Experienced HA Heaven today

Posted on
Thu Feb 02, 2017 1:43 pm
Busta999 offline
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Experienced HA Heaven today

Sat down in the lounge.

Alexa, ask Harmony to turn on AppleTV

Tv turns on, Onkyo turns on sets input to the right HDMI port, sets volume right for AppleTv, switches to 5:1 audio.

Alexa, ask Plex to play the movie Groundhog Day.

Cabinet lights turn off, 11 Hue lights dim down low.

Groundhog Day starts playing.

HA Heaven!

So many parts have to play here, and they all run soooo smoothly.

Plex, Harmony, Hue, ZWave, lightwaverf, with Indigo 7 providing all the glue to pull it all together with Plex, Onkyo, Hue, RFXCOM, plugins.

Thank you all :-)


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Posted on
Thu Feb 02, 2017 2:19 pm
jay (support) offline
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Re: Experienced HA Heaven today

Sounds awesome! I think everyone would like a little more detail if you're willing to share. For instance, when you say:

Alexa, ask Plex to play the movie Groundhog Day


What are all the parts in play to make it happen? A play-by-play for each conversation would be very helpful for others who want to do similar things.

Jay (Indigo Support)
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Posted on
Thu Feb 02, 2017 2:31 pm
blysik offline
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Re: Experienced HA Heaven today

Plex has a new Alexa skill, just released. If you have a Plex player open, say on AppleTV (and it's his default player), it will start playing Ground Hog day form his video library on it.

Latest Plex server also can send webhooks, which I would guess he could leverage to dim lights, etc on media starting to play.

Posted on
Thu Feb 02, 2017 4:07 pm
roussell offline
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Re: Experienced HA Heaven today

This sounds great. I guess I'm confused at the jump between harmony doing it's stuff by activating the AppleTV and Plex actually loading. What is the process that starts the Plex application on the Apple TV?

Terry


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Posted on
Thu Feb 02, 2017 5:16 pm
Busta999 offline
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Re: Experienced HA Heaven today

jay (support) wrote:
Sounds awesome! I think everyone would like a little more detail if you're willing to share. For instance, when you say:

Alexa, ask Plex to play the movie Groundhog Day


What are all the parts in play to make it happen? A play-by-play for each conversation would be very helpful for others who want to do similar things.


Ok

It is all really simple stuff, I am only scratching the surface of Indigo.

Plex released an Alexa plugin today. So that part is very straightforward, if you use Plex and have an Echo then search out the Plex skill, it is not in Smart Home skills but the regular skills.

Harmony has a skill for Alexa too, so that is easy and straightforward. That controls all the AV for the lounge, Onkyo, TV, Appletv Lounge and AppleTv Fireplace (which has my old 42" tv with an AppleTv app playing of a roaring fire that plays when the Lounge on timer to turn on and is turned off as part of the Alexa 'turn on goodnight' routine.

The lounge led cabinet lights, ornament lights are on Lightwaverf with some on the Evergreen ZWave sockets that are replacing Lightwaverf gradually.

The three up lights are Hue, as are the three globe lights at the back of the room, behind the tv is a Hue Bloom, and under the sectional sofa is a Hue lightstrip with extension ( makes the sofa to appear to be floating :-) )

Oh and the room scented is on a lightwaverf switch.

The lighting effects are controlled by Indigo through, Hue, RFXCOM (Lightwaverf), and ZWave interfaces/plugins.

The Plex events are tracked by Indigo using the Plex plugin.

With triggers to detect Plex Movie is being played, turn off zwave and lightwaverf lights, dim Hue lights to a scene I call TvRelax, but drop it right down to about 20%. Also trigger on Play music , different scene is set or Play TvShow yet another scene.

Another trigger detects if pause is pressed, which lifts the lights by 20%, so people can see to move around, normally for drinks or food.

The last Plex trigger is if the movie/Tvshow/ music stops then restore to previous settings and turn cabinet and ornament lights back on.

All really basic, simple stuff, just comes together really really nicely when you can come into a room and just talk to Alexa.

Now sometimes Alexa just gets honray (sp?) and does a some weird stuff.

I have over 25,000 episodes and a few thousand movies along with 80k songs. It is just great to simply say what you want to watch and up it comes without having scroll through endless lists or type letter by letter from an on screen keyboard.

Plex 'know' which episode we are up to, so saying 'Alexa, ask Plex to play the tvshow The West Wing' it plays the last episode we were watching or plays the next in line.

Having only just played with the Alexa Plex skill today, I can say it does have a leaning towards behaving like an over zealous toaster in Red Dwarf with its suggestions.

Alexa, play the album Crisis What Crisis by Supertramp, and Alexa replies would you like to listen Röyksopp?





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Posted on
Thu Feb 02, 2017 5:23 pm
Busta999 offline
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Re: Experienced HA Heaven today

roussell wrote:
This sounds great. I guess I'm confused at the jump between harmony doing it's stuff by activating the AppleTV and Plex actually loading. What is the process that starts the Plex application on the Apple TV?

Terry


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You can say, Alexa, ask Plex to load.

I haven't had to, my lounge Appletv lives in Plex.

The appletv attached to fireplace tv usually has a roaring fire app running (my better half loves it and it actually makes you feel warmer - odd but true) the fireplace tv also switches to CamTv,so if she is one her own she can see the external perimeter of the house and all the external doors/entry ways - also good for spotting expected deliveries/pizza etc.


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Posted on
Thu Feb 02, 2017 6:29 pm
blysik offline
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Re: Experienced HA Heaven today

I have CamTV setup that way also. Do you have any way to automatically bring up CamTV? AFAIK, there isn't any AppleTV control for that. So I usually just ask Siri on the AppleTV remote to "open CamTV".

Posted on
Fri Feb 03, 2017 6:58 am
Busta999 offline
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Re: Experienced HA Heaven today

blysik wrote:
I have CamTV setup that way also. Do you have any way to automatically bring up CamTV? AFAIK, there isn't any AppleTV control for that. So I usually just ask Siri on the AppleTV remote to "open CamTV".


Door I don't have an answer for you.

The Lounge AppleTV is pretty much always in Plex and the Fireplace AppleTv is pretty much always in the Fire app.

If I have need to with either to Camera monitor I just use the Apple Remote

I was wondering if there was a way through Harmony to automatically select and AppleTV app, but that was the Roku I could do that with not the AppleTV :-(

Posted on
Wed Mar 22, 2017 3:27 pm
wormhole offline
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Re: Experienced HA Heaven today

I have a similar setup as the OP, although I have found I do not need to use as many plugins to enable this. In addition I'd like to address the questions around Plex.

I only need to use the following plugins for whole house automation:

1. Indigo Alexa Hue Bridge - enables voice control of lights
2. Nest - enables control page integration of thermostats
3. Harmony - enables control page integration of entertainment systems
4. Plex Media Server - Enables creation of lighting 'scenes' based upon media center playback as well as monitoring within Control Pages of myPlex users
5. Cynical Security Spy - integrates security cameras into control pages and enables security triggers (lights, emails, texts, etc)

Plus 3 Alexa skills
1. Plex - enables voice activation of media center (which in turn triggers lights through Indigo Plex Plugin)
2. Harmony (and technically there are two, Harmony and Harmony optimized for Smart Home - get both - which enables a workaround of the current limitation to 1 harmony hub per skill) - Enables voice activation of media devices
3. Nest - Enables voice control over thermostats.

I could, but have chosen not to use the Denon, Roku, TIVO and other device specific plugins as I have found they are all covered by the Harmony plugin and having (previously)gone through the effort of setting up hubs/devices/activities find it easier to use and covers more devices not covered by Indigo Plugins (ie I see the Harmony Plugin as a 'universal' entertainment device plugin.)

In terms of Plex, there are limitations with the Alexa skill.
1. Only an 'approved' client can be activated and the client must be 'open' (see 2). For example, Vizio plex client isn't supported, the Roku Plex app is (only newest, not classic)
2. The Plex Client must be open - I saw that it was written above that you could get Alexa to launch Plex, this, as far as I know, is not the case for all devices on which Plex Clients are run. For example, if you use Roku's to watch Plex (as I do), and the Roku is on the home screen, I have not been able to figure out a way to tell Alexa to launch Plex, if I have missed something here, would appreciate the info, but over on the Plex boards I've been told this isn't possible. Maybe the comment was specific to AppleTV (which I do not own).

So today, I can say, assuming the Plex client is open, tell Plex to play xxx and it will turn down the lights - this is done by a trigger using the Plex Media Center plugin that if device (the specific Roku is a created device using the Plex Plugin) state changed, Connection Status to Playing, becomes true, Indigo then turns down the lights.

I have also setup scenes based on if the Plex client pauses (bring up lights 25%) and stops (bring back up lights to 100%).

In addition, I have different scenes for different rooms. For example in the family room (non dedicated media room) which has windows. there is a condition trigger that only does the light control 'if dark'. In addition, in that family room, there are different scenes if the Playback Media Type in the Trigger is Movie (turns off lights in family room as well as rooms that expose the family room to light - i have an open floorplan) vs TV Show (only controls family room lights), whereas in the Theater (dedicated media room, no windows), light control is irrespective of media type.

So those are a few examples and a little more detail in regards to the OP.

Posted on
Wed Mar 22, 2017 4:53 pm
Different Computers offline
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Re: Experienced HA Heaven today

I've got some parts of several of these ideas in place, but just wanted to say thanks for the inspiration to improve my setup. While I won't bring Alexa into the mix, I'm going to experiment further with some Indigo control of Plex and/or my AppleTV.

Maybe I'll even fork out the cash for more than the free version of CamTV, since more than one of you seem to think it's worth it.

SmartThings refugee, so happy to be on Indigo. Monterey on a base M1 Mini w/Harmony Hub, Hue, DomoPad, Dynamic URL, Device Extensions, HomeKitLink, Grafana, Plex, uniFAP, Fantastic Weather, Nanoleaf, LED Simple Effects, Bond Home, Camect.

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