You connect with the bridge and practically everything is set up like in the Hue app. In this case as well, the set up was very simple. I was able to test the smart home functions of the Harmony Elite with a Philips Hue light. The six bottom buttons are new and control your smart home. If they’re not required for smart devices, you can assign them to whatever you’d like. If a smart home device is set up, these buttons will automatically be assigned accordingly. The bottom of the remote control has two buttons for lights and two buttons for other devices, such as outlets. The Harmony Elite is the first Logitech remote with buttons dedicated to smart home devices. The smart home operation works, but could be better Even through I haven’t used the app for a while, when I do open it, it acts as if I’m opening it for the first time, and the Harmony hub needs to be completely rediscovered again. And no, it’s not synchronized with the Harmony remote control. But in 2018, the fact that every setting requires seconds of waiting is very inconvenient. Of course, it can do its job, especially when it comes to configuring the remote. The app is slow, confusing and not particularly pleasant to use. Unfortunately Logitech doesn’t really make it any easier. Turning on the phone and opening an app just to change the channel or the volume is too convoluted for me. I’ve personally always found it completely absurd to use my smartphone as a remote for my TV. Logitech also provides its own app that can be used as a remote control to set up the Harmony Elite. First steps for turning your home into a smart home.But once you have these scenes set up, the Harmony remote is incredibly practical. I was also faced with this problem because the entire operation of the system runs via my Sky receiver, so the YouTube app on my Samsung smart TV was practically unable to be operated. It should be noted that if you’re using the remote for TV functions, a separate scene should be used if a satellite receiver or TV signal receiver is used. So then: you can add devices, set up scenes to watch TV and listen to music, and you’re ready to go. You can set up the remote control with seemingly anything. Even better, all I had to do was simply search ‘Festival 500’ to quickly find out if they’d work with the speakers. I expected the remote control to recognize my Sky receiver, but didn’t think it would be able to support my Harman/Kardon Festival 500 speakers. I was impressed by that three years ago, and nothing has changed. 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.Anyone who has ever installed a Harmony remote control already knows this: the software is familiar with virtually every receiver, DVD player and music system that has been on the market for the past 30 years. 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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