Television Service

Note

It is recommended that beginners get comfortable with Node Red and more simple HomeKit configurations of this plugin before attempting to set up Television Service.

Services

The Television Service is a complicated one. At its most basic it will be an on/off device that can send and receive the message {"Active":0} and {"Active":1}. In order to use additional features there needs to be linked services including (but not limited to) Input Source and Television Speaker.

Currently the example below has:

Television Service
Television Speaker as child service of Television Service
Input 0 as child service of Television Service
Input 1 as child service of Television Service
Input 2 as child service of Television Service
Input 3 as child service of Television Service

Example With Speaker and 4 inputs

This example will show a television service with 4 inputs and a speaker (volume control). There are two functions that should be used to name your specific devices. These functions are Setup TV and Setup Inputs.

Setup TV: This function will be run 5 seconds after startup or whenever the TV Setup inject node is triggered. Change the name on line 1 of the function. The output message is sent to the Television Service to initialize the name and set the TV to {"Active":0} (TV off).

Setup Inputs: This function will be run 6 seconds after startup or whenever the Source Setup inject node is triggered. The following variables are available:

Lines 5 through 8 will name your sources
Lines 24 through 27 will set the input type according to the values in lines 11 through 21

Setting the HomeKit item based on TV state

There are various inject nodes which can be used to send information from your television (Vizio API, Onkyo device, Samsung TV, LG TV, etc). It is up to you as the user to set this up according to your hardware. Use the provided inject nodes as a template to begin understanding the payloads expected by the Television Service.

Please note that the Television Speaker and Input Source service items DO NOT receive any input after initial configuration.

Setting TV state based on HomeKit output

There are two debug nodes provided. These can be used as examples of the output coming from HomeKit nodes to set up your system accordingly.

The State and source output debug node will output the following payloads:

{"Active":0/1} for TV state off/on
{"Input":0-3} for changing inputs from HomeKit
{"RemoteKey":various} for various integers when using the control center remote (See bottom of this page for a list of known codes)

The Volume output debug node will output the following payloads:

{"VolumeSelector":0} when control center remote press is "Increase Volume"
{"VolumeSelector":1} when control center remote press is "Decrease Volume"

The Input Source services will output payloads like {"ConfiguredName":"Name"} if the name is changed from HomeKit. If you would like to change your input names from within HomeKit rather than the Set up inputs function, it can be done but is beyond the scope of this example.

Screenshots and Node Red Code

PLEASE NOTE The linked services will need to re-select the parent service if the node red code below is copied to your system. This example should work with plugin version 1.0.4 or newer.

View from Node Red

Screen Shot 2020-04-08 at 1 26 09 PM