Intro
I've had a Logitech Harmony universal remote for years now, in fact I've had one since Windows XP was the newest thing on the block.
I used the remote and the accompanying special Windows software to configure it time and again.
However, Windows XP is long since end-of-lifed and the Logitech Harmony software never worked properly with Windows 7.
Moving Windows XP to a VirtualBox instance on my current Kubuntu computer worked, but I was never able to make the remote connect to the virtualized Windows XP environment.
I recently bought a new media device and needed to set it up with the remote, so now the need was greater than ever!
With the help of my friend Google I was able to find a guide to set up the firmware customizing using a Ubuntu terminal.
Supposedly there was a GUI availble too, but I never bothered.
This is how I did it.
Guide
I won't go into details, just add comments to parts where I got stumped.
- I started out here: https://openattitude.com/2011/01/27/how-to-set-up-a-harmony-remote-using-linux/.
Above site is gone. Below is a summary from https://web.archive.org/web/20181202091407/https://openattitude.com/2011/01/27/how-to-set-up-a-harmony-remote-using-linux/.
Install Concordance# apt-get install concordance
Check to see if remote is detected# concordance -i -v - You should now be set, but the guide in §1 doesn't tell you how to use Concordance.
- Enter the Google again. Go to this site: https://cheat.readthedocs.io/en/latest/logitech_harmony/index.html.
- The guide specifies Ubuntu 15.10 64-bit. I used 20.04 64-bit.
- The guide in §4 suggests to install some further packages, so do that.
- Follow the rest of the guide in §4.
- When downloading the firmware files, I initially used Google Chrome but nothing was saved.
I tried Firefox instead and behold, the first file was downloaded and I waited for the second, but it never came. - When reading the guide in §4 again, I still couldn't figure out where my second file was.
So I checked ther guide again and figured I should run the Connectivity.EZHex with Concordance anyway. - Now the second file showed up for downloading!
- After saving the second file, I ran Update.EZHex with Concordance and waited for wizard to finish.
- Testing the now freshly updated remote, it worked like a charm!
- We're done.
Logging in to the Logitech Harmony Member Web
The Logitech Harmony Member Web has a tendency to get stuck and loop on the Software Update Available page (the page with the woman in a turquise top holding a Logitech remote).
Bypassing this page is sort of crucial to login and edit your devices and activities.
Use the below link to get to the login page directly. Should you still loop, try clearing your browser's web cache, or use a private/incognito tab with your favourite web browser.
I've tested this with Firefox v136 on Kubuntu 24.04.2 and it worked fine.
Congruity
I've had some initial succes with using Congruity by installing mhgui on my Kubuntu-workstation.
Install it like this.
The tested version of Congruity was v20.
$ sudo apt install mhgui
You may need to create an account first on https://MyHarmony.com, but after that, it should be pretty straight-forward.
You also may, or may not have to do this on a Windows-computer. It's a bit unclear, as the Create Account-button on mhgui at first didn't do antyhing.
The day after it worked, don't know why though. Maybe Logitech had another web outage on their Harmony-sites.
Congruity update
Some parts of the guide have changed. The Concordance steps don't quite work like before, but still seems to be okay using Congruity.
Mhgui isn't available in the default Ubuntu repos anymore, but can be cloned from https://github.com/congruity/congruity.
This version of Congruity is v21-1.
Clone the repo
$ cd /home/sorin/git
$ git clone https://github.com/congruity/congruity.git
Install mhgui
NB! Use python3, not python as specified on the github installation guide above!
$ sudo python3 setup.py install
Start Congruity
Start mhgui from a terminal as a regular user and login. Choose a remote device and the rest should be self-explanatory.
$ mhgui
Click Sync Remote in the Remote Configuration-view, when you're done editing the activities and or the devices.
Sources
https://openattitude.com/2011/01/27/how-to-set-up-a-harmony-remote-using-linux/#comment-11381
https://cheat.readthedocs.io/en/latest/logitech_harmony/index.html
http://members.harmonyremote.com/EasyZapper/
https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/bionic/+package/congruity
https://williamfriesen.com/2017/07/09/logitech-harmony-linux.html
https://sourceforge.net/projects/congruity/
https://github.com/congruity/congruity
