apostolakisl Posted December 31, 2018 Posted December 31, 2018 I just got a Roku Ultra to add to my mix of toys. It doesn't appear to work with my older logitech harmony remotes (IR/RF, no IP). I'm looking at the newer harmony remotes now that use the hub. Any comments? I'd really like if the remote could know the actual status of devices rather than the assumed status. Obviously, this is not possible with IR controlled devices, but things like the Roku I'm assuming can talk back to the remote.
carealtor Posted December 31, 2018 Posted December 31, 2018 Just a general rave and not specific to your situation, but I LOVE my Harmony Elites. I have 4 of them in my home. Getting everything to integrate to my satisfaction was not necessarily straight forward, but I eventually got there.
oberkc Posted December 31, 2018 Posted December 31, 2018 I also have several harmony hubs. I am a definite fan of these with the roku, and with the apple tv. The remotes and roku stay synced together very nicely.
oberkc Posted December 31, 2018 Posted December 31, 2018 If, by chance, your hub and ISY are near each other, and if you have the IR version of the ISY, you can communicate with the ISY also. There are a few things that dont work as well as I would like in this area, but still fun to play around with it.
apostolakisl Posted December 31, 2018 Author Posted December 31, 2018 Thanks. I suspected as much. I have been looking at the harmony elite and thinking that would be the one. I have my house wired up for IR control to a central location so I can send IR signals all over the house from a single controller. Is this a reasonable path with the hub? Mostly I'm using my Global Cache with those IR wires, but I'm getting the feeling that I can use network interface with the hub and maybe get rid of the Global Cache? And can the hub do multiple activities at once? Like I would use the same hub to run my whole house audio system and a TV and might want one, the other or, both doing their things at the same time.
apostolakisl Posted December 31, 2018 Author Posted December 31, 2018 5 minutes ago, oberkc said: If, by chance, your hub and ISY are near each other, and if you have the IR version of the ISY, you can communicate with the ISY also. There are a few things that dont work as well as I would like in this area, but still fun to play around with it. Yes, whole house is wired up with wires I can use for IR. What about the networking interface and ISY? can I link it that way? either ISY-> hub and/or hub-> isy? I have my current hamrony devices controlling my ISY via harmony base station->isy using ir. But ISY can not control the remotes using ISY.
oberkc Posted December 31, 2018 Posted December 31, 2018 I have made no attempt to control harmony wih ISY. I dont believe you can set up a harmony to send network commands to ISY. Hopefully, someone else can correct me i I am wrong. It has been a while since I looked into that, so my memory is fuzzy. And another neat trick that I have valued...two remotes controlling the same hub. I think one remote must be the simple one (no touch screen), but the other can be the harmony touch, or ultimate or whatever.
paulbates Posted December 31, 2018 Posted December 31, 2018 Just now, oberkc said: I have made no attempt to control harmony wih ISY. I dont believe you can set up a harmony to send network commands to ISY. Hopefully, someone else can correct me i I am wrong. It has been a while since I looked into that, so my memory is fuzzy. And another neat trick that I have valued...two remotes controlling the same hub. I think one remote must be the simple one (no touch screen), but the other can be the harmony touch, or ultimate or whatever. Jimbo's nodeserver is the way to go for the Harmony hub. You can use Alexa with Roku and also IFTTT. But IFTTT sounds excruciating to me in terms of programming the details. Paul
rccoleman Posted December 31, 2018 Posted December 31, 2018 Another vote for the Harmony Elite. It’s has a far better setup and configuration process than earlier Harmony remotes (can be done all through the phone, and some of it on the remote itself. The recent unceremonious removal and subsequent reinstatement of the XMPP home automation interface gives me pause, but the remote and infrastructure are really nice. I do wish that they offered more IP control, and one of the downsides of Logitech’s consumer-oriented mindset is that they don’t really see it as a priority. Still, it’s a really nice remote and ecosystem that’s come a long, long way from the 900 that I had years ago. You really need to control everything via the Harmony app/remote/node server/etc., because it expects to control the state of all the devices and won’t behave well if it doesn’t.
carealtor Posted December 31, 2018 Posted December 31, 2018 1 hour ago, rccoleman said: I do wish that they offered more IP control, Yes! Me too. I use this for my Sony TVs. So nice to not have to have IR emitters sitting in front of the TVs. Logitech would be my hero if they would expand this functionality to many many more components.
rccoleman Posted December 31, 2018 Posted December 31, 2018 3 minutes ago, carealtor said: Yes! Me too. I use this for my Sony TVs. So nice to not have to have IR emitters sitting in front of the TVs. Logitech would be my hero if they would expand this functionality to many many more components. The emitter in front of my TV is a constant source of amusement for my cat and I’d love to get rid of it. I wonder if I could use something like the AV Remote node server to control the TV and the Harmony node server to trigger on remote events and keep things in sync. I’ll do some research.
Jimbo.Automates Posted January 1, 2019 Posted January 1, 2019 The emitter in front of my TV is a constant source of amusement for my cat and I’d love to get rid of it. I wonder if I could use something like the AV Remote node server to control the TV and the Harmony node server to trigger on remote events and keep things in sync. I’ll do some research. Yes that seems like it would be possible if AV remote can control your TV you could turn it on when harmony activity is turned on.Also, the elite is great, especially with the dedicated HA buttons which allow controlling ISY devices if you use the Hue emulator Polyglot. I don't use my insteon mini remotes at all anymore.Sent from my Pixel 3 XL using Tapatalk
asbril Posted January 1, 2019 Posted January 1, 2019 Just for info, I use my Xfinity / Comcast remote to control my TV and sound bar. I also have the Harmony Hub which gives quite some control with voice commands through Google Home. Since last week I have AVRemote and I find this node server very useful. I can schedule the TV to wake me up with channel of my choice. I also use AVRemote to cast my preferred radio stations to my various Chromecasts. In short, AVRemote is very good.
mapeter Posted January 1, 2019 Posted January 1, 2019 I have a Harmony Elite and it has worked very well for me as well. Like apostolakisl, I have my whole house wired for IR. I have one of the emitters from the Harmony Hub pointing to an IR receiver and distribution block that sends the signal to the basement and to another distribution block connected to an emitter stuck to the ISY/IR. The dedicated HA buttons on the Elite are very nice as your hand can "feel" their way to them instead of having to look at the touchscreen (which was the case with the Harmony Ultimate). Someday I hope to utilize something like a Global Cache GC-CGX to connect the output of the hub to the IR connecting block. (The best solution would be for Logitech to allow the Harmony's to fire HTTP REST commands.)
Jimbo.Automates Posted January 1, 2019 Posted January 1, 2019 I have a Harmony Elite and it has worked very well for me as well. Like apostolakisl, I have my whole house wired for IR. I have one of the emitters from the Harmony Hub pointing to an IR receiver and distribution block that sends the signal to the basement and to another distribution block connected to an emitter stuck to the ISY/IR. The dedicated HA buttons on the Elite are very nice as your hand can "feel" their way to them instead of having to look at the touchscreen (which was the case with the Harmony Ultimate). Someday I hope to utilize something like a Global Cache GC-CGX to connect the output of the hub to the IR connecting block. (The best solution would be for Logitech to allow the Harmony's to fire HTTP REST commands.) I could allow the hue emulator to support setting a variable then you could have the isy send your rest command. Or I could add configuration options in hue emulator to support it directly.Sent from my Pixel C using Tapatalk
apostolakisl Posted January 2, 2019 Author Posted January 2, 2019 I ordered the harmony elite. So I just signed myself up for a day of screwing around and frustrating myself I'm sure.?
DaveStLou Posted January 3, 2019 Posted January 3, 2019 I have three Harmony Elites and one Harmony Ultimate Home. All but one I bought refurbished from Amazon with zero problems. In my case the Harmony Polyglot made it possible for ISY and Alexa to control all four hubs all without need of IFTTT or the Harmony Alexa Skill. In addition to 4 televisions, I control 4 Rokos, 2 AV receivers, 1 Blu-Ray player, a Chromecast and an Audiocast. I suppliment Harmony Polyglot with the AVremote Polyglot for great sound and Chromecast controls. While it's very flexible, the Logitech Windows GUI "MyHarmony" is not as friendly as it could be. The Android app is a little better but I'm not a fan of programming on my phone. The app and the Windows program have different functions which aren't available in the other - much like Alexa app and Alexa browser. Despite that, I'm a fan and would buy another if I had another entertainment area.
rccoleman Posted January 3, 2019 Posted January 3, 2019 Agreed about the desktop app, but I love the phone app (iPhone in this case). I’ve done all my configuration and customization using my phone and only installed the desktop app when I thought something was missing. It turned out that I was wrong and literally everything that I’ve done is available via the phone app. Super convenient and so much better than the crappy Adobe Air desktop app that they used to use. I had pretty much ruled Harmony out as a option because of that experience, and I’ve been very pleasantly surprised at how far they’ve come. Plus the ability to make changes and have them sync automatically is awesome. No cables!
apostolakisl Posted January 3, 2019 Author Posted January 3, 2019 Just discovered that my Harmony 900 can control Roku. It is under DVD->DVD->Roku. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Anyway, my Harmony 900 is now controlling my Roku just fine. I also have a couple Harmony 890's.
oberkc Posted January 3, 2019 Posted January 3, 2019 18 minutes ago, apostolakisl said: Just discovered that my Harmony 900 can control Roku. Is that via IR commands? Does that matter to you?
apostolakisl Posted January 3, 2019 Author Posted January 3, 2019 13 minutes ago, oberkc said: Is that via IR commands? Does that matter to you? Yes, IR. Remote to hub is rf, then hub to device is ir.
apostolakisl Posted January 3, 2019 Author Posted January 3, 2019 Just got a second Roku Ultra. Unknown to me, these aren't all the same. I got them both off of Amazon, but the one I just got has a remote with ir capability and no Toslink connector. Anyway, I ran the hdmi through my Yamaha tuner, and I can't get audio in dolby digital (at least not with Youtube TV). I only get PCM. So many things to complicate my life.
oberkc Posted January 3, 2019 Posted January 3, 2019 2 hours ago, apostolakisl said: but the one I just got has a remote with ir capability I had no idea that there was ever a roku ultra that did not have the RF remote. I wonder how long that has been sitting in Amazon's warehouse.
rccoleman Posted January 4, 2019 Posted January 4, 2019 Me either. The box itself supports IR, but all the remotes that I’ve seen are RF only.
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