#Looking for tips & tricks (Home cinema setup)

21 messages · Page 1 of 1 (latest)

proven geyser
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I have a few units in my home cinema that i want to control using HA.
I've done this in the past but since some firmware update to my Harmony hub it broke up my setup and now I'm kind off drawing a blank.

The units i have and that i want to control, and how they can be controlled is:
Projector (Harmony Hub)
Receiver (Harmony Hub)
TV (Harmony Hub)
CCWGTV (Its own remote)
Projector Screen (Sonff Wifi-RF bridge)
Steam Deck (No HA control)

The issue I'm running in to is how i could seamlessly transition between using the projector + screen and the TV without turning the rest off.

So i have 2 different scenes in mind.
First scene:
TV (On)
CCWGTV (On or Off depending on the source, steam deck or Chromecast)
Projector Screen (Up)
Receiver (On)

Second scene:
Projector (On)
CCWGTV (On or Off depending on the source, steam deck or Chromecast)
Projector Screen (Down)
Receiver (On)

As you probably can imagine this would require some If-statements.
If Switching to the first scene from the second scene, it should turn off the projector, pull up the screen, but turn on the TV and let the receiver and stay on, and keep the CCGTV in it's last state (again, depending on the source) and vice versa.

At first i tried doing this with a drop down and trigger automations that way, but it seemed very unreliable as it didn't always trigger the automation.

Preferably it would be nice to be able to use the CCWGTV controller to turn on the first scene for ease of use as well. This also means that i need to have some helper keeping track of my entity states which i have not been able to figure out a good way of doing.

The harmony hub itself cannot help track the states of the units it controls since it's only using remote commands.

If anyone would have some input in how i could manage this in a reliable way it would be much appreciated.

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Looking for tips & tricks (Home cinema setup)

silver lava
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The thing that would be problematic is if any entities can have their states changed without HA knowing about it, but you could just use an input number helper to save the state you think everything is in (or individual booleans if you just care about on/off)

proven geyser
silver lava
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Alternatively - you could try installing a smart plug and use the power draw of the devices to be able to tell which are on/off based on that (e.g. <3W = off, else on)

proven geyser
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I believe it already uses the android tv integration let me take a screenshot
The power draw is clever I must say even if it requires additional costs.

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Question is tho, should I use scenes or automations?

So far I've setup scripts to handle power on/off for the devices controller by the harmony up.
And a script for getting the projector screen up/down

silver lava
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I'd personally go scenes as it's neater imo

proven geyser
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Haven't really dabbled in scenes. Do I need to assume the states of each entity for the scene?

Also this confuses me a bit with scripts

TV on turned off, is that just another way of saying, script has finished running?

Screenshot_20241005-113928.png
silver lava
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Yeah - it's "the script 'TV on' has stopped running"

proven geyser
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Got it

silver lava
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i'm not 100% sure how the scenes would work when you are switching something "blindly" tbh - that's a good point

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maybe someone else can weigh in on that

proven geyser
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Thank you so far.
I'm guessing I would have to setup a few helpers to keep track of the states. But it'll still be tricky to track it reliably I guess

silver lava
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yeah tricky - the power monitoring would be much easier and (imo) reliable

proven geyser
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Also, CEC has to be setup between the receiver and the CC to use the volume buttons 🫠

proven geyser
silver lava
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they can be pretty cheap from aliexpress or similar

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just avoid tuya