Harmony Hub is Awesome

We got a new wireless 4K Sony TV which made me think there should be a way to control it from my phone.  Well there was an app for our AV Receiver but not the TV.  That was cool but not enough.  I took the harmony 900 remote and set it up.  It worked for most things and could setup activities for TV, Netflix and BlueRay.  

From there I started wondering why should I touch a remote, when I can tell the women of the house to do it.  No, not my wife but Alexa.  She generally follows direction better anyways.  

After some research, Alexa can't talk to the devices directly but a Harmony hub is the tool for the job.  Black Friday sales really help because I found them 30 dollars off.   $99 regularly. Gotta get two right?  One for living room and one for bed room.

The setup is really awesome and has come a long way since the harmony 900.  Down load the app. iPad is best but phones work too.  First it searches your network and finds devices.  My tv and receiver setup automatically.  Then, just add Blue ray and Direct tv.  

I am not going to go into the setup of activities because it is easy.  The only trick is to go into the receiver device and set it to stay on unless directly turning it's power off.  This helps transitioning through activities smoother.  

Favorites are the secrete sauce and you must set them up.  Setup every channel you watch normally.  The thing to recognize is favorites are device specific, once you set them up they will sync to their cloud but only download to other devices if you reset them and sync changes again.   This is important for Alexa.

If you have multiple hubs, you can switch between hubs from phone or iPad.  

At times my IR devices don't turn on and off but if I get close to them, they work fine.  I am not sure why that is yet but it's not a big deal.

Also, once you set everything up, you can control your hub remotely but I am not sure why you would want to but guess who needs that ability, Alexa.   

I will talk about Alexa integration in a later post.