Can you use Siri on your phone or watch to turn off your Apple TV? When I turn off my Apple TV, my actual TV automatically turns off too. This would be cool if it could... If so, do I need to set it up in Homekit or anywhere else? Thanks.
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Can Siri "Turn off Apple TV"?
- Thread starter legaleye3000
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But, can it be done with Siri?
I will give it a try later, but in my experience, Siri is pretty dumbed-downed for tvOS. It is disappointing considering Siri is already not the best.
I cannot use Siri on the [physical] remote (or is that just a microphone and not siri?) to turn off the Apple TV.
It will tell you to long-press the TV Button and select turn off...or maybe it just turns off after that. and mine will also turn off the actual TV as well when I do that.
It will tell you to long-press the TV Button and select turn off...or maybe it just turns off after that. and mine will also turn off the actual TV as well when I do that.
So it seems to be no on both accounts:
a) Siri won't do it for you
b) appleTV will shut off all connected devices, not just itself. This feature is non-configurable, in current implementation.
I played a bit with Homekit, configured on my iPad and Apple TV. Both on version 12 beta. I believe (because I am not sure at all. It's very confusing), that Homekit can use the Apple TV as a hub, but not as an accessory. Still it gets added and one can see it in the "At Home" (? I believe that's its name in English) app. From there the only thing I can do is touch the ATV icon and that pause the ATV, in my case pausing the music played from "Computer".
That's it. The automations do not show anything, configuring the ATV on At Home just shows the options to change room/device name. So I doubt it would connect to Siri at all. Still, as a workaround you can use the Apple TV Remote app: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201664.
But I believe we must be on the same LAN. And one would use it blindly if in a different place.
That's it. The automations do not show anything, configuring the ATV on At Home just shows the options to change room/device name. So I doubt it would connect to Siri at all. Still, as a workaround you can use the Apple TV Remote app: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201664.
But I believe we must be on the same LAN. And one would use it blindly if in a different place.
For me the single use of aTV as homekit hub is that I can access my accessories over internet from anywhere.
And I believe in my setup (only Elgato Eve devices) aTV still needs to be able to connect to accessories over Bluetooth.
I had to relocate it in my room to reliably get a connection from outside home.
And I believe in my setup (only Elgato Eve devices) aTV still needs to be able to connect to accessories over Bluetooth.
I had to relocate it in my room to reliably get a connection from outside home.
I have this working, but you will need to buy some hardware and it requires some setup.
I have a Logitech Harmony universal remote with an activity called Watch Apple TV that turns everything (TV/AVR/ATV) on and off. Then I have Homebridge setup on a Raspberry Pi to enable Homekit for unsupported devices like the Harmony remote. So with all this setup I can say "Hey Siri turn off watch apple TV" and it works.
You could modify the Harmony remote sequence to do whatever you want like just turn off the ATV if you like, or switch over to a DVD player... things like that. Any activities you setup in the Harmony remote will show up as Homekit commands on your iOS devices.
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@Weaselboy That's interesting. I didn't think about the option to have a bridge to support non Homekit devices. I investigate a bit and I discovered there is Homebridge (also for macOS) indeed. One needs to install homebrew and Node (npm), as described in this instruction, but after that I have seen a post in reddit from a guy that controlled even his PS4. I believe it shouldn't be had to create a plugin for the Apple Tv if one isn't available already.
Here's one that is currently up: https://www.npmjs.com/package/homebridge-apple-tv
I'm not sure of the reliability as I have mine set up through the harmony hub plugin like Weasleboy. Homebridge is fun to play around with and there are tons of plugins on the npmjs site. One thing to be weary of is certain phrasing can trigger an error when using Siri. Such as "hey siri turn on the tv" always gave me an error, but "hey siri PLEASE turn on the tv" in the custom scene works flawlessly
I couldn't make that one working. Actually I spent nearly a day and not a single ATV plugin I tested did the job. Would you mind sharing the config.json file?
Here's the sample config.json for the plugin I referenced: https://lprhodes.github.io/homebridge-apple-tv-slate/#homebridge-apple-tv
Its crucial to make sure your homebridge and node.js version are specific to the plugin or this can cause a lot of headaches. I'm currently updating my complete setup as I'm running an older version of homebridge, so I'll get you my .json file for the harmony hub plugin as soon as I get it up and running this weekend. My current configuration could conflict with the version you're trying to run.
@Bgosh All right, thanks. I'll take a look. I had many headaches indeed, so after my first day of tries I gave up. The JS was failing with a byte being 8 bits instead of 6 bits, something like that. I went a bit through the code, but it didn't make any sense to me (and I am not a JS expert at all either).
@Michelasso sure thing. I'm far from a js expert as well, but spent a lot of time scouring GitHub for solutions to errors that were similar to my own. Feel free to shoot me a PM and I'll try and help where I can.