Anyone already got it’s hands on it? Hoping for fast HA (local) support.
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I pre-ordered one.
Did anyone of you receive it yet and if so, does it work out of the box wit ha or does it need some work?
Mine is to be delivered today. We will see what can be done with it out of the box.
Well… I set up Matter and imported that to HA. I got a “Generic Button” device that has four Generic Switch events. There are for switches under the display that should generate press events on the switches, but they I do not see any.
Not what I was expecting. I will keep at it and update.
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Same experience here so far.
I’m hoping for s good harmony replacement…
Can you start activities with it like on harmony?
Seems the integration is not yet working for HA?
So it turns out that in the Switchbot app, you can setup the 4 buttons as matter devices.
Go to the remote in the app. Click manage devices. Click the plus symbol. Click third party control. Click matter.
Now you can name each button.
When it saves to the remote, these buttons come up as accessory when you press the Switchbot logo button to take you to the device select screen. Select matter accessory and now the 4 buttons under the screen are 4 matter buttons sending events to your matter bridge.
Once I did this, since I already had the remote buttons showing up under matter in Home Assistant, each button passes an event when it’s pressed.
I actually found it passes two events for some reason.
I’m using one of them to toggle an input Boolean to test it out and it seems to be working fine. I just made a condition that it only toggles if the state has been unchanged for 2 seconds. Otherwise the 2 events were toggling it on and back off immediately.
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It appears it can do scenes similar to Harmony IF you have one of the hubs.
Because for some reason, the remote itself doesn’t seem to control anything besides air conditioners, lights and televisions.
As in, I can add my receiver to the hub and control it from the app via the IR blaster on the hub. I can set scenes with it and the scene can be called from the remote. But I can’t change the receiver volume or change the input directly from the remote because the receiver will not copy from the hub to the remote.
It’s insane, and hopefully something they will fix in an update.
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Ok, that’s indeed a bummer, I stick for now with my harmony then…
The firmware update to 2.6 allows you to load other devices directly to the remote. My receiver is on it now.
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I have a question about this remote which I hope can be answered by those people that have one.
Is it possible to send an instruction from HA to operate all of the devices that the SwitchBot remote is configured to control?
Thanks in advance.
Yeah, like the harmony, every device and all commands like channel up/down, volume on receiver … Activities…
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But only 4 custom switches in the remote. Than you can use to launch automation.
Its correct???
I don’t believe so, but I may be wrong. I haven’t messed with that aspect at all honestly.
The matter integration exposes sensors from the remote for the 4 buttons under the screen (and the 2 buttons on the Hub 2 if you use that).
So, not normal “buttons” with click, double click and long click possiblities. Just sensors that detect “events”.
They work if you use an event on a button to trigger an automation. Each button shows up as it’s own event sensor.
Those buttons also only operate as Matter buttons when you choose “Matter Accessory” on the remote. If you’re on the Apple TV or Receiver on the remote, they are extra programmable buttons for those devices instead of sending Matter events to Home Assistant. Unless I’ve missed a way to program them to remain Matter buttons when you’re on an IR device.
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Hi!
Did someone managed to do something in Home Assistant using the remote?
I have the 4 buttons appearing unaivalable as one matter device but pushing on the buttons on the remote does nothing…
On Android, cannot access matter devices from the remote either.
Can somebody tell me what is inside that remote? Are there some interesting pins? Is it driven by a ESP?
I guess hacking that pretty manufactored device could be really interesting.
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Seems like the remote has Bluetooth and IR emitter in it. And you can add IR devices to it (Predefined without a hub, and custom with the hub).
I am planning to get a Zigbee (or wifi) IR receiver device, and try to use it with HA. So I would for example add a generic “Light” to the remote, use the remote to teach the “IR receiver”, and use HA with automations.
I will let you know if it works.
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@eliz Oh! Can you please share the reference of the zigbee receiver when you have tried? It looks interesting!
I was planning on using the remote to interact with Home Assistant but only 4 events and it does not work reliably for me.
Plan B was GitHub - t0bst4r/matterbridge-home-assistant to expose selected devices as matter devices and control them but the remote does not see matter devices…