Roon Extension: Deep Harmony - rich feature set for Logitech Harmony

[Adam_Goodfellow]

@gTunes

You don’t need to educate me on how extensions work There are obviously gaps in my understanding. Maybe there’s a formal “volume extension” protocol in which extensions such as Deep Harmony can take ownership of volume. That would make sense. I’m pretty sure that isn’t what extensions such as Home Assistant and rooExtend to, though - they seem to just be making volume adjustment API calls.

Control only extensions that only send volume/mute and transport changes INTO Roon are very easy to implement and has nothing to do with this issue.

[Richard_Neale]

@DrCWO : did you solve this? Very keen to install Deep Harmony on rooExtend running on Pi4. I have rooExtend up and running, have enabled the Extension Manager, but can’t select (can’t see) Deep Harmony…

(Of course, when you implement IR out from rooExtend/rooDial via FLIRC, I won’t need to do this!

[DrCWO (C.W. Oehlrich)]

I’m afraid no
rooExtend (v3.x.x) runs on an ARMv8 and as far as I know Deep Harmony is not (and probably will never be) compatible with ARMv8.

So you need a second Pi, maybe a Zero W to run the Application Manager with Deep Harmony on it. Other alternative as far as I know is a x86 Linux system. I apologize for the inconvenience. I asked @Adam_Goodfellow and he refuses to update it

IR with FLIRC USB is on my list since some time but I have to solve the time delay issue with the Microsoft Surface Dial before I start with a new Roon Extension. I promised it as so may are waiting for it…

Best DrCWO

[Richard_Neale]

Thanks @DrCWO . I’ll have a play with the recommended approach while watching for other developments.

I see that you already have a volume control presentation to hardware in the rooControl extension… so you are already on the path.

A long time ago, there was talk that Roon would develop a driver for something like the GlobalCache iTach IP to IR box… but nothing seemed to come of it. Given the IR learning capability of the GlobalCache device, this would have provided a more-or-less universal ability to control devices (pre-amps, etc.) that accept only IR volume/mute commands using the in-Roon volume buttons. I guess this is what you are targeting with the potential future extension to drive IR commands out of a FLIRC device.

For me, the desire is to control the volume on a DALI Sound Hub Compact (which is an IR-only device). Currently, I have programmed a simple 6-button IR remote to control the Sound Hub Compact (volume and mute) and a RoPieee (with FLIRC connected - for play/pause, next/previous). Where I am trying to head is to use the superior tactile UI of the Microsoft Surface Dial (currently greatly reduced in Australia, selling at under Eur65 brand new from Microsoft). I know this will work for play/pause and next/previous (for my RoPieee streamer/DAC), but I also need volume and mute. First step will be to try Deep Harmony to send the IR volume/mute commands to the Sound Hub, but I’m hoping one day to use your extension (with FLIRC hardware, or this or this or this.

But I guess you already knew that.

Richard.

[Henry_Svendblad]

Carl,

Not sure if you ever got around to getting a Harmony? I have had one for a while but wasn’t using it with Roon. I just got a second hub on eBay (for $30) and set it up in my Harmony system. Installed, the harmony-remote docker image on my Linux/NUC and it just worked with minimal tinkering.

This solves the two outstanding issues for RME and Roon.

1. I can now power ON my RME and AMP from Roon.
2. I can use RME volume. It also works with rooExtend controls. You don’t get the same experience, but it works.

I am happy to help if you are still thinking of supporting from within your controllers?

I could see the use of a power on/power off button that can be mapped to a gesture or button this also opens you up to supporting home automation and anything that can me mapped to harmony.

Cheers!

[DrCWO (C.W. Oehlrich)]

Hi Herry,
I know that rooExtend works with the DeepHarmony Roon extension. It is a shame that the author of it did not want to make it available for 64Bit Linux. So it can’t be used with rooExtend even if the Application Manager got enabled

There is a guy here on the forum called @Friedemann_Wachsmuth. He built a little IR board as a Raspberry PI HAT. This board can be controlled by rooControl to send infrared commands. Only thing you have to do is enable rooControl, select the offered GPIO output and add volnume and power control offered by rooControl to Roon.

I asked @Friedemann_Wachsmuth to make this board available to others but it seams he lost interest in the project. If you like just ask him.

On the other hand I ordered a FLIRC USB dongle last week, plus the FLIRC remote control. I plan to build a rooIR Roon Extension so Roon can be controlled by this Remote but also offer the ability to remte control other IR devices using the built in IR-transmitter of the FLIRC USB dongle.

If you are lucky this will be ready till end of this year.

Best DrCWO

[Henry_Svendblad]

Carl,

Thanks for sharing. I see Harmony is discontinued and it seems FLIRC could easily work as an alternative. A device like this Broadlink might also provide some flexibility and seems to support a wide number of devices and APIs IR/RF UNIVERSAL REMOTE-Broadlink博联智能. IR support in rooExtend makes sense to me, I am happy to help with any testing if you need it. For me Deep Harmony is a very nice addition to Roon.

EDIT: Here is a link to their SDK —> BroadLink Document

[Friedemann_Wachsmuth]

@DrCWO

There is a guy here on the forum called @Friedemann_Wachsmuth. He built a little IR board as a Raspberry PI HAT. This board can be controlled by rooControl to send infrared commands. Only thing you have to do is enable rooControl, select the offered GPIO output and add volnume and power control offered by rooControl to Roon.

I asked @Friedemann_Wachsmuth to make this board available to others but it seams he lost interest in the project. If you like just ask him.

I didn’t lose interest, but I lost time
…and then Raspi Zeros became unobtainium for quite a while.

I think I still have 5 prototype boards here. As any first revision, they have a couple of flaws, do for a production version, I’d need to touch the PCB layout again. I think there were also minor things missing on the software side… so not ready to sell yet, but close!

I might find time for this in december again. Is there any interest…?

[Richard_Neale]

I’m very interested in either solution… something to send IR volume commands to a device that is not Roon aware. I have a spare FLIRC…

[Dmitriy_Kagarlickij]

I’ve got Harmony Hub & remote today and couldn’t make it work because Harmony iOS app fails to connect to server (from Reddit I’ve got that it’s a common issue)
Extension can see the Hub, but I connect remote to it and can’t use iOS app to learn commands for my Chord TT2
Any ideas how it could be fixed?

@DrCWO it would be great to have rooIR, waiting for it a lot!

[AleSlo (Alexey Slobozhaninov)]

I have installed Deep Harmony on my Synology DS 720+. It is running, but roon core do not show it in Expansion tab. What should I do to fix the issue?

[Zeki_Mustafa (Banned)]

hi Adam, im not familiar with harmony so few questions pls:

• do i just need to buy any harmony remote and a hub to get going?
• can you set a playlist as one of the 10 presets and have it shuffle by default? and what are the steps to play one of these number shortcuts - just press it or hold it down or?
• can the server part of this run on a mac? sorry don’t really understand docker images
• are there any videos or guides anywhere on how this actually functions?

thx

[Simon_Arnold3 (Simon Arnold)]

Yes you need their hardware, it’s an extension to control using it.

You just press the assigned buttons to activate them and no it won’t shuffle it just plays them. Most of your answers are here :

GitHub - Khazul/roon-extension-deep-harmony-release:...

As for docket it can run on Mac you will just have to configure it. It’s much easier to use a Raspberry Pi with Diet Pi installed and Roon Extension manager installed to help set up this and other extensions painlessly.

[Zeki_Mustafa (Banned)]

thx, if it wont shuffle its no good to me, im looking for a one click solution to playing tracks and playlists and i dont want the same track order every time

[Simon_Arnold3 (Simon Arnold)]

It would need to be available in the Roon API to do this. You can set shuffle on/off with another button. Check out the mappings in the link I gave you,

[Philipp_Hamacher]

Just tried to set up Deep Harmony. Roon extension is showing, but get “No Harmony hubs discovered”. Roon is running on a Mac Mini and Deep Harmony on a Pi via docker. Any suggestions?

[Simon_Arnold3 (Simon Arnold)]

Did you set it up so it’s using host address if not it’s on an isolated network it needs to run on same subnet as the hub and core do.

[Philipp_Hamacher]

Yes it’s running on host network. Same as home assistant (same pi). HA can talk to Harmony hub.

[Anthro]

@Adam_Goodfellow

If you want to get Roon to accept Volume control from your phone buttons and send those instructions to an extension (ie Deep Harmony) so it can send IR etc then that appears to needs a change to Roon code and therefore a feature request to Roon. If they should choose to implement this and assuming they implemented it via the existing mechanism (there is no reason why not), then it would automatically work with the existing release of Deep Harmony. There is nothing I can do about this, nor need to do.

I suggest you open a feature request about it on the line of pass phone volume control buttons to extensions.

@Adam_Goodfellow A while back I made a ticket as you advised me, but hardly anyone seems to have noticed this feature request. I believe it would bring allot of added value to the extension if physical volume buttons would let me adjust my amps volume through deep harmony.

Perhaps you opening this feature request and linking it in this topic would give it the attention the request needs. Thanks in advance.

[Dennis_Mutsaers]

Deep Harmony stopped working (after changing the ip range of my home network), so I decided to start from scratch. I’ve created a new dietpi instance, added Roon Extension Manager and Deep Harmony. Configured Deep Harmony in Roon Extensions, but when I want to add Roku in the Harmony app it doesn’t find the Roku remote. Any suggestions?

p.s. When running the Deep Harmony console application on my Windows notebook the Harmony app can find a Roku remote on my network.
When running the Deep Harmony console application on my Roon server (Linux, Ubuntu) the Harmony app is unable to find the Roku remote (same result as when using the extension manager).