Setting up our new home and I am intrigued by the Harmony Hub. It sounds like you can get it working to incorporate IR as a part of a scene pretty easily and that the Harmony Ultimate Remote can drive Vera scenes as well.
I am really curious if it would be hard to the same thing with a Raspberry PI.
If I go with Harmony I would use the remote, but it’s not a requirement. I am most interested in being able to run a scene to shut off TV and lights at the same time, or turn it all on… Would also be nice to have a remote fire up the Sonos system (going to try with Aeon Minimote).
With the Hub and plugin you can trigger scenes based on the Hub activity selected. You cannot trigger scenes on device commands. You can include activity activation and/or sending a device command as part of a scene on your Vera.
Not sure how you propose to use the PI with this. Is it to send some IR command(s) and drive that from Vera scenes? I have no experience with that.
There are some other options like the Keen IR transceiver and matching plugin that can be setup to do this. I actually use the Keene and a dummy light device on the Harmony Hub to control my lights via the harmony remote. Saves me trying to find my mobile in some situations (yes, I’m of the remote generation, not the mobile ;D).
Personally I like using Global Cache IP2IR devices and no plug-in (although there is one available). I just use the http call to the IP2IR (or IP2SL) in my Vera scene to trigger whatever command I want to send to my AV gear. For remotes I use iRule on phones/tablets direct to the IP2IR/IP2SL, but I can also call a Vera scene or device either direct via HTTP or via iRule’s (somewhat crappy) Vera module…
Thanks that gives some perspective. I also see that mysensors has an IR option, that is the least expensive for sure.
The look of the Global Cache device is great, but for $100 I could easily build 2 PI based devices that do the same thing.
I want to send IR btw, idea would be scenes like turn all off, turning TV, lights, etc. off. Listen to music (from TV channel). I know the harmony will do it and having the remote would be really nice, so might go that way.
The one thing I love about Harmony is the ability to easily download IR codes for whatever device I am working on. Having these extra codes, like discreet On/Off or direct input IR codes (which are usually not included on the devices remote control) are a must for any programmer, scene or macro designer.
Nothing worse than having a device not work the way you want because you do not have the correct IR codes.
Something to think about if you are planning on doing this yourself.
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