Hacking the Harmony Home Control buttons

[ptdalen]

Sorry, you do need a harmony home control or better. Basically a remote with the dedicated home control buttons. At least you need that to be able to control HA devices without having to tie it to a harmony activity.

If you do have a home control, you just add the emulated hue hub with the harmony app, discover devices, and it finds the emulated hub, and any devices you’ve set up with the emulated hub, and them you map the devices to the home control buttons.

If you dont have a home control, I recommend you use the emulated roku, you then add the roku as a device to every activity, and map the buttons as you need. Only downside is that you have to have an activity running to be able to control the HA devices

[pergola.fabio]

hmm, still dont know what you mean with a home control buton?
i have the smarthub and an ultimate remote

[ptdalen]

Hacking the Harmony Home Control buttons

Yeah, That one will not do what you want. As in it does not have dedicated buttons that work “outside” of activities. This is the cheapest one that does what you want. There are others that do that as well. You could use the emulated roku to add HA stuff to Activities, which is what I used to do, but it still requires an activity to be running. [harmony]

This is the home control, it has 4 dedicated buttons to control Home Automation. Harmony right out of th box supports, Hue, Smartthings, Ecobee, etc. You can map lights to the buttons, and even dim, etc.

I dont know about the ultimate, maybe it has similiar options with the touch screen. I have a 950 which also has dedicated home control buttons, but I can do some home control with the touch screen as well

[pergola.fabio]

ah ok, thnx for that
dont think i have those home control buttons
and to start activity first, thats not ideal

but thnx for info

[_Mike]

@ptdalen - Let me clarify: I am not looking at add actual Hue Lights to the Emulated Hue. I would like to add an emulated/fake Hue light, so that I can then use that to trigger HomeKit automations. For example, if I set up one of the Harmony home buttons to turn on an emulated “Fake Hue Light” bulb, I can then set up HomeKit to trigger the “Movie Night” scene when Fake Hue Light is turned on.

To answer your other question - Home Assistant is merely a means to an end for me. I already have HomeKit set up with lots of accessories. But there are a few (such as the Harmony Hub) which are not natively compatible. Home Assistant helps bridge that gap. I have an Apple home, and I like to trigger automation using Siri. You need HomeKit for that.

[ptdalen]

Ahh, got it. Well, creating a “dummy” light is easy

light:
  - platform: template
    lights:
      harmony_virtual:
        friendly_name: "Dummy Light"
        turn_on:
        turn_off:
        set_level:

then in customize.yaml

light.harmony_virtual:
  emulated_hue_hidden: false

Overall there is no reason this would not give you want you need.

Of course create the emulate hue per the documentation for you need

[_Mike]

Awesome! Thanks for that! I’m still pretty new to Home Assistant, so it would have taken me a while to get there without some help. I’ll give this a try over the next few days and let you know how it goes.

[_Mike]

@ptdalen - Thanks again for your help! I have Emulated Hue working and the Harmony is seeing it. But I have a small issue - Using your example, I created two dummy lights. However, only one shows up. Only the “Emulated Hue Goodnight” light is working. Any idea what I’m doing wrong?

In configuration.yaml:

light:
  - platform: template
    lights:
      harmony_virtual_movie_night:
        friendly_name: "Emulated Hue Movie Night"
        turn_on:
        turn_off:
        set_level:
            
light:
  - platform: template
    lights:
      harmony_virtual_goodnight:
        friendly_name: "Emulated Hue Goodnight"
        turn_on:
        turn_off:
        set_level:

In cusomize.yaml:

light.harmony_virtual_movie_night:
  emulated_hue_hidden: false
  
light.harmony_virtual_goodnight:
  emulated_hue_hidden: false

[petro]

All light platforms going inside the single light section. Not separate. All home assistant works like this. So if you double the light section, only one of them will come through because the other will get overwritten.

Secondly, the platform template only needs to be added once, and all lights that you want to add go under the lights section.

light:
  - platform: template
    lights:
      harmony_virtual_movie_night:
        friendly_name: "Emulated Hue Movie Night"
        turn_on:
        turn_off:
        set_level:
      harmony_virtual_goodnight:
        friendly_name: "Emulated Hue Goodnight"
        turn_on:
        turn_off:
        set_level:

[_Mike]

Thank you @petro! I have it working now!

[Jokerigno]

Hi all,

I don’t know if it is necroposting but I tried without success to use light buttons on my harmony remote to switch on a light in my livingroom.

This is what I’ve done:

Create an emulated roku called Home Assistant

emulated_roku:
  servers:
    - name: Home Assistant
      listen_port: 8060

Create some automation for light button and + and - buttons

- alias: Soggiorno - Accendi Piantana da Telecomando
    initial_state: "on"
    trigger:
    - platform: event
      event_type: roku_command
      event_data:
        source_name: Home Assistant
        type: keypress
        key: Crackle
    action:
    - service: light.turn_on
      entity_id: light.piantana

  - alias: Soggiorno - Spegni Piantana da Telecomando
    initial_state: "on"
    trigger:
    - platform: event
      event_type: roku_command
      event_data:
        source_name: Home Assistant
        type: keypress
        key: HBONow
    action:
    - service: light.turn_off
      entity_id: light.piantana

  - alias: Soggiorno - Luce Piantana Su da Telecomando
    initial_state: "on"
    trigger:
    - platform: event
      event_type: roku_command
      event_data:
        source_name: Home Assistant
        type: keypress
        key: DirectionUp
    action:
    - service: script.turn_on
      entity_id: script.lucepiantanasu

  - alias: Soggiorno - Luce Piantana Giu da Telecomando
    initial_state: "on"
    trigger:
    - platform: event
      event_type: roku_command
      event_data:
        source_name: Home Assistant
        type: keypress
        key: DirectionDown
    action:
    - service: script.turn_on
      entity_id: light.lucepiantanagiu

The script lucepiantanagiu and lucepiantanasu are working correctly. But the automation is not.

Can someone please help me?

Thank you in advance!

[ptdalen]

You have one of the remotes with Home control options, right? The ones with 4 “lights/plugs” and a dimmer rocker? I figure you do or you would, just verifying.

Ok, assuming you do. What I found worked best for me, to have a more traditional experience, was to use the emulated hue component. I exposed a few switches, and light groups this way. This allows you to dim lights if needed. I do use the roku component as well. but not for the smart home buttons.

[Jokerigno]

Yes I have this one:

Added emulated hue against emulated roku and it was SUPER easy!

Thank you!

[ptdalen]

I have the same one. Glad to have helped. Works well with emulated hue. I have a couple light groups, exposed as a “Light” and the dimming controls work great.

[FlangeMonkey]

Are your lights slow to respond? When I press a home control button on the Harmony Remote it takes 5 or 6 seconds to react.

Thanks,

[ptdalen]

Not slow at all. Almost instant. That’s interesting.

[FlangeMonkey]

It’s interesting, from the Harmony App it’s quick, from the remote it’s slow. However, these devices are bridged over smartthings and when I moved one of the plugs to zwave on HA the speed increased.

Thanks for letting me know you normal state.

Edit: Its got nothing to do with SmartThings, but its the groups within Harmony that are slow. Do you get this?

[ptdalen]

So, you just making sure I understand. Are you saying you have several devices exposed to the remote using the emulated Hue. Then in the Harmony app, you group a few of them together so you can turn on/off/dim the group with one button, right? I defintiely used to do that and it works, but…it’s been quite a while since I did groups like that. I think it was because it was slow, or it might have been that I prefered HA groups to using harmony to create groups. If this is all what you mean, this is my recommendation/best practices/what has worked for me.

Create light groups in HA, then expose the group to emulated Hue. Harmony will see it as a single entity, HA will take care of the rest
Only expose to emulated hue/harmony what you think you will control. For me I only control a few lights and switches that are entertainment focused. Of course maybe you want the ability to control all your lights/switches/scripts, etc. so do what works for you

I defintiely think the groups in HA vs grouping with harmony should help speed you up.

[FlangeMonkey]

Yes you are currect. I tested groups in HA and its much more responsive… I will move in that direction, but its interesting to me that its slow to respond for Harmony Groups. I had the same setup on smartthings and it responds as expected. Etherway SmartThings are on the way out for me.

Thanks for your help on this.

[_Mike]

This is slightly off topic, but I have a feeling someone on this thread might be able to help since there are some Emulated Hue users.

I am using Emulated Hue to expose certain HA devices to Alexa. I also have a physical Hue bridge, but I don’t want that exposed to Alexa. Does anyone know how to remove the physical Hue bridge from Alexa while still exposing the Emulated Hue devices?

OK, after re-reading my post, it is not slightly off topic. It is very off topic. But still…