Hi folks, just discovered Home Assistant after looking for a way to use the Home Control buttons on my Harmony Elite to control some of my WeMo LED Bulbs.
I have used Homebridge on a Pi for a good while now but don’t think it can do what I was trying to achieve and I was hoping Home Assistant might be able to?
Has anyone got experience of such a setup or know if its even possible?
Many thanks!
As long as you have your Wemo bulbs in homeassistant, you can use the emulated hue bridge to make harmony hub think they are hue bulbs:
Many thanks for the link, sounds very promising!
I will have a go at setting it up, have you actually used this method?
Yes, I use this method to control my lights using my harmony remotes.
Excellent, the Pi4 I was going to use for this project was DOA so waiting for it to be replaced.
Any chance I could see your setup files while I wait?
The following assumes you have your lights configured and controllable in home-assistant, I do not use we-mo bulbs so look if there is an integration for these.
I have the following to my configuration.yaml file, it’s simple and it works for me:
emulated_hue:
listen_port: 80
expose_by_default: true
exposed_domains:
- light
- switch
You can change the exposed_domains to suit your needs, and filter entities as you require, see the Emulated Hue Bridge documents linked in my earlier post.
This will expose your lights and switches as hue bulbs or plugs, respectively.
You will need to discover the hue bridge using the harmony setup in the harmony app, it may ask you to press a button on the Hue Hub, just ignore this step as the emulated bridge sends this “button press” periodically.
This is also a common way to get your lights controlled by alexa, though it may depend on which generation alexa devices you have.
emulated hue doesnt work with ha 2021.6.6. or i cant get it to install. is there anyway to use button command to activate a light. ive got the wiz light integration and the only way i found to control it with the elite remote is to create an activity and then use an automation. but i want to use a button not an activity. does anyone know how i can do this?
From this thread, “Emulated Roku” seems a way the replace Emultaed Hue with Harmony
i already have a roku ultra and if i use the emulated roku it has alot of the same buttons and it messes with my roku ultra so this wont work unless im missing something?
They are separate and completely unrelated other than they have the name ‘roku’. One emulates a hub on the network the other is an actual roku. The endpoints are different so 1 will not impact the other.
but it does impact my roku ultra. it uses alot of the same ir frequencies not sure why but it does. on myharmony it finds roku 4 on the network and sets it up. also another thing i dont understand is there is no emulated roku device under devices or entities so how do i setup a automation or scene with it?
Emulated roku doesn’t transmit frequencies…
There won’t be a device. Home assistant is mimicking a roku. In home assistant, you’ll be using the events from whatever is using the emulated roku
To further clarify, this odd behavior is most likely coming from how you set it up in harmony.
its the only way to set it up in harmony as for as i know. so i need to edit the the config file for emu roku to make it turn on the lights or can i do it on the ha os 6.1 ui?
Have you read the documents on how emulated roku works or are you making assumptions on it’s functionality? It seems you’re missing how it works.
It emulates a roku’s commands in home assistant. So other devices will see a roku instead of a home assistant. That other device can then send commands to emulated roku which appear as events in home assistant. You then build automations based on the events that come through.
There are no signals that are sent. There’s no interference with other rokus. Nothing like that.
So, in order to use it in Harmony, you set up a new roku device. When you go to the device page and select the new roku device, you’ll get a bunch of controls. When you press the buttons on the remote, an event will appear in home assistant.
If you’re trying to get this to work during an activity, you need to add the roku device to the activity. That’s the only spot you may run into issues where the same command is being sent to 2 different rokus if you have 2 rokus assigned to 1 activity.
the only way to setup harmony and this emulated roku device is to search on the network for it and it finds emulated roku as roku 4. i dont know why but some of the buttons even the unassigned ones make changes on my roku ultra. i have read the documentation on emulated roku but im new to ha and just learning and dont quite understand how to make this work. i have my wiz lights working in ha. just want to use my remote to turn them on and off. the only events i know of is the one you select under automations and im still unsure what to do there.
You’re using the wrong roku device then. They have different endpoints. I have a roku ultra and emulated roku and they do not interfere at all. I’m not sure what else to tell you. I named it differently because I’m treating it as controls for my chromecast.
Not to hammer this, but have you looked at the documents for emulated roku? The documents have examples and have a step by step process to work with the events.
im not using the wrong device. if i disable emu roku then harmony will not find roku 4 on the network.
I’m not sure what to tell you then. There’s a disconnect that you’re doing. Maybe you don’t know that it can only control roku commands? So commands like volume up won’t do anything with a roku because roku doesn’t have a volume up.
