- #Harmony home control compatibility how to#
- #Harmony home control compatibility Bluetooth#
- #Harmony home control compatibility plus#
- #Harmony home control compatibility tv#
The Harmony Hub finds it automatically - because it also speaks Bluetooth and WiFi, not just IR. That’s because, if your A/V component is also on WiFi (like many current HDTV sets, Roku Internet-video boxes, Sonos speakers, and so on), you don’t have to type it in.
#Harmony home control compatibility tv#
You’re asked to test turning it on and off from your phone, just to make sure.īy the way: I was delighted to see my Samsung TV and Apple TV already listed in the app, without my even having to type them in. Harmony Ultimate Home Hub smartphone setup screensĪnd like that, your Harmony app displays the correct component, knows exactly what features it offers, and stands ready to control it. We want to control our lights, our thermostats, our door locks. How are they supposed to control A/V components, which are usually designed to be controlled by IR?įurthermore, these days, we want to control more than our TV setups. For one thing, most smartphones don’t have infrared (IR) transmitters. Sounds great, but there are a couple of huge obstacles. Wouldn’t it be great if we could use those to control our entertainment systems, Harmony style? Which brings us to Problem #2: People already have smart devices in their pockets, which already have lovely touchscreens. Dozens of Harmony models have come and gone, some with lovely, responsive touchscreens. This system has given thousands of people universal remotes that really, truly work. “TiVo Series 3.” “Samsung 7100 Smart TV.” And so on. So to program your Harmony remote, all you had to do was tell it which components you owned. And Harmony sleuthed out all the proper infrared remote-control codes to send to each one. Harmony created a database of 250,000 audio and video components - every model known. It was murder.Ī few years ago, a company called Harmony (now owned by Logitech) devised a nutty alternative plan. “We,” in this case, meaning “technically proficient people with entire weekends free.” Because you had to tediously teach the universal remote all the commands your existing remotes sent out.
#Harmony home control compatibility how to#
How can one gadget know how to control all of them?įor most of recorded home-entertainment time, we’ve solved that by programming a universal remote.
#Harmony home control compatibility plus#
Problem #1: There are thousands of different brands of TVs, cable boxes, Blu-ray players, video recorders, game consoles, audio receivers, and speakers - plus all those Internet TV boxes like Apple TV and Roku. Now you can go from basketball-watching mode to movie-watching mode with just a few button presses, all without getting up from your couch.Don’t look now, but somebody has finally nailed the universal-remote problem. The lights, the blinds, and even your thermostat are crucial to the ultimate home theater experience–so it only makes sense you’d be able to control them from your remote. Your home theater is more than just a TV and some speakers. You can even set it to un-dim the lights when you switch to a different activity (by changing their state for the activity’s end). You’re only limited by your imagination…and how many smart devices you have in your house. For example, you could create an activity called “Movie Night” That turns on your home theater, sets it to your Blu-Ray player, rolls down your smart blinds, and dims your smart light bulbs all at once. This is a very simple example, but this can be very powerful. In our case, the activity will just be a one-time button press, so we won’t do anything here–we’ll press the Skip button.Īnd now we’re finished. Repeat this process for when the activity ends. This is much, much more useful than the hardware buttons, which are surprisingly uncustomizable. If you want true customization of your smarthome devices, touch screen-enabled remotes allow you to create activities for your smarthome devices, from the very simple (“Dim Lights”) to the more complex (“Dim the lights, roll up the blinds, and start my home theater”). How to Create Activities to Control Your Devices When you’re done, tap the Next button to save your changes. Repeat this process for the other buttons. We really, really, wish you could customize these functions, but Logitech apparently decided to leave this feature half-finished instead. In our case, a short press turns the lights on, a long press turns the lights off, and the rocker switch in the middle adjusts the brightness of those bulbs. Unfortunately, you can’t customize what the buttons do–they are strangely limited–but you can see the button assignments below. When you do, it’ll return you to the Home Control Buttons page. In our case, we’re going to control the “Living Room” group of lights we created earlier. Select the device(s) you want to control with that button.
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