Help please: Logitech Harmony + Vera

I’m terribly confused about the possibility of using my Harmony Elite’s dedicated hard buttons to control lighting scenes with Vera. Can anyone help point me in the right direction? Thanks.

Hi,

With just the Harmony Plugin (see Harmony Hub Control - Ezlo Community) this is not possible. You can only have the Vera respond to Activity changes as button presses are not pushed to any app connected to the Hub.

There is (was?) a Zwave extender for the Harmony Hub you could use as second Zwave controller, but not sure if that is still being sold.

An other workaround is to install some IR receiver like Kira, with the plugin. Then add a dummy device on the Harmony, learn those codes into the Vera Kira plugin and use those to control lights.

So there are ways, but not a simple one sadly.

Cheers Rene

Thanks Rene, I think the Harmony Hub was only ever sold in the US so wouldn’t work here in the UK as it’s the wrong frequency. I will investigate the Kira IR receiver.

Stu

I don’t think this could be true… The harmony hub is a wifi-IR bridge. Wifi is nearly universal for frequency and so is IR. I don’t think this would be the reason why it would not be sold in the UK and I am fairly sure it has been selling in EUR. @reneboer is actually in EU.

Ah, my error was thinking it acted as a Z-Wave bridge, so needed the EU frequency!

Hi @rafale77,

You are mixing two of their products (can’t blame you, it is messy). The Hub is indeed the IR/IP remote bit. They have/had the Hub Extender that acts as a add on to add a Zwave controller Home Hub Extender.

I can only find some on ebay and amazone for the US. Their supports articles are also in Dutch though, even how to use it together with Vera! Just no idea where to get one. Weird.

Cheers Rene

I forgot about this device but did consider it before. This extender is indeed a zwave controller attached to the vera hub. Sorry about this. I even misread what the OP was trying to do: trigger vera scenes with his remote. This could be possible by creating dummy activities on the harmony hub which would then be trigger scenes when going into these activities. Not ideal, but possible. I trigger scenes on my vera based on activity the state variable.

Problem with using dummy activities to control (zwave) devices is that only one activity can be on at a time. So your TV will turn off if you turn on the living room lights, or something to that extend. It can be done, but takes careful planning.

With a device like Kira and the Kira plugin you can link commands from any dummy device. But I must say, now I can yell at alexa the need to do things via the remote as become less :grin:

Cheers Rene

That’s exactly what I do! Indeed that’s why I don’t run scenes from the remote unless the scene is to be associated with an activity… and I actually even start the activity from alexa.

Hi
I had a Harmony Hub, but to connect with Vera I had to add the Extender plug to the hub, and it’s available on Amazon
link:

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I never had to buy a extender to connect my hub to my VP

The extender is meant to make the Harmony hub a zigbee/zwave controller so that your harmony remote can now control zigbee device on its own zigbee network and a zwave network which could be optionally the vera’s zwave network. It won’t add the harmony as a IR hub to your vera. It will add it as a secondary controller with limited to no additional functionalities… kind of like a minimote.

Hi
The Hub Harmony machine can be added to the Vera Plus and we can control IR devices.

In fiber control, a switch IR device is added as Virtual Divas, and devices IR can be commanded and controlled with fiber, but in Vera Plus this is not the case, and an extrnder device must be tuned for harmony that can connect to the fiber Zwave via Vera And controlled the devices IR

No that won’t work (assuming I understood what you said) and is not necessary. You cannot control the Harmony IR through zwave. You can have harmony control both IR and zwave.
To control the harmony IR from vera you just need to install the harmony plugin on the vera.
To control the vera’s zwave devices from the harmony, you can either use the extender and add it to the zwave network as a secondary device or you can do what was previously discussed in this thread, making the vera detect an activity and use it as a trigger for a scene. The extender is then not needed.

You can have harmony control both IR and zwave.
Here’s how to install this plugin؟

I had a problem pairing the fibaro double switch FGS-223; I needed every method I tried in the instructions above and Vera Plus could not detect it?
I even emailed Vera’s backup and she said the same instructions but I didn’t get an answer

I think we are saying the same thing:

I think it is the English. If not clear this is a drawing:

This is the case where you want the vera to control the Harmony IR devices. You only need the plugin which is not a device. It is a software.

This is what you are describing about using the extender so that the harmony can control zwave devices on the vera.

Which you can do by setting up a scene in the vera triggered by activity changes polled by the harmony plugin so you don’t need the extender and in reality gives you a lot more control since you can control much more than zwave devices:

What you cannot do is have the harmony control the vera through the extender. It can only control devices on its zwave network by being a secondary zwave controller. That you can only do through the plugin. And even less so, in this setup, unlike the plugin case, the vera cannot control the Harmony’s IR.

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Thanks for the full explanation
The name of the Harmony Hub plugin I need to install on Vera?

Link is on the second post of this thread.

Hi Raf,

Thanks for this excellent explanation. I’ll add a link to this in the Harmony Wiki Home · reneboer/vera-Harmony-Hub Wiki · GitHub

@eesa_mousaee. The wiki pages give full instructions for the Vera Harmony Plugin.

Cheers Rene