Harmony Hub Issue

irishbuzz

I have my Harmony Elite remote and hub since the Black Friday sales last year. I mostly use it via Alexa to control my TV & Sky Box and I find it excellent... when it works!

I have an activity for turning on the TV that issues commands: Turn on the TV itself -> Turn on the Sky Box -> Change the channel to XXX. I have the Harmony skill set up on Alexa that can trigger the entire sequence with "Alexa, turn the TV On". The problem is that most of the time I attempt to use this the hub is offline (constant red light on hub). If I check the wifi on other devices it looks good. At this point I manually turn on the TV and Sky and quite often after a moment or two the hub connects (goes green) and is ready to work. Normally while the TV is on the hub will stay green and I can send commands to it without problem. I can also use the turn off activity command and all works correctly. Sometime after I do this it's quite common that the hub will go red again.

It's happened often enough that I think it is mocking me... that or there is some type of interference. It doesn't misbehave like this every time but I would guess that maybe 50% of the time I want to turn on the TV the hub is disconnected.

I'm wondering has anyone else experienced or heard of similar issues with the hub?

Some more info that may or may not be relevant
* TV: Sony Bravia
* Sky Box: Sky HD (controlled via Labgear Magic Eye)
* Wifi: Signal strength good (~5m from Router). Network has same SSID for both 2.4GHz & 5GHz (Although I believe the hub is connecting to 5GHz)

spaceHopper

Is the tv on a wired or wireless network?
I've a bravia and alex can turn it on since the last firmware update but often when I try it says the Tv is off line. It's hard wired to the router.

sioda

Give the harmony a static ip address might help it. I know I had issues with virgin and to many wifi devices recently

irishbuzz

spaceHopper wrote: »

Is the tv on a wired or wireless network?
I've a bravia and alex can turn it on since the last firmware update but often when I try it says the Tv is off line. It's hard wired to the router.

I actually have it connected both via ethernet and also Wifi. I found that certain things did not work correctly if I used ethernet only.

The TV only ever connects wirelessly over 2.4GHz. I installed that same firmware update recently but I could never get the Alexa skill to sync with the TV. I have a theory that this is because Alexa is on the 5GHz network and requires the TV to be on the same but can't see it.

I tried temporarily disabling 2.4G radio to force the TV to 5G but it wouldn't connect. I want to keep Alexa on 5G. Perhaps I'm wrong here and that shouldn't matter since I used the same SSID. Regardless after a number of attempts, it would never connect.

irishbuzz

sioda wrote: »

Give the harmony a static ip address might help it. I know I had issues with virgin and to many wifi devices recently

Interesting suggestion. I should be able to work out how to do that tonight and will report back.

irishbuzz

I think I figured it out.

I performed a number of tests and eventually narrowed it down. With my TV I have a Sony soundbar and accompanying subwoofer. The subwoofer is wireless. I actually sit my harmony hub directly on top of the sub. The soundbar is connected to the TV via a HDMI ARC connection. When I turn on the TV it turns on the soundbar which then turns on the subwoofer. For whatever reason, the wireless communication between the bar and sub is tripping up the hub. When the bar attempts to turn off the sub the hub knocks off too. I unplugged the sub and repeated my tests and everything was resolved.

So, for now, I'm sitting here with harmony fully operational but a distinct lack of bass from my TV.

More tests to be performed tomorrow to try and properly solve this.