Best way to control entertainment devices

[TomL]

I have 2 Samsung TV's and 2 LG soundbars, 1 in living room the other in Bedroom.  I am wondering what is the best easiest way to control them with Alexa voice commands.  I currently have each connected to On/Off modules, so that function is not needed.  Primarily I want to effect volume, channel and apps.  It would be nice too, if there was a way to get the tv to show cameras when triggered, possibly through a program on the ISY.   Is the Harmony remote and hub the way to go, would I still need a smart things hub, would one harmony allow me to control both tv's and sound bars independently?  

Thanks

Tom

[kevindavis544]

I have been using the Harmony Hub (recommend either the Elite or Pro) for about 2 years and I am very pleased. Works great for changing channels, volume control, play | pause | resume | rewind and fast-forward. Will also do input switching if using multiple inputs. There is a little bit of a learning curve involved but certainly doable. If you are going to have more than one Harmony Hub, you will need to link your second hub to another Amazon account for Alexa integration/linking. 

[asbril]

3 hours ago, kevindavis544 said:

I have been using the Harmony Hub (recommend either the Elite or Pro) for about 2 years and I am very pleased. Works great for changing channels, volume control, play | pause | resume | rewind and fast-forward. Will also do input switching if using multiple inputs. There is a little bit of a learning curve involved but certainly doable. If you are going to have more than one Harmony Hub, you will need to link your second hub to another Amazon account for Alexa integration/linking. 

In my case the nodeserver AVRemote,  together with the Harmony hub nodeserver, has been fabulous. All day long  my favorite radio stations from France, the Netherlands and from Israel, stream throughout my home, as programed in my ISY with these nodeservers. There is an occasional hick-up, but nothing that I can not handle. On workday mornings, my TV switches on with my preferred news channel and preferred volume.

[nathagt]

How old are you Samsung TVs? If they are newer than 2016 models, you could IP commands to control them using Network Resources on the ISY. You can set up an A/V device in the ISYPortal and map the various commands to network resources. This is what I've done for my Sony TV and it works flawlessly. There is more than likely a setting to allow your Samsung TV to control the volume level of the soundbar through CEC so you likely wouldn't even need to integrate with that. I'm able to do the following and more with Alexa utilizing nothing but network resources on the ISY:

• Alexa, turn on the TV
• Alexa, pause on TV
• Alexa, set TV input to HDMI 4
• Alexa, set TV volume to 65.
• Alexa, mute on TV

If you can also launch apps on your TV using IP commands (Sony allows this) then you could create "devices" in the ISY portal that map to these network resources to launch them

• Alexa, turn on Netflix
• Alexa, turn on Plex

Here is a site where you can verify if your devices can be controlled with IP commands. If they can, then the ISY can be used to send commands to them over your network. 

https://www.simplecontrol.com/check-compatibility/

[carealtor]

8 hours ago, nathagt said:

If you can also launch apps on your TV using IP commands (Sony allows this) then you could create "devices" in the ISY portal that map to these network resources to launch them

• Alexa, turn on Netflix
• Alexa, turn on Plex

This statement intrigues me.

Are you saying that, with a Network Resource, you can start any app that is on a Sony TV?   I would love to see a screen shot of an example NR that is something other than Netflix.

I don't know if it matters, but I am not using Alexa.

[nathagt]

I can't say every Sony TV, but the models that use Android TV, yes. Here are the details. 

 

Example: Launch Plex

{"method":"setActiveApp","params":[{"uri":"com.sony.dtv.com.plexapp.android.com.plexapp.plex.activities.SplashActivity"}],"id":10, "version":"1.0"}

To start, you will first need to register the ISY with the TV

{"id":13,"method":"actRegister","version":"1.0","params":[{"clientid":"ISY:1","nickname":"ISY"},[{"clientid":"ISY:1","value":"yes","nickname":"ISY","function":"WOL"}]]}

Then you can use the getapps command to get a list of all the applications installed on the TV 

{"id": 3,"method": "getApplicationList","version": "1.0","params": []}

I'd recommend using something like ARC to do the getapps command. ISY does not handle the long list that is returned well. Make sure to look at the headers and URL in the register screenshot as it is different than what you use for getapps and launching an app. The register command is a one-time thing that you'll hopefully never have to mess with again. 

[nathagt]

Also found this post where I shared some basic playback commands and setup instructions which you might find useful.

https://forum.universal-devices.com/topic/24535-isy-echo-android-tv/?do=findComment&comment=244740

[TomL]

Nathagt,

That sound very promising, both the tv's were purchase a few months ago so probably 2018 models, my mind is blank to the actual model numbers at the moment.  I have never used network resources, so I guess I have alittle project to work on, will refer to Wiki and see what trouble I can get into.  Thanks very much for the input.

Tom

[nathagt]

57 minutes ago, TomL said:

Nathagt,

That sound very promising, both the tv's were purchase a few months ago so probably 2018 models, my mind is blank to the actual model numbers at the moment.  I have never used network resources, so I guess I have alittle project to work on, will refer to Wiki and see what trouble I can get into.  Thanks very much for the input.

Tom

This might be a good place to start. This person is using python but you should be able to decipher how  they're actually sending commands to the TV. Good luck!

https://github.com/Ape/samsungctl

[carealtor]

I'm finally getting around to playing with this tonight.

Where do I put the code that comes up on the TV when registering?

[nathagt]

There should be something that pops up that allows you to enter a password. You have to do it fast though because it times out. See the post I linked above for a more thorough instruction. 

[nathagt]

Also, here is the post that helped me get this set up. This guy initially had some trouble and he also had the question about where to put in the passcode. Make sure you're adding the authorization header to get the pop-up.

 

 

[carealtor]

Just fyi, I'm not pursuing this anymore.

Running an app on my Android TV is not in actuality what I want to do.  What I really want to do is run an app on my Sony Bluray player.  I asked to see the NR because I thought I might be able to modify it to do the same with the Bluray player, but I believe they are very different animals.  Feel free to correct me if I am wrong.

Now if anyone wants to enlighten me as to how I might go about directly running an app on the Bluray player, I'm all ears.  Right now I am using a series of cursor direction commands to start an app.  It works, but it's not very elegant.

[auger66]

On 5/5/2019 at 2:46 PM, nathagt said:

How old are you Samsung TVs? If they are newer than 2016 models, you could IP commands to control them using Network Resources on the ISY. You can set up an A/V device in the ISYPortal and map the various commands to network resources. This is what I've done for my Sony TV and it works flawlessly. There is more than likely a setting to allow your Samsung TV to control the volume level of the soundbar through CEC so you likely wouldn't even need to integrate with that. I'm able to do the following and more with Alexa utilizing nothing but network resources on the ISY:

. . .

I'm looking to send just a couple of commands (stop, off) to a Samsung commercial display (ML55E) with network resources. The display was released in 2016 so it probably would be the same as a 2017 Samsung tv. What is the protocol information in the network resources editor you used? Thanks.

[nathagt]

I have a Sony TV so the protocol is not the same. This link I found on google might be helpful or at least a place to start. I basically reverse-engineered some github code I found to create my Sony network resources.

https://github.com/Ape/samsungctl

On 6/21/2019 at 1:14 AM, auger66 said:

I'm looking to send just a couple of commands (stop, off) to a Samsung commercial display (ML55E) with network resources. The display was released in 2016 so it probably would be the same as a 2017 Samsung tv. What is the protocol information in the network resources editor you used? Thanks.

 

[auger66]

My mistake--I misread your post. I thought you had a Samsung and had already gotten this to work.

I played with this but didn't get anywhere without knowing how to populate the various fields in network resources. Above my level. Thanks, though . . .

[nathagt]

Just now, auger66 said:

My mistake--I misread your post. I thought you had a Samsung and had already gotten this to work.

I played with this but didn't get anywhere without knowing how to populate the various fields in network resources. Above my level. Thanks, though . . .

I'd be happy to help you with populating the network resource if you have some code that you think might work. 

[larryllix]

I have used Samsung TV app that can control mine just fine but from seeing the API I had no idea what they were talking about. It uses some encryption scheme that made no sense at the time.

I am thinking I may have to use a packet sniffer and try an app again, to just capture raw data streams, without understanding them.