exposed at all. Now everything is working fine.

Thanks @ffm777 and @0x0a11c0de
Mine was also set to false fixed it and after that filtered entity showed up in my Harmony elite.
I have Hyperion and I was looking for to control it via my Harmony Elite remote for a very long time . Though I was trying to edit those buttons via mobile app never thought that desktop app will be different but when I tried via desktop app it did let me add any emulated Hue entity but the trick is to use desktop app mobile My Harmony app won’t let you add these. I have added my Hyperion which works with dimmer and also the fan controls works fine with ‘+’ and ‘-‘ buttons.

I was able to get it working on Home Assistant OS by simply adding

emulated_hue:
  listen_port: 8300
  expose_by_default: false
  entities:
    light.knitting_light:
      name: 'Knitting Light'
      hidden: false

The hub and Home Assistant are on the same subnet and discovery of the emulated hue hub from the Logitech app on Android was trivial.

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If a real Hue is paired with the Harmony Hub, pairing the emulated Hue too is not possible, right?

I am trying to control some entities in HA with the Harmony home control remote buttons, but since a Hue is already set up this appears to be the deal breaker; the mobile/desktop app won’t pair another Hue hub.

You can use them as normal buttons OR smart buttons. Simplest way to solve your issue is to control Hue with HA and then HA with the buttons, I use emulated_roku for this.

It used to not work without a physical connection to the hub, but now it works again without a physical connection.

It’s good news. The documentation on HA is out of date.

Do you mean that it now works without an actual Hue Hub? Because I really want this to work :slight_smile:

Yes, without hue hub. After months of working without a hub, then not working without a hub, during the Xmas break, it started working again without a hue hub.

Now my harmony elite can control lights through HA and I don’t have a hue hub.

And now I tried it. Added emulated hue and then did a search for it in my Harmony app (using the hub with companion controller). It still says “press central button” but I waited for 10 seconds and it suddenly was paired! Halleluja :slight_smile:

Hallelujah indeed! It made my Xmas when it got integrated. :slight_smile:

Recently found this and it does work indeed. I have HA installed via Docker and this is the config I added:

emulated_hue:
  host_ip: 192.168.29.234
  listen_port: 8300
  expose_by_default: false
  exposed_domains:
   - light
   - switch
  entities:
    light.basement_recessed_lights:
      name: Basement Lights (Hue)
      hidden: false

I didn’t want everything exposed so set expose_by_default:false and if you do that you HAVE to have hidden:false under each entity otherwise nothing will still show up.

I was able to scan for devices within the Android Harmony app and find the Emulated Hue devices

Can someone help me understand what I am missing here?
I tried setting up this emulated hue, but when the Harmony tries to connect it says to press the button on a physical bridge. I tried waiting a while based on comments that it just should connect but it never did.

There is the line in the docs about needing to physically connect something to something but 1) I honestly did NOT understand what it meant specifically and 2) comments here saying that is out of date.

But I have not managed to get this working :frowning:

EDIT: Yay I finally got this working! Things were complicated by the fact that I have a physical Hue and because I was screwing up the configuration on the emulated one :frowning:

For anyone else who has similar issues let me sum up things at this point in time (may change in the future of course!)

First, you do not need a physical Hue hub (in fact having one complicates things). Also you do NOT need to connect anything to anything despite what the instructions say.

When setting up your emulated_hue make sure of two things which is where my problem was:

  1. If you are going to specify your host_ip makes sure it is right. Yeah, I had typo’d this. Honestly probably best to leave it blank and let it auto discover unless for some reason that doesn’t work.
  2. Do NOT use port 80 like the documentation suggests. This was my main issue. For whatever reason, the Harmony system would never find an emulated hue on port 80. It wasn’t until I changed it to something else (I used 8300 as per the post above me) that it started being found
  3. You do not need to plug your hub into any computer like the docs suggest, or use the windows software. Just use the iOS/Android app like normal, select the Hue option and it will find the hub then say to press the center button. Just wait a little bit (20 seconds maybe?) and it will continue.
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I have not tried to get this to work myself but have been thinking about it. Question jwvanderbeck, are you using the phone app (iOS or Android) or the computer based My Harmony app? From what I see you have to use the computer based program.

I was trying everything in many combinations and nothing was working. I edited my post above though as I did finally get it working.

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Thank you so much.
Your short description worked perfect.
Just the emulated hue in the yaml file, port 8300 and the expose… to true.
Then your three steps and SUCCESS!

THANK YOU!

thanks for this information, this is very usefull.

only one question, its posible to use more buttons to this “emulated_hue” devices? or only can use the 6 buttons in the elite remote?