Yeah this is my ideal setup. I hate smart-tv’s with a passion, but I rather not get into that right now. Any recommendations on that front? I wasn’t even aware those still existed.
Oh, that makes the decision more complicated. I have reservations about constant polling, especially if it is over a non-dedicated network, so that leaves me either having to find another way to intelligently poll or be fine with a latency of constant polling that is serviceable for the network.
I have found the same, but it always confounds me because if anything it should be the opposite no? I also think this speaks to a much larger “societal” problem that is well out of the scope of this forum.
Most of the major brands still have dumb TV’s. They are marketed as part of their “commercial” line up and often used for signage displays.
I understand. I don’t particularly like polling but sometimes it’s appropriate. I have a TCL Roku TV setup and it’s polled quite frequently and it’s nothing to my network. Works just fine via Wifi or Wired connection.
I think that topic would require it’s own forum and babysitters
I appreciate the heads up, but that effectively brings me back to square one and back to the start of this thread, minus your suggestion of Roku based TV’s, but even then, at least for my use case, is only as good as my current Vizio TV.
It seems that outside of Hisense and their MQTT communication, every other brand is more or less the same when it comes to DIY control/monitoring, for their commercial lines anyway. The differentiator then becomes the display quality and/or the OOB calibration of the TV. But that is something that is not covered very often for these “commercial” displays, at least based on my initial research. So if anyone has any resources or recommendations of where to start I would appreciate it.
Going back to the beginning of your question. I think it’s the wrong question. You are trying to find a TV that has “good smart home integrations”. Define this? What controller are you actually using or wanting to use.
Problem is that NONE of the typical DIY home controllers have “good” integrations with most home TV’s or A/V systems. This is because most of the DIY systems are based around “hubs” or software only and don’t provide the physical capabilities to integrate with lots of devices that they could or they don’t have proper integrations with 3rd party controllers to achieve this through drivers (plugins/integrations/whatever).
Most TV’s out there aren’t going to support “push” as it’s not the job of the TV to control your smart home but it’s the home controllers job to control and manage the TV. Now you mentioned the Hisense with MQTT and that’s pretty cool. If you could share a link I’d like to look into that more. The TCL series of Roku TV’s and any other brand of Roku TV is the closest you’re going to find that is DIY friendly with an open API for integration through Node-RED or other software integrations. As mentioned before many, nearly all major brands offer serial connections to control the TV’s from controllers or Global Cache controllers. The problem here is that not many of the DIY “hubs” actually have good drivers if any for Global Cache and this tends to be a 1-way configuration anyways using serial. Hence why the controller is in charge of controlling the TV. Now this is a problem as if the TV is changed outside of the controller then you don’t get any update of this change back to the controller… You’ve likely experienced this if you use Harmony remotes and someone changes the TV with the OEM remote or manually. Same thing.
Pro systems provide remote controls that interface with the controller which is then controlling the TV.
Now the Roku TV integration is a polling interface. However I have my controlling polling the TV’s every 5 seconds and there’s zero impact on my network. This is a tiny tiny amount of data that is polled. Polling is not a huge issue on the network until you start polling internet end-points and that introduces latency. However the amount of data is still tiny. The Roku polling is all internal traffic local to your network and in modern wired or wireless networks it’s nothing. Do not fear the polling…
A Roku TV along with a driver for your control processor would be a very good option. Now the question/problem is what processor are you using, if any and whether it integrates.
Now if you wanted to do a full blown DIY hack-o-thon you could use a Global Cache unit with a serial or IR block to your TV. Then use an IR reciever like a Flirc or something and from a driver/integration use the remote + IR + Flirc to the control the Global Cache to then control the TV. Since your driver/integration would be controlling the TV (even with your remote as it’s now using the hacked Flirc receiver) then your “automation system” would know the status of the TV and such. However you still have the same problem of the “home automation” being out of sync IF the TV is changed not using the hacked together integration solution. Hence where having a Roku TV being polled to pickup any outside changes becomes a really nice thing.
Another option in DIY space would be a android based TV that could be hacked and use the ADB controls to get TV information. This has been done with FireTV systems but is kinda a hit or miss and breaks when Amazon decides they want to change things and update the TV as they don’t intend for the TV to be used this way.
Honestly I was hoping to use a Core, but that is another topic entirely. Most likely I will be using Hubitat with Node-RED for rules and automations, so if the TV can directly integrate into NR that would be acceptable. Hell, something that works with Alexa or Google Home and has fast pushing of the status, unlikely due to cloud interface, would work.
Reference my above post, also notice that I found those other manufacturer’s 3rd party integrations and I would be curious on your take compared to Roku TV’s integrations. Also regarding Hisense the repo is more of a guide than it is software or a traditional integration. It seems that their mobile app uses MQTT for its protocol and he is just giving the steps of how to connect via that without your phone, which as an aside seems to be how most of these “integrations” are. They seem to just be emulating a phone’s connection to the TV.
This will probably be my second option behind Hisense if that doesn’t pan out. With Amazon and the FireTV yeah I could see that as an issue, but I dont forsee that happening with the likes of a Nvidia Shield or even a Google/Android TV smart TV. Amazon’s stuff is based on Android yes, but they put a layer of their stuff on top which is where the issues are introduced generally.
Another route may be to monitor your AV receiver. My Denon receivers provide instant power and input status. The Denon API is pretty well documented and the Hubitat drivers (I use the community one) works well.
I like my Rokus, but Roku is a big data monitoring device (but so are the TV makers). So I run a pi-hole to minimize the traffic
I know results may be a way off, but I believe that Amazon is forcing all the AV companies to start to use Matter. Hopefully that will provide better routes to automate AV equipment.
I mean if that means actually good Alexa integration then I am all for it. Yeah these companies have skills but boy are a lot of them garbage. At least my Yamaha one is. Why is it so difficult for them to just show each zone as a speaker so I can make that they default music output of my group.
Late to the game. I use a community integration for my lg television. It is quite functional, and utilizes a websocket for push updates I believe. i have been happy with it, not that I actually use it a lot…
Can control a large amount of the built in functions as well as monitor power state…
There’s an absolutely immaculate REST API integration for Sony Android TVs over at the HE forums. It works really nicely and gives you more or less complete control over the TV. For example, here’s a TV remote dashboard I built, below. You can control, on, off, mute, volume, start up Netflix or YouTube, move the cursor around, change source etc. All controllable from Rule Machine. It’s so cool and smacks the Samsung integration into the touchline. There’s still an open thread on that subject with people struggling to turn their Samsung TVs on ha ha ha. I really think to only buy Sony TVs from now on to celebrate their efforts on their open API
Yeah I have been leaning this way too since AFAIK they are basically the best screen on the market, rivaled really only by LG iirc, and their software is top notch being Android TV. The only thing that might be pulling me back is the MQTT of Hisense, but those are budget displays at the end of the day.
You can change the icon on your buttons in the Advanced → Layout tab to be blank:
It’s not an option to choose so you have to select another icon 1st in Templates then go to Advanced → Layout and change customIcon to “he_blank”. It will get rid of the on all of your buttons.
Just Google “round blue icon shadow”. You should be able to find some nice icons that way. There are various sites that have the. Some I had to make up myself using an image editor. I use ‘gimp’ for that, which is free but takes a bit of learning.
Actually, looking at them again here I need to improve the colour matching so that they are more uniform.
Any recommendations on that front? I wasn’t even aware those still existed.
I also think this speaks to a much larger “societal” problem that is well out of the scope of this forum.
on all of your buttons.
