So, I’ve been messing around with my smart home setup again. You know, like you do when you’re a tech nerd like me. This time, I wanted to get my SmartThings hub talking to my Logitech Harmony hub. Sounds simple enough, right? Wrong. It turned into a bit of a headache, but I figured it out in the end, and I thought I’d share my little adventure.
First off, I made sure my phone was on the same Wi-Fi network as my hubs. That’s pretty basic, but you’d be surprised how often that trips people up. Then, I fired up the Harmony app on my phone and hit “Set Up New Hub.” Easy peasy. But here’s where it started getting weird.
The Harmony app just wouldn’t find my SmartThings hub. It kept searching and searching, like a lost puppy looking for its owner. I was like, “Come on, buddies, talk to each other!” I even tried unplugging the Harmony hub, waiting for about 10 seconds, and plugging it back in. That’s like the universal “have you tried turning it off and on again” fix for tech, but nope, no luck. The hub powered back on after about 30 seconds, but still no connection.
Then I started digging around online. I saw some folks talking about clearing the cache and cookies on your phone’s browser, or trying a different browser altogether. I use Safari, so I cleared everything out, but it still didn’t work. I even restarted my phone, just in case that would magically fix things. Spoiler alert: it didn’t.
I stumbled upon some old info about using the SmartThings Classic app to do the initial setup. Apparently, you could go to “Marketplace,” then “SmartApps,” and then “More” to find the Logitech integration. I’m guessing this was from back in the day because it’s not there anymore. The new SmartThings app doesn’t seem to have that option, at least not where I could find it. So that was a dead end.
Then I found out that SmartThings doesn’t even let you pull your Harmony activities into SmartThings anymore. What’s up with that? It used to be a thing, but now it’s like they’ve broken up and aren’t on speaking terms. That’s a bummer because it was a pretty cool feature.
I even read a post from someone begging Logitech to fix the SmartThings integration. They said that as soon as they linked their Harmony account, everything started lagging. Not a good sign.
Since I already had the Harmony linked service in SmartThings, and it was clearly just causing trouble, I decided to just delete it. I figured, “What’s the worst that could happen?” At least that was easy to do. But again, it didn’t magically solve the connection issue.
So, what finally worked?
Here’s a word of caution: Don’t use emojis in your Wi-Fi password. Seriously, I discovered that Harmony doesn’t like them. I mean, who would have thought, right? I changed my password to something emoji-free, and guess what?
It finally worked! My Harmony app finally discovered my SmartThings hub, and they started talking to each other like old friends. It was a beautiful moment. I could finally control my SmartThings devices through my Harmony remote. Mission accomplished!
So, there you have it. My little saga of trying to connect SmartThings and Harmony. It was a bit of a rollercoaster, but I learned a few things along the way, especially about those pesky emojis in Wi-Fi passwords. If you’re trying to do the same thing, hopefully, my experience will save you some headaches. Happy automating, folks!