Joining of Harmony Hub Extender to Openhab ZWave Network

Good Morning, I have OH 2.5.12-1 running on a Pi. In my living room I have a Harmony Hub with Extender that I just added. In order to control in this case Z-Wave devices, I need to join the Hub Extender to my existing OH ZWave Network. The extender has software to automatically join Wink and other systems, but not OH.

I took some initial steps to attempt the join, but all I could see was a new zwave node in OH which was inaccessible because I’m guessing the extender is not coded in the OH ZWave database.

Does anyone know if it’s possible to join the two, and if so how. I searched the community but was surprised not to find any posts concerning the Hub Extender. If there is another solution that I am missing, please let me know.

Thanks

You mean you want the harmony hub as a secondary controller? I know the binding has some capability for that but do not know of anybody using it.

I suspect that this is due to the Extender never becoming widely available. It was a very niche product, and Logitech didn’t do much to advance it (I couldn’t even figure out where to buy one in Canada). With the recent news that they’re no longer selling Harmony devices, I’m doubtful that anyone else will come along looking to add one to OH.

That sounds promising, but if you plan to expand your Z-Wave network then you might be better off picking up a Z-Wave USB stick and abandoning the extender. Logitech says they’ll continue to support Harmony devices for as long as users are using them, but who knows how long that will be.

1 Like

What does the extender do ? Is it just a Z-Wave repeater or does it act like a secondary controller?

If the device is just an extender, then it will not do anything other than route packets. The binding doesn’t need to do anything as it won’t have any channels in a device like this - it will just use it to extend the network.

I thought you just said that it was included in the network? There should not be anything else required.

1 Like

rpwong is correct, this device is a niche product and hasn’t been very popular. The device uses extender within it’s name, but I believe that it’s not what we typically understand as an network extender, although fundamentally it may be.
I understand it to be a separate controller, like Wink for example, that needs to join my existing OH controller. More can be found at the bottom of the page here: Pairing Z-Wave & ZigBee
As I touched on earlier, the Logitech software has the built in capability to Join existing Wink, SmartHome, and a number of other off the shelf controllers/networks, but not OH.
Once joined, I’m expecting all my zwave devices will be seen, and controllable via the Harmony Remote independent of OH.
Thanks

I think I (and possibly others) misunderstood the Extender. I thought you wanted to connect ZWave devices to the Extender and then have them available to OH. I now see that you have an existing Z-Wave network in OH and want to add the Extender as a remote control for those ZWave devices. Is that correct?

Yes, that is correct. Since my last post I found out that on the Harmony app side XMPP needs to be enabled, which I did. But I’m still stuck with the zwave database issue I believe. When trying to pair the Harmony app with OH using inclusion, I see the new node but it remains offline because there is no description available for the device. On the Harmony side, it never acknowledges anything discovered.
What should happen is that the Harmony app sees the controller, joins the zwave network, then gains the ability to also control all or most zwave devices on the network using my Harmony smart remote. But I’m stuck. The app is able to work with Homeassistant and other pi based controllers, but there are plugins to accommodate that on the controller side.

Are they using a standard zwave library like openzwave or zwavejs2mqtt?

If the use a special plug-in you should not expect the OH zwave binding to work.

If you want to have the harmony hub controlled by OH did you look at the existing binding?

But what do you expect the binding to do? If all you want to do is to directly control devices on the network from the remote, then that doesn’t require any functionality in the binding.

If the remote is sending commands to the binding, that’s a different story - I’m not really clear what this does?

Did you follow the steps in the Harmony Extender’s manual? At the bottom of the section that lists the home automation hubs there is a small link for Z-Wave. Follow the instructions in that link.

https://support.myharmony.com/en-us/home-hub-extender

I took a look at that yesterday and from the description it expects a secondary controller acts as more than just a repeater.

If it needs to join the network as a repeater then after trying to include it should appear in OH as unknown and an xml file generated in the zwave folder of userdata. This can be used to add it to the community maintained device database for future bunding builds.

Morning Bruce,
No new file in the userdata section. I checked the events logs and this is what I found:
```
2021-04-19 16:33:54.052 [home.event.InboxAddedEvent] - Discovery Result with UID ‘zwave:device:14531fc9:node32’ has been added.
2021-04-19 16:33:54.069 [vent.ItemStateChangedEvent] - zwave_serial_zstick_14531fc9_serial_ack changed from 75174 to 75175
2021-04-19 16:34:07.203 [me.event.InboxRemovedEvent] - Discovery Result with UID ‘zwave:device:14531fc9:node32’ has been removed.
2021-04-19 16:34:07.271 [hingStatusInfoChangedEvent] - ‘zwave:device:14531fc9:node32’ changed from UNINITIALIZED to INITIALIZING
2021-04-19 16:34:07.318 [hingStatusInfoChangedEvent] - ‘zwave:device:14531fc9:node32’ changed from INITIALIZING to OFFLINE (BRIDGE_OFFLINE): Controller is offline
2021-04-19 16:34:07.322 [hingStatusInfoChangedEvent] - ‘zwave:device:14531fc9:node32’ changed from OFFLINE (BRIDGE_OFFLINE): Controller is offline to OFFLINE: Node not found in Z-Wave network

I accepted the Z-Wave Node 32 from my inbox, but it shows offline.  Not sure why there is no XML file, I searched all my shared OH folders without success.  I approved use of XMPP in the Harmony app, but I may need to restart the device for it to be initiated.  I'll try again when I come home from work today.

After you accepted the node the binding sent a NIF (Node Information Frame) request to the device. The device is required to respond with information from its firmware. Many times battery operated devices need to be awakened multiple times before they respond. openHAB stores this information in an eml file in the zwave folder of userdata. If there is no file the discovery has not been completed.

Of course, for any unexplained zwave issue, users follow the binding documentation and enable DEBUG logging to get more data from OH on what is happening.

No, two different things. Logitech made this rather confusing. The hub is a bluetooth, network, IR device that is used to communicate with those devices through an app loaded on a phone or ipad, and the hub extender is a secondary device that plugs into the hub. What you are talking about is using the binding to control or monitor bluetooth, network, IR devices that are already connected to the hub. The extender gives the hub the ability to control zwave and zigbee smart devices. I can add the smart devices directly to the extender through inclusion, or control smart devices through another primary controller like OH once the extender has joined that zwave network. The later is what I am trying to do.

Ya, I’m well aware of these instructions.

If you want that device t ohave full control I would expect you need to set it up as a Zwave controller but the binding only accepts serial devices. Perhaps it uses Z/IP which is not supported by the zwave binding?

Please ignore my reply foopah below LOL. Anyways, in response to you Chris, maybe this link will help explain.

As the extender has been around awhile I had hoped that integration would have already been established, but I guess because of the really low popularity of the extender with Harmony remotes it never took off. I really cant think of too many other ways to explain just what the hub extender does. It really is its own smart hub to control smart devices just like OH. I can either use it stand alone to control smart devices through inclusion, or join an already established zwave network like OH. The later is what I prefer to do.

https://support.myharmony.com/en-ls/home-hub-extender

that link looks like they are connecting to HA using Zigbee, not Z-Wave