Lg webOS 3.0 Control workaround

[jbonzey]

Has anyone figured out how to power on/off a LG TV with webOS 3.0 from within Vera directly through luup or another approach as there is no addon?  Without the lg authentication I don't see how it's possible. I do have a harmony hub but so sick of it only controlling devices through IR as the tv didn't always turn on which drove me crazy.

One thing I have working is I put home-assistant on a raspberry pi3 and only loaded the lg webos component.  I then put a scene in vera using a virtual switch and as an action have it send a curl command within luup to send the following to the Home-assitant rest API:

os.execute [[curl -X POST -H "x-ha-access: mypassword" -H "Content-Type: application/json" http://192.168.0.254:8123/api/services/media_player/turn_on]]

This all works perfectly but seems insane I have to link to a vera competitor in order to do this for one function.  There are basically 2 tvs out there - LG and Samsung.  No LG addon seems to be a huge hole for everyone I would think.

Just wondering if anyone has a different approach.

[Nameless]

I feel your pain. My LG constantly unpairs from my phone app, so I had to use the remote to turn it on all the time. My solution, which works half the time, is to send a wake on LAN command from Vera. I setup a scene for the execution and now use Alexa to turn on the TV.

This isn't perfect, but at least gets the TV on 50% of the time which then my phone app pairs again. The LG app sucks for turning the TV on, regardless if I have the permissions enabled on the TV.

I did this setup because my LG is in my bedroom. The remote is usually laying on the dresser when I'm in bed and don't want to get up and get it.

[brucehvn]

The LG TV we bought last November has a text based network command interface documented in the manual.  It would allow turning off the TV (as well as controlling just about any other items), but you would need to use WOL to power it back on again.  It doesn't require any pin or password like the smartphone app.  The user manual shows how to connect via telnet to play with it.  I started writing a plugin to connect this way and while testing, the TV stopped responding to any of the commands.  I can still connect to the TV via telnet, but it just doesn't respond anymore.  I've been around and around with the support people and they tell me I will have to call a technician out, though they have also said it probably wouldn't be covered by the warranty even though the API is well documented in the manual.

I talked to a technician on JustAnswers.com and he said it sounds like the firmware had gotten corrupted and would need to be re-flashed.  I got a new OTA firmware update however and the problem still persists.  I did a full factory reset on the TV and everything.  So my development on the plugin has been abandoned until I can figure that out.

[jbonzey]

Brucehvn - could you post the tv model you have so I can find the manual you reference.  I haven't seen anything like this for my uh8500 purchased last year but hopeful I just missed it

[brucehvn]

Brucehvn - could you post the tv model you have so I can find the manual you reference.  I haven't seen anything like this for my uh8500 purchased last year but hopeful I just missed it

It's a 55UH6030.  The telnet feature has to be enabled via a special menu that they tell you how to bring up using the remote.

Bruce

[jbonzey]

Thanks Bruce and Nameless.   You got me thinking about WOL.  Turns out I was totally overthinking this.   I was able to create a scene using the "wake on LAN" app and the tv turns on immediately.  I don't have an issue with my harmony hub turning things off it was only the power on.   

Now if I can get all my scenes to show up in the new Alexa routine functionally they just added  I'll be able to fire the harmony scene and the vera wake on LAN scene together using Alexa  and I'm good.