Total Harmony

It was getting quite ridiculous. This is the set of remotes I had built up to control my HT. From right to left; Receiver, NowTV box, PVR, FireTV, BluRay, Projector, Squeezebox, DAC.

It's little wonder no-one else in the family used the system!

In the past, I'd used various Logitech Harmony remotes but all had outlived their usefulness and have been retired. A few months ago, I'd picked up a Harmony Companion set on Amazon warehouse for a steal, but hadn't got around to configuring it all until now.

Unpacking the box reveals two main components, the remote itself and the Harmony hub. There's also a few cables and an IR extender/blaster to help with situations where the hub needs to be hidden away.

First impressions were good. The remote is a neat size, and has a tactile feel. The remote is powered by a small CR type battery, which was a little bit of a surprise. There's no LCD on this unit, only hard buttons to trigger activities. I'd had some remotes like this before and found it a little limiting, but this unit supports up to 6 activities which I planned to configure as follows;

• Listen to Squeezebox
• Listen to CD
• Watch TV
• Watch NowTV
• Watch FireTV
• Watch BluRay

Rather more disappointingly, theres no backlight on this remote. The buttons are fairly logically laid out though, but there will be a bit of learning as I fumble about in the dark. (In the future, I might upgrade to a Harmony 950 if there's a good deal)

However, this package is not all about the remote. It's also possible to use apps or even Alexa to control devices. (more on she who must not be named below, but I'm getting ahead of myself.

The brains of the operation here is the Hub, a tidy slim puck that is the real controller, supporting IR, BT and WiFi. In summary, it's necessary to configure devices, activities etc. in the Hub and then the remote, app or Alexa send instructions. (technically, the configuration lives in the Logitech cloud, so a Logi account is mandatory).

Configuration can be done via the Harmony app, or via a desktop PC or Mac. (Logitech recommend the App route for initial configuration).

Here I ran into my first non-standard roadblock. I wanted to use an older 7" Fire tablet which would live in my HT permanently. But, of course, the Harmony app was not available in the Amazon walled garden app store. A quick bit of Google-Fu, however, revealed that the Play Store can be installed and, 20 minutes of pfaffing around later, I had the Harmony app up and running.

The app bluetooth to the Hub to allow it be configured on WiFI. I had trouble with this as well, with the Hub refusing to join my 2.4GHz network until I'd restarted both the Hub and my WiFi router. (Hub supports 2.4GHz only).

Once connected, it was a very straightforward and intuitive process to add all my devices and start setting up activities. One gotcha is that it's not obvious that you're in a setup mode, and I spent ages trying to figure out how to get out to the Apps control UI.  (I actually can't remember how, sorry!).

The whole setup to have all the basics working took about 45 minutes, and that included fairly complex setups such as my Sony Blu Ray going through the Marantz HD1 DAC for CD but directly to receiver for BluRay.

Once I'd tested everything was working as expected, I used the OSX App to do some additional configuration on buttons. I'm sure I could do this in the Android app, but wanted to see how the desktop app worked.

One feature of my system is the use of lens memory on my JVC projector. I have presets configured for 16:9, 2.35:1 and that oddball Netflix pseudo widescreen that they use. These were fairly easy to set up under my activities and I could map sequences or macros to my numerical buttons. One frustrating aspect was that I needed to re-configure the sequences under each activity - there was no way that I could find to set up the aspect switching in, say, my FireTV activity and then copy it to BluRay and TV activities.

Harmony Hub positioned above projector

Another issue here is that the desktop app does not sync or update the Hub. You need to either open the android app and access the sync option hidden in the menus, or attach the hub to your computer via USB. Since my Hub is nestled above my projector, I didn't fancy removing it for direct attachment so used the app. A minor enough inconvenience, but a little frustrating.

Worth noting, however, is the excellent coverage of the Hub itself. In its home above the projector, it has no trouble reaching any IR or BT devices anywhere in a fairly large room. It can also  control the projector itself, a significant feat given it's directly on top with no line of sight.

Also frustrating was the Alexa experience. Setting up was a little fiddly with the usual account linking and a bit of discovery to go through. Alexa commands work reasonably well, and I can say things like

'Alexa, Turn on BluRay'
'Alexa, Turn On Squeezebox'

and the various activity macros trigger. However, when I say 'Alexa, Turn on Tv', she has a bit of a fit and tells me the skill has a problem. It's an issue that's emerged following a recent firmware update, but it kind of cripples the voice-control experience, which is tantalising in that when it works, it works really well.

Hopefully they'll fix it soon.

So, in summary, so far, I'm fairly delighted with the Harmony Companion All In One. Really good value at ~€50 on warehouse, easy enough to set up and does exactly what I need it to. Goodbye all you remotes.