That’s where the contradiction lies. Control is not automation. And automation is not necessarily control.
The OP needs control. And sometimes a remote control at hand on the coffee table remains the easiest way to interact with a device.
I understand the OP need although I don’t have a solution at hand. Maybe:GitHub - piotrC4/mqtt-ir-transceiver: ESP8266 based bidirectional bridge between MQTT and IR (change MQTT message to IR signal and change received IR signal to MQTT message)
I still haven’t built it but I have the bits ready
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Wifi or Bluetooth would be better probably, then you could control your stuff from all over the house.
What you are looking for is a usb ir receiver . Search flirc
I use a mi Cube. Put the desired channel logo up and give it a push: turns everything on/changes channel. Turn it: volume up /down, shake it : pause, double tap : mute, free fall (toss & catch) : everything off.
This is a zigbee device interfacing through Conbee /deconz /openhab 2 and Harmony hub.
I have described deconz/oh2 interface in a previous post.
My 85 years old mother loves this. Have a pink one for 6 TV channels and a white one for 6 radio channels.
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You hit the nail on the head. I have rules beyond rules at this point to automate all of the different steps in the process. What I need is a better way to control, to send the commands. Just turning the system on is a dozen automated steps that I have a single command for. I have Sonos ONE speakers everywhere to convert Alexa commands into OH commands and then use Amazon Polly to provide me anything I want back out the Sonos. But think about this, what if you need to scroll down a guide 30 times. Do you really want to say “Alexa, down.” 30 times? Sure you could write a rule to convert a number and hit it 30 times but that doesn’t work when you are just surfing chanels. Think about it another way, what is the difference between a physical remote and the android app (excluding any kind of rich content like graphs or such)?
I’m a fan of the wifi suggeston. IR is a no go for a bunch of reasons in the room, it just doesn’t fit. So the question is, does anyone know of a device or combination of devices that can be programmed to send OH a command through the API when a button is pushed?
Try this
Binding can be found here.
Understood, same with me. But again, what’s wrong with using your TV/mediaplayer for that ? You only want to access functions of that, right? Its remote and UI are optimized for that.
Point is OH does not need to be involved at that stage, and it’s clearly faster and less prone to error when it isn’t involved. Still you can involve it.
For my own TV I’m using my dreambox’ remote to turn on TV, OH will notice status change and trigger all required automation action such as to set a proper lighting scene, lower roller shutters, put the AVR into proper sound mode, mute the phone and so on.
It’s all in a closet. There is no line of site for the remotes to work. I use OH and GlobalCache modules to send the IR commands to those boxes.
Have you considered deploying an IR repeater[extender] ?
Remember the KISS principle.
You could buy a Logitech Harmony Hub. Before this I had several ‘universal’ remote and everyone had some problem, since I have Harmony Hub and a Harmony Remote (I have the Harmony Ultimate) I don’t use any other remote controller. You can control every device with it, it has physical buttons, so you don’t have to use phone/tablet (but you can because it has an app) and you can easily integrate it into OH. For example I control my lights depending on what I’m watching on TV.
It’s like NEEO, but a little cheaper…
Can the harmony be configured to send calls to the OH api?
I’m not sure, not using for this. However I have several rules triggered by Harmony Hub Acitivity changes
I can’t imagine using an IR for my smarthome. The sounds terrible 
The best interactions are those that require no hands at all: voice control. I’d look at Amazon echo integrations for OpenHAB2, personally. Perhaps putting touch panels around the house instead of IR remotes, if you really feel strongly about it.
Exactly. If anyone who is not into IT (and most importantly IoT) and asks “how you control your ‘smart’ home”, I always say that I don’t really control it… In my opinion what makes it smart that you don’t have to do anything (or just make a simple voice command) it will do its actions automatically. Just spending money and time on a smart home solution which one and only main goal to control everyThing from a controller or from a smarthome is just a waste of time (and money).
I have been reading this post because I’m searching for the same solution. Disapointed about the Sonos I just bought as it’s lacking a plain old remote. So I just thought: why not connect a remote control to OpenHab and configure my most wanted instructions for the Sonos and why not: the other connected devices.
Can you please share the rest of the story: did you find the perfect solution in the meantime?
I’m using an Xiaomi Opple 6 button control linked to openhab with zigbee2mqtt.
With 3 actions per button (single,double or long) I can set 18 different scenes from one switch if required.
Regards
The harmony hub is not good at doing 2 way information sharing like most cloud based products they wish to take your data and not return anything. Whilst good for the original posters question, your wanting to use it for controlling Sonos and that is totally different and should be a new thread. You can use Openhab and harmony hub to control devices but you can not get notified when and what button is pushed. The only buttons that seem to be useful are the three activity buttons on the top of the remote and the off button. Binding readme is here and refer to the channel subsection and the examples.
Possibly the cheaper RM pro remotes have more flexible abilities then the harmony hub.
Another way that is useful and is not widely known and that is the Milight wall remotes can be made to send MQTT using a esp8266 bridge. Very easy to make one as you just upload a bin file to the esp8266 and connect 5? wires between two off the shelf boards.
They have a range of wall controllers and hand held remotes that are very low priced and some would look fine at controlling volume for Sonos instead of lights.
Hand held
https://www.milight.com/milight-rgbw-remote/
Wall mounted
https://neonica.eu/wall-mount-panel-for-rc-rgb-rgb-w-controller.html
They do require a can do attitude and some time learning how to use them for a purpose not designed for…
So my answer worked at the time but isn’t going to work anymore. I ended up getting the Neeo remote. It’s absolutely amazing and Control4 buying them and killing it was a complete travesty. For now, I’m OK as I already have the ones I need. If they ever break, I’m hosed. I hope someone comes out with a replacement.
I wonder if there would be a way to get openHAB into the Harmony Hub as a controlled device (same as a TV or DVD player)? If that were the case, you could map commands to remote buttons as easily as anything else it works with.
You can add a Raspberry Pi, but the Harmony Hub app indicates that you need an IR receiver. So I suppose that you could add an IR receiver and then have openHAB listen for commands. If I recall correctly, Kodi receives commands from the Harmony Hub using Bluetooth, so that should also be possible.
I thought that Hue emulation might be a workaround, but it seems as if Hue devices can only be mapped to the dedicated buttons on the Home Control remotes. And even then, you can only do on/off, dimmer, and colour items. I didn’t dig too deep, so maybe there’s more to it…but it doesn’t seem worth the effort.
I’m just tossing this out in case someone wants to pick up the idea. My Harmony Hubs work great for sending commands to devices (I just added a Rowenta fan that I’m now integrating into openHAB),
and I don’t have any personal need to go in the other direction.
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