Do you have a Logitech Harmony (Companion or Elite) remote managing your smart home or entertainment center? Well, now you can use voice commands with Google Home via IFTTT to control some of the basic functions. Echo ‘skills’ is more robust, but I assume Google Home will catch up.
Step 1: Setup Activities in Harmony App
Harmony App
At this point, you’ve probably already done this. Activities are one-touch commands that trigger a series of events. Each one of these activities has a name associated with it, like “Watch TV.”
As an example, my “Watch TV” activity triggers the following:
- turn on TV
- set TV input to HDMI 1
- turn on receiver and set source to SAT
- turn on DVR/Cable box
- turn on living room lights (Hue) to 60%
- turn on Hue light strips behind TV to 60%, color light blue
Step 2: Connect Harmony service to your IFTTT account.
This step is easy. IFTTT will ask for your Logitech account info so it can manage communication between Harmony and other IFTTT services (previously known as channels).
Step 3: Connect Google Assistant to IFTTT
Same as above for Harmony. You need both of these services connected to IFTTT to make everything work.
Step 4: Create an Applet
Google Assistant Phrase
This is the recipe in IFTTT that runs the action based on what you tell Google Home. IFTTT (If this, then that) first needs a command from Google Assistant – what you’ll tell Google Home. You’ll fill out the simple phrase option and type it what you want to tell Google Home.
Harmony Activities
Now that you’ve chosen what you want the trigger phrase to be (If This), you select the Harmony service (Then That). Under the Harmony service option, you’ll see the activities from the Harmony app. Select the one you want and you’re done!
You’re Done!
Go try it. Your ‘OK Google’ command should trigger the IFTTT applet connected to Harmony. If not, you can look at error reports on IFTTT. If everything looks good on IFTTT, then make sure your saying the correct trigger command.
Keep in mind that the only thing IFTTT Google Assistant supports today is the ability to change activities. It’s far too difficult to change channels or volume, but I assume these actions will be part of IFTTT Harmony services soon. For now, Echo supports channel and activity controls through skills. This is better than going through IFTTT because it’s usually a little quicker.
Great Tutorial! Helped alot. :-) Please do some more! for example…. “sexy time”
1. a custom scene with the philips hue (maybe some red or purple color)
2. a spotify song or custom playlist playing on your TV oder Receiver
ha. yes, I plan on doing a lot more videos/posts in 2017 including how to create scenes and activities around the home.
Love the site. Am just getting into this home automation world and am debating Google Home vs. Echo Dot. The rest of my stuff is Android/Google based, but I was wondering which you feel is smoother for working with your TV?
Thanks, looking forward to what else you write.
I’m going to do a video soon on this exact topic. For now, Echo is better for integration with Harmony/Sonos and other entertainment related devices. There are ways, however, to make Google Home handle most of the tasks – just not as smoothly. More to come, stay tuned.
So I got a Harmony Hub yesterday to use with my Google Home as well. I set up a command to turn on all of my devices (TV/Receiver/Cable Box/Xbox One) that works fine. I also created an activity to just turn up the volume by 2 through my receiver. The problem is, once I start the activity that turns on all of my devices and then run the activity for the volume, it ends the other activity and turns off everything but the receiver. Do you know if there is a way around this?
Hi.
Sounds like you might have ‘end sequences’ setup in Harmony that controls the commands of the an activity when it is exited to start another. It may be tricky to have an activity for just volume, but go into your Harmony settings for your main activity that turns everything on, then 1) go to edit, 2) “edit end sequence.” What I’m thinking here is that you need to make sure there is nothing in this section. Harmony has ‘start’ and ‘end’ actions for every event and when you’re starting the volume activity, it sounds like it’s triggering the ‘end sequence’ of the first activity. Hope that helps.