How goes Harmony Hub implementations?

Yes, absolutely I have. The issue is (a) the majority of my devices are IR with no IP control (b) I don't yet own an IP 2 IR device (c) at least one of my devices will not be in a standard database as I built it myself and the smart remote does not have an IR receiver to 'learn' IR commands and I thought it was not possible to define custom IR codes (am I correct about that)?

Given it all works with the hub, the hub is a good makeshift IP 2 IR bridge.

My Harmony remote died years ago (my daughter dunked it in her milk and it still is a festering wound in our relationship) and since then we've been using the Harmony app on smartphones. I was wanting a better and customisable replacement for the harmony remote and think the SmartRemote may be it...

Also I like the fact it's local and I'm not reliant on a third party cloud.

Long story short, I want to perservere wirh Harmony and I bet there are others out there with the same use case...

[double post]

It sounds to me like you need to build something in between. Ditch the Harmony activities and create myServer macros, but have those macros turn on your devices and set inputs etc. using Harmony device commands. Then create your own custom scenes with hard buttons running Harmony device commands and on screen buttons doing the same. So you're not using Harmony activities but you are using it as an IP to IR bridge for each device's commands. Does that make sense?

Andrew

andrew wrote:

It sounds to me like you need to build something in between. Ditch the Harmony activities and create myServer macros, but have those macros turn on your devices and set inputs etc. using Harmony device commands. Then create your own custom scenes with hard buttons running Harmony device commands and on screen buttons doing the same. So you're not using Harmony activities but you are using it as an IP to IR bridge for each device's commands. Does that make sense?

Andrew
 

That makes total sense and is effectively exactly what I am doing.  However, the reason I am using Harmony to activate the activity is for a few reasons however:

1. It is so much more convenient to make one call to Harmony and have it switch on all appropriate devices and set to correct inputs, rather than create a macro to do it - which is very cumbersome.

2. Also the real benefit of using a Harmony 'activity' rather than a manual switch on of all devices is the 'power off' routine.  I believe (but have not yet 100% confirmed) that the Harmony power off routine only works well (or at all) if an activity is running as activities have 'switch on' and 'switch off' routines associated with them.  The power off command does a great job of turning off only those devices associated with activities that are running.  It also keeps track of what devices are on (so it can switch them off).  This is particularly useful for my Virgin media cable box which infuriatingly has no discrete 'on' and 'off' function, only a power 'toggle' function. Unless something is keeping track of whether it is on or off it is impossible.  I could I suppose create a bespoke variable (switching from 0 to 1) but what a pain and how do I do it?

So using activity switch on and off is much more convenient.

Also, is it possible to create custom macros in the macros section of the server interface (ie to make bespoke ones fto turn on all devices and set correct settings) and call on that macro from a button press, rather than putting a long list of commands into each button?

(Apologies if the above doesn't make sense!)

Weirdly, the Virgin box actually has a discrete POWER_OFF command, but not a POWER_ON one - for that you have to use POWER_TOGGLE, which then makes the POWER_OFF command kinda pointless. Which is really annoying.

I actually discovered this last night when I was trying to get the box to work with another remote and downloaded the full IR code set for the Tivo V6 and the Ziggo DCX690 boxes (turns out the latter worked whereas the former did not, possibly because my V6 box was software upgraded to the 360 box, not sure).

There's also an integration through HA to IP control the Virgin box, but Virgin keep messing with things to stop it working. Which is also quite irritating.

So to make sure it's on you do a POWER_OFF then TOGGLE. Annoying but it should work.

Andrew