I recently set up HASS on Pi and have a few questions. Please help where you can.
Echo:
When I try to enable the skill, I get “We were unable to link Home Assistant at this time. Please try again later.” I’ve read that many have encountered this issue and it remains unresolved. I’ve tried some of the discussed solutions and nothing worked. Is there any fix for Echo linking?
Harmony Hub:
I’m running the latest versions. Auto discovery does not find the Harmony Hub, even though it found other devices (Vera, Hue, etc.). The Hub is on the same subnet and it is advertising. OpenHab found it without issues. I added “platform, name, host” to configuration.yaml and the Hub appears only as one card. The harmony.xxx.conf file contains all the activities and devices. I was hoping that all of the activities and devices would automatically appear on the Overview page. I realize that I can probably add each manually, but is there a way to get all the activities and devices to appear without manually defining each?
Vera:
Unlike the Harmony Hub, HASS found Vera via autodiscovery and once configured, all of the devices and scenes showed up. I was able to link Google Home and use it to control Vera devices via HASS. No complaints here.
Configs:
I read that to create rooms (Groups) and devices, it requires manual, text entry/definition. I presume there is no GUI option for this?
Remote:
From what I can gather, I either port forward, TOR, or VPN. I found no other options. Will remote via the HA Cloud ever be possible? Just curious.
I would appreciate any comment/help on these topics.
Howdy, I have a similar setup to you and am also a recent convert, I have a Vera Plus with Hass.io on a Pi3B.
I switched to the new Lovelace UI but both option do require you to configure your groups via the respective YAML files - there’s currently no GIU driven system to do this.
I’d recommend switching to lovelace and giving it a go - you can switch easily as it’s baked in from 0.72. Just click the round info symbol under developer options, then use the “try out” option.
If you have a harmony.conf file, then the auto-discovery did detect your hub. Unfortunately, the Harmony component isn’t sophisticated enough to automatically add support to control your devices and activities. You’ll need to create scripts or automations in order to control your hub.
So Vera has a plugin that exposes all the harmony devices and activities with buttons etc. You can add buttons however you like and customize it. Is there a way to integrate that in HA? When HA discovers the vera hub it adds all the devices as switches and thats it.
I’m sure there’s a way to integrate that type of support into HA. Someone just needs to take the time to do it. Unfortunately, I’m not that guy, but that’s something I’d really love to see!
I’m just surprised the ability to import the setup from Vera isn’t integrated. I have no idea how to do it but the fact its already done in Vera and just needs to be exposed in HA I would have thought someone more clever then me would have done it. It lets you put all your activities and devices with their respective buttons on one page essentially. More info here…