Hi, I just signed up for SharpTools a couple weeks ago and so far have been enjoying the experience. I’m a recent Hubitat converter, and am in the process of writing a few apps/drivers to control my entertainment systems (namely Rokus and Yamaha receivers).
I’m using SharpTools to build a home automation display. One of the things I would like to do is create a remote control dashboard. My kids are always misplacing the Harmony remote, and having a backup solution (until the remote is found) would be great.
So a couple of questions: Can SharpTools support the Momentary capability? This would be the best-fitting capability to use for commands like, “up”, “down”, “left”, “right”, “ok”, etc. Since they’re not switches or any other stateful device, a simple “press()” command would fit my need perfectly. Unfortunately, when I created the Momentary device to test, it wasn’t available in the Hubitat SharpTools device selection.
Second question: Has anyone created something similar to what I’m looking to do in a dashboard remote control?
So I found a recent thread that announced launching support for momentary devices. I was able to get my device working by adding the “Actuator” capability to my hubitat driver.
Still very interested to see if others have created remote control dashboards though.
Hi @Pierce, welcome to SharpTools family and the community. Glad you have been enjoying SharpTools. You may find inspiration from the Show Off Your SharpTools Dashboards thread. @Andy_Sparling posted a very cool Speakers dashboard that uses the up/down for the volume and rule tile to play specific playlists, and @Wendy_Reed showed off a beautiful Entertainment dashboard with different TV related tiles. Though these are not exactly “remote control” type dashboards, but may still be a good reference for you. Excited to see the remote control dashboard design you come up with and don’t forget to make us jealous by posting it in the Show Off Dashboard thread.
For others who find this post, here is the Momentary Tile announcement post mentioned.
I’m currently working on one.
I’m a Hubitat user, but since the Hubitat-Harmony integration is mostly just about activities, I have a node-RED running node-red-contrib-harmony-websocket for most of my controls. This allows you to have every command for every device you have setup, including custom macros, as well as control and monitoring of all your activities.
The remote dashboard is just one part of a much bigger project I’m working on, but it is definitely in the works, and is working well.
IMPORTANT NOTE: You do have to have your node-RED set up as https with SSL certificate in order for SharpTools to pass commands to it. Unfortunately, this breaks GET commands in Hubitat right now, as it is just the opposite–can only send GET commands to http endpoints.
In the end, I just made a copy of my docker container and made one of them secure. It was much easier and lightweight than setting up a reverse proxy, and flows can be copy-pasted from one to the other effortlessly. I already had a lot of Hubitat-Harmony integration going on to control other household devices via infrared (fake candles, oscillating fans, LED strip lights, a Maestro ceiling fan, etc.). It’s not that hard to secure node-RED to make it work with SharpTools, though. Let me know if you want any help finding resources to help with that.
I’m a hubitat user. The dashboard consists primarily of harmony activities, and some drivers I wrote myself: A Roku controller (top middle), a Roku Extended Control (direction pad), and a Yamaha Receiver Extended Control (the audio related tiles).
I plan to clean up the drivers a bit and release them to the hubitat community.
@Pierce Looks nice! I’m creating a TV remote for mobile. For Disney/Netflix/YouTube etc. do you use the launchApp command? And the tiles are super tiles and/or rules? That is, to both get current status (on/off) and to select that app/input source when clicking.
As a new SharpTools user I’m looking for best practices to set things like these up. I’m using SmartThings and I have no Harmony, but need to control the TV via the Samsung commands.
