I suspect like a lot of people I have a Smart TV and something like a Chromecast. Over the year the Smart TV functionality has started to die off and I use the Chromecast for streaming and TV for broadcast TV.
I have just added an ESP Home IR transmitter and this works well to control the TV and the Android TV integration does a reasonable job of controlling the Chromecast.
So I now have basically the TV and Chromecast remotes emulated in HA dashboard but it seems I can do more and make things more integrated (this is now harking back to the Harmony remote I had many moons ago when I had a HiFi receiver, HTPC, CD player…) This does give me a few extras such as being able to switch to HDMI 1 rather than having to scroll through all the sources on the TV and being able to open Disney Plus via a button but it is still a bit clunky.
The primary issue is I have no feedback on what is on the TV. It could be on terrestrial TV, Chromecast, Games Console etc. so anything about this I guess will be open to a little bit of frustration but would be workable.
The ultimate end game would be being able to ask Alexa to
- change the TV to BBC One
- open Disney Plus (or even open up a particular show)
and generally have more of a centralised control rather than just dashboard copies of two remotes.
Any suggestions on taking this to the next level and making this more cohesive and integrated?
For info main TV is a 2012 Samsung TV and it is a Chromecast HD