How to Automate

Good to know. I won’t be connecting that to the cloud. Perhaps we’ll come up with something in the Core to do that. We do have a wish list. Perhaps I’ll add that to it? Maybe if I ask nicely?
:aprils_kiss:

Harmony is dead. RIP. Could have been a contender.

https://www.techhive.com/article/3614814/logitech-officially-discontinues-its-line-of-harmony-universal-remotes.html

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I’ve never laughed so hard at death before.

Looks like the first distro I talked with was correct and the Harmony lover dealer was wrong… LOL!!!

Hmm… looks like sales may increase for Pro Control remotes.

That is unfortunate, say what you might about harmony, it was a decently powerful system with, to my knowledge, next to no competitors in the consumer field. I wonder what will fill its place. Professionally integrated remotes are really expensive by comparison and CEC is well…CEC. I really hope CEC does not become the widespread practice for all-in-one remotes now, I have never had a good experience with an implementation.

Well I had been playing with the thought of getting one of the fancy elite remotes for a year. Now I know to let that thought go. Truth be told my harmony hub doesn’t see much action anyways…

Lets just say it… CEC Sucks!

“Pro” remotes aren’t all super expensive. The Pro Control remotes are not expensive at all considering what they can do and neither are the URC remotes.

They aren’t expensive for what they do on paper, but is the average consumer, i.e. who logitech was marketing harmony to, really going to get value from all of those extra features?

And that is really why this is sad, because it is just furthering the divide between the average person and enthusiasts which will only make everyone’s life more difficult IMO, not only from an innovation standpoint but from an adoption standpoint. IMO, this kind of move is only feeding into the apathetic attitude that seems to be going around as of late in the consumer tech sphere.

Also yeah, CEC sucks :rofl:

There are others that are consumer marketed.

  • Sevenhugs
  • Sofabaton
  • Caavo

Problem with those and even with Harmony are not the devices but the dumbing down of the consumers.

WHAT?!?! you mean there’s NO APP??? How cAn I uSe it without an APP?!?!?

Which then leads to there are thousands of APPS! in the market places for using a Phone/Tablet as the remote control now. Apps are cheap.

So, when the average consumer no longer has the ability to program a remote and they turn to using apps or voice control then there’s no market for things like Harmony and even Sevenhugs is having a hard time because to the average person they’re too expensive!!! Really? Ok… I’ll go back to my couch with my RTI remote :slight_smile:

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The hub is the main reason I really like my harmony.It integrates with my home Automation nicely and I don’t have to sit there and hold the remote at the system while it does its thing.

That being said, everything I’ve seen mentioned as alternatives, while they do look nice, are hubless. I can’t go back. It also has to be affordable, I have 4 harmony setups that I’ve gotten over the years at a good price. I don’t plan to spend $400 on each TV for a remote. I also must be able to purchase it myself, I don’t want to have to go through a pro to get one.

I do realize the market has been going in a different direction unfortunately.

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I have 3 Harmony Hubs as well. Hopefully we’ll have a few years of support still, to allow time to find alternatives.

One possible option that comes to mind is the Broadlink series of devices. I have never used one, but they seem somewhat popular.

Ya I’m not panicking yet. It looks like they will continue to support the back end. So my existing I’ll still be able to work with until it dies.

Then I’ll start looking for alternatives. We have years by the look of it.

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My fear is the length of the support. I imagine that once it is gone, the devices will keep working, but there will be no way to add new devices or routines. I haven’t made any changes to those things in the past couple of years, but I am guessing some day I will buy a new TV (still running HD). I would hate to have the lack of ability to add it to Harmony be the reason to not buy it.

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Can anyone say how much is cloud based with harmony? I’d be curious.

It looks like pretty much the entire setup and config process. When I need to configure certain things it kicks you to a web portal. You do all the configuration. When the remotes with hubs sync, they then sync from the cloud. The remotes without hubs you plug into the computer and it downloads the configuration directly to it. But the config is still stored in the cloud. The entire database of devices is also hosted in the cloud. But if your device does not exist you can add it and train your remote as well.

Their is a local unsupported api, but its mainly used for kicking off commands and getting a status of whats going on with the remote.

The cloud is a nice feature really. I configure my neighbors remote and make tweaks and when they next use it, it will sync and be updated. I don’t even have to go over.

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^ This + the normal cloud things like Alexa, Google Home, and support for other 3rd party integrations. Alexa, imo, is particularly useful and I am not sure how you could replace it if Logitech’s servers went down besides just going to a whole other platform.

I really just hope if they do abandon the Harmony platform some time in the future they open source the software and allow a fully local deploy of their databases as a last hurrah.

Yah. I base a lot off of my harmony status. Keeps the lights under control without having to worry about motion. I’d be sad if they go away. I have two. I have the app on my computer to program and so I wondered if that connected to the cloud or if it was local. So my question answered.

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While activities are useful and I certainly use them myself, if the ability to configure them went away, those at least could be configured elsewhere as a collection of commands, in much the same way they are a collection of commands / rules in the Harmony setup. Granted you would not be able to access them on the remote as you can now… The only other thing you lose then is the ability to add devices, if we lose the cloud platform… I would expect…