Comment by Spoom
2 months ago
I dread the day that Logitech kills the servers for Harmony. If they don't release the IR code database, they're going to have a lot of people (myself included) pretty annoyed.
(To be clear, they still work today if you can get a second hand remote / hub.)
As someone who works in this industry and has access to commercial HDMI debugging equipment, I can’t agree more.
I will use Harmony for my home setup until it no longer functions.
The horrors I have seen related to CEC and ARC are something else.
I also love the Harmony remote in my living room. It's imperfect, but it's plenty good enough. It flows well and works predictably. It's easy to reconfigure.
And no matter what bizarro-world co-dependent cacophony of AV gear I manage to pile up together, any person can pick up the remote and watch TV or play a game or whatever.
I will be particularly unhappy when Logitech finally pulls the plug on Harmony servers.
At that point, I'll definitely need something different.
But IR codes are only part of the puzzle. And that is perhaps the easiest part to solve: We've already got lots of databases with IR-stuff available. There's databases focused on RC5, and the sleepy LIRC project, and some other things (all of which tend to be very Old Web in appearance).
License-permitting, it's simple enough to use this work as a foundation onto which newer codes can be placed.
That just leaves making the Harmony hardware interface work (hah, hahah -- and it's a dead-end anyway), or developing a new open-source remote to rule them all (which actually might not be too terrible of a task).
That all covers the first 90% of the problem.
The remaining 90% of the problem is just creating software that has a usable UI and actually works.
Having just swapped to a new TV on my Harmony setup I was concerned if it was still going to work. Lucky me, it did.
I really REALLY want someone to manufacture the thin harmony RF remote with a simple receiver puck with an open firmware. That's all we'd need because the HA crowd would be all over it and have it doing anything you want.
Assuming ir means infrared, you could get one of these (or any ir transceiver) and decode the signals and use it or whatever to send them out if your $thing dies.
https://www.athom.tech/blank-1/tasmota-ir-controller