Logitech Harmony Elite and Hub

[Flux]

Hi all, 

I have had on back order since the 1st Jan a Logitech Harmony Elite and hub, and was wondering why the delivery date kept slipping. 

I now know why, it is because Logitech have officially discontinued the product as of I believe the 12th of April ,

My question to those who have already succesuflly intergrated this product with Loxone, is this, considerting the product will no longer be supported, should I wait and hope my order gets fullfilled or cancel the order and put up with from what I can see the poor alternatives.

Is there any other product on the market or close to being released that others would reccomend that can do the same job?

Regards

John

[Duncan]

i think the product is great, its easy to use, and there doesnt seem to be an obvious replacment - i just bought a couple of spares via ebay and amazon just in case

logitech have said they will continue to support the web service/database

[Simon Still]

Are they  dropping the entire Harmony product line?  Mine are working fine but I'd sure miss them. 

There are minimal opportunities to integrate with Loxone but it's by far the best AV control I know of.  With Loxone all I've done is use a Loxone IR to receive commands from Loxone (using an old device remote, teaching the signals to Loxone and Harmony and mapping a few commands to remote buttons on Harmony (so I've got a macro that dims lights, shuts blinds) 

On Friday, 14 May 2021 at 21:47:48 UTC+1 Flux wrote:

[Duncan]

i think they are dropping the whole line

you can create full bilateral integration relatively easily

ive integrated via a loxberry running iobroker with mqtt-client, simple RESTful api and harmony adapters, and use the loxberry mqtt/http virtual inputs to send from the harmony to loxone, and simple RESTful api to write commands from loxone out to the harmony

once you get your head round it its quite easy and allows read/write to all the devices and activities in the hub(s) - ive got 4 hubs and give them a fixed IP via my router
and  i renamed all hubs, activities and devices to remove any spaces to make things much easier

for example, the 'slap' function of my knx mdt glass buttons turns on/off the room lights and harmony activity, all set via radio buttons in the app so the end user can reconfigure which light mood and harmony activity, or the other way round, turning on the harmony to an activity can set the room lights to the correct mood

[Simon Still]

It says something about the product line that there dont seem to be any in stock anywhere and eBay prices are high.  I'm guessing a lot fo owners bought spares.   

If anything does turn up can you post here? Not sure about holding a spare Elite but I reckon a companion would make do if there really are no other good options (which seems to be the case. )

[Duncan]

the previous model the ultimate (with hub) has exactly the same functions and is a lot cheaper (around 100-£120) so might be worth grabbing a couple from ebay, the elite just has a few extra buttons at the bottom intended for home automation

[Tomasz Nowak]

I'm using Harmony Elite (950 remote + hub) integrated with Loxone for almost 2 years without any problems. Here's my diagram:

I'm using ioBroker Harmony adapter to get Harmony CurrentActiviy as analog input and iobroker simpleAPI adapter to push outputs to Harmony Hub from Media Controller block.
You may find some more details on this matter here.

BTW, I highly value two more Harmony "tricks" that I'm using a lot:

• using Harmony remote to control Audioserver Player during Music activity - this is done using fakeRoku adapter, see this
• using Harmony activites to control Shelly Plugs S, that turn on additional HT power amps and other equipment. For this I use HABridge to emulate Philips Hue Bridge but it's backed by HTTP commands to Shellies. They show up as Lights in Harmony devices, but you can turn them on and on as a part of activity steps:
  
  

[Jonathan Thursby]

Tomasz, how are you getting the state from harmony from IObroker, I can see you have a VI input to mini server but I am trying to recognise a virtual HTTP input to recognise state of a Sonos player?

[Duncan]

the iobroker for harmony finds and queries the status of the hubs (thats why ive used a fixed IP for the hubs so iobroker doesnt have to be told to scan for hubs again after the initial search)  - to get it into loxone ive:

1) added the mqtt-client in iobroker

2) configure it to talk to the mqtt broker on my loxberry

3) in iobroker in the Objects view, click on the spanner (in the Settings column) and this sets this item to be sent to mqtt

4) in loxberry mqtt gateway add iobroker/# to the subscriptions

5) in the loxberry mqtt gateway, when you can see the incoming iobroker items, create matching analog virtual inputs in your loxone config for updates via http, else configure udp inputs on the loxone to match

iobroker has a Sonos adapter so i would imagine it would work in exactly the same way using that adapter

[Tomasz Nowak]

I use MQTT Client adapter, that publishes object state changes to MQTT broker. From MQTT broker they are passed to Miniserver UDP VI by MQTT Gateway plugin.

[Rob]

Quick question - are the remotes and hub specific to one another or can you mix and match remotes and hubs if you have several.

[Duncan]

they usually come as a pre-linked pair, but you can pair/re-pair any suitable remote to any hub

[Flux]

Hi all,

I have carried out Duncans 1 to 4 steps and think that all is okay, however , when it comes to step 5, I cannot see any "incoming iobroker items" on the loxberry MQTT broker, which like Duncan is on another pi. 

The log of the iobroker says that i am connected  to the broker , but the broker does not receive any changes in state of the harmony. Below are some shots of the config, any help would be appreciated, especially about whether or not the clientId=iobroker parameter in the following http request is an issue, ther request seems to connect to the broker, but the broker does not reply with the actual status

(11551) Try to connect to mqtt://loxberry:@192.168.1.8:1883?clientId=iobroker with lwt "ioBrokerTest/status"

Flux

[Duncan]

my log looks the same after a restart so it looks like iobroker is talking to mqtt

have you subscribed to iobroker/# in the mqtt plugin of the loxberry?

[Flux]

Yes  

ioboker/# is in place under the subscription tab,

I have been assuming that the incoming overview tab of the mqtt gateway, will recieve any state change that the harmony sends, and that i do not have to have to have the miniserver virutual inputs set up first, (as i will  need to know the exact text of the cmd sent prior to setting up the VI) am I correct ?

Is there any way on the ioBroker side that i can confirm that messages are being sent, or any other subscriptions i could try bearing in mind , I do not have a shellie to try

Regards

flux

[Duncan]

yes you are right in that received messages in mosquitto should show up in the loxberry plugin 'incoming' and will be yellow/orange if they dont have a corresponding virtual input in loxone to be sent to

just check you havnt got a typo - above you have 'ioboker/#' instead of 'iobroker/#'

[Duncan]

in your iobroker, hover over the green dot by the mqtt-client.0 and see if it says its connected to your broker

On Tuesday, 6 July 2021 at 20:22:52 UTC+1 Flux wrote:

[Flux]

I can confirm that the typo is here and not in the setup. I am still at a loss why I cannot see any message's  from iobroker.

[Flux]

Okay , finally some progress,

Dont ask me why but replacing /iobroker# with /harmony# in the Gateway subscriptions tab, cured the conversation between ioBroker and MQTT , but only for harmony activities.

If i try to publish a specific button , any button on any device , I am back to the problem that I cannot see the state change on MQTT

Basically I want to be able to be able change the mood lighting in Loxone to a specific scene when a button on the harmony is pressed 

Am i correct in thinking that when a button is pushed on the harmony, provided i am using the correct device, I should see a state change in the objects table or the log, because whilst activities, seem to update correctly as I said no button pushed can be seen s a change in iobroker.

Any ideas?

Thanks for your continued help

Flux

[Flux]

I think I finally have stable conversation ioBroker ---> mqtt          but  I still  have a problem with  harmony remote ---> ioBroker ----> mqtt

What i mean is that if i press on the "trigger event " (see screenshot) of the volume up or Samsung_TV:A buttons , the loxone VI is sucessfully, authenticated, acknowledged , excecuted  bu Loxone and Loxone changes the lighting scene. 

However , whatever button I register as VI  in Loxone, publish in ioBroker  and subsequently press on the harmony remote does not trigger the said same event.

Has anyone got a working example of a Loxone VI that is sucessfull activated on the press on a mapped harmony button eg  harmony.0.tvRoom.Samsung_TV.A

Need help

Flux

[Duncan]

unfortunately i have the same issues with these specific button presses, i havnt come across it because i only read or write the state of activities and just use the remotes for AV control

ive tried fiddling with the iobroker settings and also mqtt settings but no progress and ive tried reading documentation but there is little or nothing to help on t'internet

ill keep playing and searching...

[Ewan Tait]

So I'm not using ioBroker or a Logitech Harmony, but I have been using zigbee2MQTT and a zigbee switch to control blinds. To get that to work, I had to check "reset after send".

No idea if it will help in your situation, but if you've not tried that, it might be worth a shot.

Regards,

Ewan

[Duncan]

so reading around the docs for the harmony adapter, the number/value that you write (as if the button was being pressed) is the time in millseconds so im not sure how you can detect that a button has been pushed. i tried changing the data type but it doesnt make any difference, so ive emailed the harmony adapter author to see if he can help

[Flux]

Agreed, I also have had no success . Changing roles, values , on any other setting within the iobroker harmony adaptor settings,  does not work, or more precisley does not register a button press from the harmony . 

 The setup is very close , all that is needed is that a mapped button within the harmony setup, replicates the "Trigger Event" of the already registered button of your TV, amp , etc, but atm I cannot see any way forward 

Flux

[Duncan]

what do you need the button for in loxone? and which harmony model do you have?

i presume you dont really need the vol+ or vol- to trigger something in loxone but you might be able to remap one of the other buttons to trigger a function via the fakeroku device available in iobroker

[John Perdoni]

All I want to do, to start with anyway, is change the lighting scene on loxone , using preferably the plus/minus buttons at the bottom of the harmony elite. 

I will take a look, at fakerou, but am still convinced there must be a way of using the harmony instance

Regards

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Subject: Re: Logitech Harmony Elite and Hub

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[Duncan]

if you add the fakeroku device to iobroker, then add it in harmony to your activity, you should be able to remap the bottom up/down buttons to the fakeroku device whilst keeping all the other buttons for the normal activity functions eg vol up/down, channel up/down

in iobroker, the fakeroku up/down (vol) seems to trigger mqtt without any problems

[John Perdoni]

Thank you as per usual Duncan,  will give it a go later.

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[Flux]

Truly sorry to drag this up again, but still no joy with getting a button / any button to pass from the  harmonyElite ----> ioBroker----> mqtt ----> loxone

  I have added  the fakeroku device to iobroker, then added it in harmony to my Netflix activity, 

I could not remap the bottom buttons of the harmony elite to the  the fakeroku up/down (vol) as it does not exist in my options, so I mapped instead to the Roku_3 Amazon , but  this did not work,

Not wanting to repeat myself, but  with the exception of the harmony.0.activities state,  nothing else is sucessfully passed to Loxone, anything else requires the press of "the trigger event"  (see pic) so can anyone 

Without specifically pressing on the "Trigger Event " any trigger event, (see pic) if someone could confirm to me that they can press on "ANY" button on the harmony elite and then get Loxone to react, with an example then it will be most graciously received.

[Duncan]

the fakeroku can use the normal control buttons when the harmony is in device mode, but not the extra automation buttons unfortunately

https://forum.iobroker.net/topic/7114/hue-bridge-emulator/7

this says you can use the HA bridge instead (there is a loxberry plugin) which is recognised by the harmony as an automation device so you should be able to use the extra bottom buttons