I have a feeling I know the answer, but I’m going to ask anyway before moving all the logic off this remote and into HA (making it the most expensive dumb remote on the planet).
I got the remote setup and added the third party integration in Home Assistant. I can use that integration to change from one activity to another in HA, and it works - sort of. The activity change does happen (i.e. it switches to the right HDMI input, etc). but the remote never changes to the new activity, so I still have the controls for the activity that is now off. That means I have to hit the Home button and then change to that activity. This reduces the usability by like 70% since even if HA switches to the activity I need and queues up my media, I still have to hit two buttons on the remote to be able to control anything.
Am I missing something, or am I just going to have to rewrite all my HA stuff to include the logic for which “activity” is active and just have one activity on the Remote Two that always runs the same script in HA.
Oh, and I had to use HA for all the control because none of the built in Remote Two integrations work in a way that is useful to me (or use IR, and since the Dock is being extremely temperamental, so I can’t depend on the IR, that’s not an option, and another problem for another time).
It might be related, but that report looks like when call an activity from the remote. In my case I’m calling the activity from Home Assistant. It’s hard to say whether the solution would be the same. Anyway, I spent time this morning writing activity handling into HA, so now I just have one activity on the Remote two with one set of buttons, and when I change the HA based activity it remaps what the buttons do on the HA side.
It was a pain to setup, but now that it’s set, it’s easy enough to maintain.
Anyway, I spent time this morning writing activity handling into HA, so now I just have one activity on the Remote two with one set of buttons
Same situation as you. My strategy to smart home logic is the same. All devices go into Home Assistant. Stuff that doesn’t integrate nicely has got to go. Logic and automation goes into HA as all other solutions are just too naive, buggy or broken. But UI and frontends are painfull in HA, so those go into dedicated solutions. e.g. a nice hardware remote that can interface with HA
For all I care, UC can let go of all the integrations and tries to build fancy abstractions for activity configuration. Competing with the HA community on integrations looks like a fools erand anyway. If the Dock and remote could act as a HA device to control IR legacy stuff that would be splendid.
