Home Assistant - Button Entities as activity commands or key mappings

General
1

Would it be possible for a Home Assitant button entity to be useable as a command in an activity. I have a SkyQ Satellite box, the remote control commands are media_player service commands that are not available in the remote UI. However I could link each service call to a button entity. The button entity is available in the remote UI, but I can’t use it as a command within the UI, I think it possibly appears as a blank “available command” but I can’t choose it. Hope this makes sense ?

2

I had the same problem, not be able to use the button entity so i created a bug report here: Home Assistant "input_button" entity type (simple button) not working · Issue #13 · unfoldedcircle/bug-reports · GitHub

3

Can you assign a Home Assistant script to a remote button? If so, you could have a HA script for each remote control command and then assign that script to a remote button. Since you were apparently going to have to assign them to something anyway, that shouldn’t be too much more work.

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I don’t think that’s possible, but I’d love someone to tell me I’m wrong and tell me how to do it.

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I really hope it’s possible, because it’s the only way I’m going to be able to get this remote to work in my environment. Since you can’t change the physical remote to a different layout via API, I need a way to dynamically assign an action to a key based on stuff in HA. That means a script? Why do I need that? Because I have some things that run that can change the state of my media devices based on other inputs, and if I can’t change the remote to match then I need to leave the remote static and have HA know what state things are in and act accordingly. I know this is a bit of an edge case, as the Unfolded Circle folks have been clear that this a thing that controls other things, not something that responds to other things. But without one of these two, I’ll end up having to pass on this remote. It’ll be useless for me.

I didn’t back it, so I’m waiting for pre-ordering to happen. Hopefully that’ll give things some time to change in ways that are useful for me.

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