In the HA/Harmony documentation it seams like I can switch on a specific activity, but only switch off everything?
But I might be miss interpreting it?
I want to activate an action which plays music in my bathroom and then switch it off again without switching anything else off, is that possible or not?
(I have the Elite remote so I want the screen to reflect that the activity isn’t active any longer also)
Oki, so I just tried it myself…
- service: remote.turn_off
entity_id: remote.living_room
That switches off all activities, even those not started from HA.
There must be another way?
You haven’t added the activity you want to turn off…
- service: remote.turn_off
data:
entity_id: remote.living_room
activity: ????????Have you actually tried it?
Regardless, I never use turn off activity on the remote or otherwise, I always switch to a default activity when I’ve finished which just has a couple of devices assigned to it which are set to “I want to leave this device powered on all the time” so they don’t change state when switched to. This would give you exactly what you were after.
I also use this when selecting my ‘Bedtime’ activity, which obviously turns off the current activity but also all the lights, as I don’t want it left on that next morning so have an automation in HA that is triggered when it senses the ‘Bedtime’ activity and immediately sends a command to change back to the default one.
I’m new to the Harmony so this might be obvious…
Can I only run one activity at once?
As there are no way of playing a Spotify play list on Sonos through HA I was hoping todo it through Harmony. But if it switches off other activities (tv etc.) then it’s not usable 
Yes, just one, it’s meant as a capture all tv/media remote but can now do other things to but is still expected to be used in one location and therefore only a need for one activity at a time. If you want to use it for multiple environments you need multiple hubs, some guys on here have three or more to cover their house.
From what you describe an Echo Dot sounds much more appropriate and is fully supported by Sonos to the extent they were giving generous Amazon vouchers for owners to buy one a few weeks back. You can then link Alexa to HA by several different methods to bring other functions into play if you so desire.
I have a Dot too, but what I’m trying todo is this:
When motion is detected in the Bathroom or Shower Room lights shall turn on and “Spotify - Discover Weekly” playlist shall be played on the Sonos Play:1.
This is working with only HA code, but then only with a radio station, not a Spotify playlist…
So I basically only need a way to trigger the playlist to play on Sonos. I thought that the Spotify component could handle it but it turned out that it won’t work with Sonos.
Right now I feel the Harmony is rather limited, but I like it so I hope we can find workarounds or other use cases for it.
I haven’t got a Sonos and don’t use Spotify but it specifically says in the component doc it works with playlists…
…and the Sonos is just a media player so should be fine.
Yeah that’s what I thought too… But it turns out that Sonos uses Spotify Connect (I think that’s what they call it) and (big surprise) that isn’t supported. So the Spotify component only supports “cast-to” units like Chrome Cast, iPhones etc…
Thanks for the suggestion though.
As I said, I don’t have one so can’t confirm or deny, but a quick Google suggests you only use Spotify Connect if you want to control it but you can cast to it like anything else.
This actually works but you have to configure it via .yaml file, unfortunately.
What’s unfortunate about it?
