Emulate Harmony when switching activities?

Hi. Logitech Harmony has the clever facility that when you switch activities (e.g. from watching a DVD to using a satellite box) it only powers off/on things that are changing, and only switches inputs that need to be switched. That is, things that are the same between activities are left alone and it does the minimum necessary changes. Does myServer6/SmartRemote support the same kind of behaviour?

Andrew

So I suppose I can answer this a bit myself now. I can see how you could program this yourself by having a set of current state variables (device A is on, device B is off, device C is on, device A is set to input AV1 etc.) and when you start a new activity ('scene' in myServer?) you compare how you want things to be with the current state variables, then just change things that differ. And then update the current state variables. But it would be nice if myServer had some kind of built in support for this sort of thing.

I am thinking use SmartRemote and just trigger Hub Actions.
The Hub does what it does today with the Harmony Remote.

I would later, move Actions as myServer macros and trigger Harmony Devices. You can implement this "anyway you want' with regards to Toggles, Discrete Power on / off (whatever the device supports), Pauses, If / Then operations, For / Next Loops, etc.

Then, move your Harmony Devices into myServer where drivers are available. Start with IR devices where there are really good odds that things are covered in myServer. If there is an IP driver, then use that instead of IR (and rewire the device).

So, you can do pretty much whatever you need to do. Ask how on the forum if the partial documentation that is available today doesn't cover the subject well.

It seems to be when starting and stopping activities that Harmony 'phones home' and stalls if it has trouble reaching the Logitech servers. So replacing Harmony activities is a high priority for me. However as I've been thinking about it I've realised that with my AV gear it's only really the source device that gets turned on and off during a session; the amp and TV stay on and it's only the amp that switches inputs. So (being a typical software developer) in my head I've been imagining a need for a totally generic, flexible solution with arbitrary numbers of devices going on and off and being configured when in reality it's a lot simpler.

And for anyone else reading this who's in it for migrating away from Harmony, I've found the current myServer Harmony documentation here: allonis.com/support/documentation?view=category&id=155 . It looks like as David implied above there is a gradual path for migrating away from Harmony in stages with no big bang cutover needed. Nice.