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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Takes look at the Elgato Stream Deck. There’s supposed to be a OH plug-in available on the Elgato website within the next couple of days.
@rpwong
I like your idea and hope it is possible but I suspect it is not without serious changes on Logitech end. The remote asks you which device controls volume and you can only select. One device. It does not allow the sending to your amp and openhab so if it was possible you would then have to use openhab as your volume control. I prefer devices do the heavy lifting so they keep working if openhab goes down.
Of course I could be wrong as I have not read the api it is just my gut feeling.
Don’t get me wrong I do love the harmony hub as I can use it in the dark and know where the volume and important keys are without looking and the rf link is far better than infrared.
I have to use Kodi to make a lot of things possible like text and video overlays as well as knowing if a movie has just started playing.
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What about a App programmable Bluetooth remote controller to trigger those commands, is this workable with some keyboard-shortcuts to invoke some scripts ? We are trying to develop something like thi.
I have a Bang&Olufsen BeoRemote One Bluetooth laying here and would like to use it to control certain things in my setup. I currently use it in Infrared mode and it works fine, though it doesn’t always receive the commands if I’m sitting across the room. Also, each command needs 200 msec to be sent and received, which is sometimes awfully long when scrolling through netflix lists. The bluetooth remote from my samsung TV is much quicker then.
Is there any way to connect and relay BT commands from this remote to the openhab environment? I can connect the BeoRemote to the mac running openhab, and it controls itunes play/pause and volume, but there’s no way of routing the commands to the openhab server… Any suggestions?
If you are on Linux you can use the Linux Input binding to handle events from all devices attached to the openhab machine which are recognized by the Linux input subsystem.
This works very well for Bluetooth or USB keyboards and numpads and may also work for bluetooth or IR remotes (not tested).
(Shameless plug)
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I’m on mac OS, is there a similar binding here?
So far I don’t think so.
I have 433mhz remotes lying around the house and also a few 433mhz wall switches.
They communicate to the sonoff rf-bridge and OH3 does the rest.
The remotes are great because I can just press one of the buttons and all the lights come on etc. Also to open garage door.
Easier than a phone app especially in th emiddle of the night.
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Also using 433 remotes for this purpose, really cheap and reliable enough. On some of my zwave wallswitches I have a additional pushbutton connected to secondary input that will trigger some scene (like all off and dimming certain lights)
I’m using a Harmony Hub and remote .
To give an example when I use the Media player activity:
The Media player, beamer and AVR receiver turn on.
My shutter closes and my elite screen rolls down.
When I start a movie or series in Kodi, the light goes out. When I pause the light goes to 10% and when I stop at 100% etc.
In Home Assistant there is a component emulated_roku.
which emulates a Roku where you can map different items with for example the volume button (I’ve read this but I have no experience with that myself.)
For example, I don’t know how the harmony /remote/hub communicates with the Home assistant component.
Maybe inspiration for someone with the skills and interests.
I can script a bit but making an openhab binding is one bridge too far
And for everyday tasks such as light scenes, I use the Aqara Opple switch (as mentioned by “clinophobic” in a previous comment.)