old convo but I’m also trying to pass my harmony home control buttons into HASS and this came up so maybe a good place to deposit my solution. I accomplished this by exposing 4 switches via emulated hue. I chose non-pronounceable names since these virtual switches are only going to exist for automation purposes and I don’t want to accidentally trigger them with alexa
emulated_hue:
host_ip: !secret hue_host_ip
expose_by_default: false
entities:
switch.e8t1:
hidden: false
switch.e8t2:
hidden: false
#repeat...
input_boolean:
e8t1:
initial: off
e8t2:
initial: off
#repeat...
switch:
- platform: template
switches:
e8t1:
value_template: "{{ is_state('input_boolean.e8t1', 'on') }}"
turn_on:
service: input_boolean.turn_on
data:
entity_id: input_boolean.e8t1
turn_off:
service: input_boolean.turn_off
data:
entity_id: input_boolean.e8t1
#repeat...
I found out the same thing as op that template switches need to control something else, they can’t be set up as a virtual stand alone switch. when I first tried to set up the switch doing a service call on itself, my hass slowed to a crawl as my log filled up with thousands of rows of hass looping the service call, no bueno.
From where I am now, I can decide to pass through the on/off commands to other entities through automation, or I can change the target entity in the template switch and delete the input_boolean.
I’ll keep the input boolean for now and create some controls in node-red.