Logitech Harmony and Google Assistant: Setup and Voice Commands
Lazy
Google Assistant enjoying his TV evening handsfree with his Logitech
Harmony, while we need to create shortcuts to stay sane.
In this post, we will connect Google Assistant with our
Logitech Harmony Hub. In case you have not already set up your Harmony
devices, activities and favorites, it is a good time to do so. Refer to
the post Logitech Harmony: a Hub and its Elite, Ultimate, Companion for the Logitech Harmony setup.
Setting up Harmony for Google Assistant
You might have tried to add Harmony through the Home Control section
of your Google Home app, only to find that the action is not available
there, where all the other smart home apps are.
The setup process starts as easy as saying “OK Google, ask Harmony to link my account”.
Are you a hero?
Google Assistant – Logitech Harmony app already linked
In case you get the response from Harmony “It looks like your Logitech Harmony account is already connected …”, you might have bravely walked down the stony path before on your own, only to find yourself lost in Google space.
No worries, let’s get you back to the start:
Open your Google Assistant app on your smartphone and tap the (blue) menu on the top right.
In the explore Tab type “Harmony” into the search box. You should see a red Harmony app in the results, tap on it.
Scroll down to the bottom of this Harmony app page, find the “Unlink” link and click it.
Linking Harmony to Google Assistant
By now, you should hear the response “It looks like your Harmony account is not linked yet …”, when you say: “OK Google, ask Harmony to link my account”.
From here you have two options to link Harmony, pick the one which works for you:
Google Assistant – Logitech Harmony app – not linked
Either open your Google Home app and find a blue box titled “Link to Harmony” on the Welcome Screen. Tap the LINK button.
Or open your Google Assistant app on your smartphone and tap the
(blue) menu on the top right. In the explore Tab type “Harmony” into the
search box. You should see a red Harmony app in the results, tap on it.
At the top of the app page, you should find a LINK button, click it.
2. Now we should see the familiar “logi” login screen. Login to the
Logitech account where your Harmony Hub settings are saved. Authorize
Google to access your Harmony remote.
If you linked this account before you might see the screen “Your Settings have been restored”, tap the arrow on the top right.
Selecting Activities & Favorites
Google and Logitech Harmony – Selecting activities
A list of your Harmony activities pops up. Here you can check which
activities should be controlled by Google. You can define new
alternatives for your activities by tapping “Add friendly name +” or
delete suggested alternatives by tapping the little “x”.
Note, if you want to create shortcuts later on, as described in this
post, you can neglect the friendly names, as we will define them in the
shortcuts.
On the next screen, you will find a list of the favorite channels
that you have specified during your Harmony setup. Check which favorites
you would like to control.
Note, some “friendly names” are reserved for Google (e.g. “music”),
but it seems that this is not checked here. In case you find that
particular activities or favorites do not work for you later on, the
screens above are the right place to rename them.
Google – Logitech Harmony – Not so fun commands
On the final screen, you will see a list of not so fun commands which
all start with “Hey Google, ask Harmony to …”. Tap the “Link Account”
button.
Done? No, not yet.
By now, you are able to control Harmony by saying: Hey Google, ask/tell Harmony to (turn on/off) / (change/switch to) (the) ACTIVITY / FAVORITE
as well as Hey Google, ask/tell Harmony to pause / play / rewind / fast forward / increase/decrease volume
Not too bad, but no, we do not like schizophrenic AI, where we have
to ask Google to ask Harmony to do something. Hearing two different AI
voices with whom we have to discuss that a simple activity like turning
on the TV should just happen, gives me goosebumps. But we can only
fix/shorten our voice commands, the Google Assistant & Harmony
voices will keep hunting us.
Creating Google Assistant Shortcuts
Unfortunately, there is no easier way to shorten the commands, than to create Google Assistant shortcuts for each and every Harmony command.
Again, we have two options to open shortcuts, pick the one which works for you:
Google Assistant Settings Menu with Shortcuts
Either, open the Google Home app and select “More Settings” under the
top left menu. Google Home opens the Google Assistant app settings
screen and if you scroll down you should find the “Shortcuts”, tap them.
Or alternatively, open your Google Assistant app on your smartphone
and tap the (blue) menu on the top right. In the explore Tab type
“Harmony” into the search box. You should see a red Harmony app in the
results, tap on it. When you scroll down this app page you will find a
“Manage Shortcuts” button, tap it.
What are Google Shortcuts?
Google shortcuts give us the option to say one thing and make Google
hear another. This way we can say for instance “Hey Google, good
morning” and make Google hear “Stop and tell me about my day”, which is a
nice way to stop Googles alarm in the morning.
We can specify up to five different phrases we can say to make Google
hear one other phrase. With some restrictions – the first command must
not require Google asking back – we can combine two voice commands into
one by using an “and” in between.
Note, Google “knows” the Harmony commands and even without creating
shortcuts, will come up with “For that, you might like Harmony. Wanna
give it a try?”. To get rid of this question, we need to specify
shortcuts.
Sample Shortcuts
Google Assistant Sample Shortcuts for Logitech Harmony
Here are some sample shortcuts – based on our configuration during
Harmony setup – which help to shorten the commands and immediately
summon Harmony. Of course, you can and should adapt your shortcuts to
your liking. However, expect that some of your favorite shortcut names
need some tweaking before they work. I have tested following shortcuts
thoroughly and they work:
To power off any activity (entertainment devices), enter: “Turn off TV” – “Ask Harmony to turn off”
To turn on an activity e.g. “Watch Apple TV” activity, enter: “Turn on Apple TV” – “Ask Harmony to turn on watch Apple TV”
To turn on the “Listen to Music” activity, enter:
“Turn on Stereo” – “Ask Harmony to turn on stereo” (assuming stereo is a
friendly name. Note, “music” does not work for Google)
To turn on the “Watch TV” activity, enter “Turn on watch TV” – “Ask Harmony to turn on watch TV” (watch out, the “watch” was important in my case to make it work)
To pause/resume playback, enter “TV pause” – “Tell Harmony to pause”
To resume playback, enter “TV resume” – “Tell Harmony to resume”
To rewind, enter: “TV rewind” – “Tell Harmony to rewind”
To fast forward, enter “TV fast forward” – “Tell Harmony to forward”
To turn the volume down, enter “TV volume down” – “Tell Harmony to decrease the volume”
To turn the volume up, enter “TV volume up” – “Tell Harmony to increase the volume”
To switch a channel up, enter “TV channel up” – “Tell Harmony to channel up”
To switch a channel down, enter “TV channel down” – “Tell Harmony to channel down”
To switch to a favorite channel e.g. “CNN”, enter “Watch CNN” – “Tell Harmony to switch to CNN”
Google Assistant More Sample Shortcuts for Logitech Harmony
Wow, a lot of work to get rid of the “ask harmony to …” and the “for that you might like Harmony?” question.
Make sure you provide some alternatives for the commands if you and
your family want more than one phrase to control an activity.
Note, sometimes Harmony comes back with “I am unable to apply this
change to this particular activity”, this usually happened to me when
quickly switching commands, just repeat the command and it should work.
Conclusion
Harmony commands, activities, and favorites are accessible through
Google Assistant. The integration provided is suboptimal. You need
lengthy, unnatural phrases to access the Harmony functionality and in
most cases, you will end up in a pointless dialogue with Google and
Harmony.
To adapt the Harmony integration to our liking we can use Google
Assistant shortcuts. However, we need to create a shortcut for every
activity and favorite. We can’t get rid of Googles “Ok, let’s get
Harmony” and the subsequent Harmony confirmation.
Please note, since I am not a big fan of 3rd party services like
IFTTT, Stringify, etc. as they add another layer of complexity and
another cloud service which has to be up, Google Assistant shortcuts are
the only onboard tools I would recommend.
Another weakness of the Google Assistant Harmony integration is a
missing list of supported activities and favorites. It is only during
the configuration phase, that we can see (and change) available
activities and favorites. At least we can refer to our shortcuts list,
once we have built it up.
We can only hope, that Google and Harmony will improve their
integration to save us the work of creating so many shortcuts manually.
Since July 2017 we know that it can be done, but more on that in the
upcoming post about Logitech Harmony and Alexa.
I hope you enjoyed this post! If you are interested in Alexa, you might following posts enlightening:
