The Sofabaton X2 remote control recently launched for $289, excluding shipping and taxes. It features a database of 500,000 device codes and is already integrated with Home Assistant. The average battery life is said to be 30 days.
Do any Homey users already have the X2, and are there sufficient options for creating a user-friendly connection with Homey? YouTube already has several first-impression videos of the X2.
At first glance, this seems like a good successor to the Logitech Harmony. The delivery time is currently 15 days.
The Sofabaton supports MQTT (local) and IP addresses (webhook cloud).
So I think manual configuration for a Homey connection is possible. A user-friendly Homey app might be a next step. Are there any skilled developers who feel called upon to create a nice Homey app for this?
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I would like to share my first experiences with the Homey integration on my Sofabaton X2.
MQTT
First I installed 3 MQTT Homey apps:
- MQTT broker: MQTT server
- MQTT client: sending en receiving MQTT messages to and from devices
- MQTT hub: (not mandatory) setup MQTT communication channels for external apps to discover and control the Homey devices. Activate the Home Assistant Discovery option during setup and activate the devices to be synced with X2.
In the Sofabaton X2 app I defined the Connection to Home Assistant, which is in fact a MQTT connector with Home Assistant protocol.
In the X2 app define MQTT devices. Only give them a name, and the device_id and key_id (=button id) will be generated.
Install MQTT Explorer (not mandatory, but Homey MQTT hub app recommended) to visualize MQTT trafic, and to get the X2 unique device number and device parameters.
In Homey define a flow with the MQTT client to trigger the X2 device activity. Filter with logic on device_id and key_id (one text variable), and execute your Homey command (in my case switch lights on or off)
The X2 device could look like this:
Webhook
With api calls (webhooks) it is possible to start a X2 activity (activate multiple devices, like: turn on tv, receiver and speakers, and select channel 1). Activating the X2 api interface, the app generates an url.
Copy the X2 url link and paste this in a Homey flow POST logic. In this case: start activity view TV.
Developers of Home Assistant have created a complete X2 integration, which is fully documented on GitHub. Hopefully someone with programming skills can create a Sofabaton X2 integration for Homey, allowing more possibilities and a more user friendly interface.
