Alexa and my AC

Apps & Services openHAB Cloud
1

Hi everyone!

I hope you can help me. I went over the documentation, also tried to find any similar topic on community forums but no success so far.

I have my openhab ecosystem up and running and I’m very satisfied. Recently I added a new gadget to my home, Echo Dot. I followed the setup instructions and I’m halfway successfull.

I successfully added Temperature reading from my mihome sensors to alexa.
I successfully added AC Power ON/OFF to alexa and voice command.

Next what I want is to add 2 more things, which I have on my AC sitemap and rules - target temperature setting and ac mode.

This is my dummy items file:

Group gAC

Number ACTemp "AC Temp Setting" (gAC) ["TargetTemperature"]

Switch ACPower "AC Power" (gAC) ["Switchable"]

Number ACMode "AC Mode" (gAC) ["Switchable"]

First I tried without group and ony the ACPower switch was detected. Later I added tags to ACTemp and ACMode, but alexa doesn’t detect them.

Sitemap for this items is like:

sitemap ir label="Mi IR Remote" {
    Default item=ACPower label="AC Power"
    Setpoint item=ACTemp icon="temperature" label="AC Temp [%.1f °C]" minValue=23 maxValue=25 step=1
    Switch item=ACMode icon="climate" label="AC Mode" mappings=[0="Cool", 1="Heat", 2="Dry"]
}

So what am I missing. I think I followed instructions well, but only the “AC Power” switch is detected with alexa, other items not. All the items are working ok, sitemap does everything requested.

Any ideas/help?
Thank you!

2

If I change [“TargetTemperature”] to [“CurrentTemperature”] for example, the device is discovered.

3

You need to define the whole set of items:

Group gDownstairsThermostat "Downstairs Thermostat" (gFF) [ "Thermostat" ]
Number DownstairsThermostatCurrentTemp "Downstairs Thermostat Current Temperature" (gDownstairsThermostat) [ "CurrentTemperature" ]
Number DownstairsThermostatTargetTemperature "Downstairs Thermostat Target Temperature" (gDownstairsThermostat) [ "TargetTemperature" ]
String DownstairsThermostatHeatingCoolingMode "Downstairs Thermostat Heating/Cooling Mode" (gDownstairsThermostat) [ "homekit:TargetHeatingCoolingMode" ]
4

Hi sihui,

With whole group it worked. So I got my AC ON/OFF and target temp working with voice commands. Only thing not working is "Target Mode. I always receive “I don’t know how to set AC to that setting”. My commands are “Set AC to Heat” or “Set AC to Heating mode”.

Group gAC "AC" ["Thermostat"]

Number ACTemp "AC Temp Setting" (gAC) ["TargetTemperature"]

Number AC_Temp "AC Current" (gAC) ["CurrentTemperature"]

Switch ACPower "AC Power" (gAC) ["Switchable"]

String ACMode "AC Mode" (gAC) ["homekit:TargetHeatingCoolingMode"]

Tried “ACMode” with string or number. No command is sent to openhab.

What am I missing? :slight_smile:

5

I’m not using this feature so can’t comment.
But I remember reading a post about it, you may find it through the search function

6

Maybe this topic helps.

But it depends on the modes of your AC.

Normally they are:

OFF, HEAT, COOL, AUTO, heat-cool” or “0,1,2,3"

But I never tried these settings.

E.g. my thermostats have 3 main modes. MANUAL, AUTOMATIC, BOOST.

I created a rule.

1 Like
7

yeah, but first I would like alexa to send a command in the first place, which is not happening.

With my rules AC supports 0,1,2. But that can easily be adjusted. For now I want alexa to actually send a command to openhab. When I catch that, I can create a rule.

8

But I never tried these settings with mappings.

E.g. my thermostats have 3 main modes. MANUAL, AUTOMATIC, BOOST.

I created a rule.

See here.

But this may also help while using mappings.

9

Will try this guide and let you know.

Meanwhile, do you mybe know how to debug alexa voice commands? I want to see if alexa correctly receives the right command and what it does?

Br

10

@mitabrev

Go to Alexa APP–> Menu --> Alexa Privacy --> Voice Command Recordings --> There you can read the exact text what Alexa understood and you also can hear your command again.

If there are lines like “no text saved” you also can hear the recordings.

You could try utterances like this: “Alexa set heating to heat mode” Or “set heating to 0”

11

Hi all,

I went the other, easier way.

My AC has 3 modes - COOL, HEAT and DRY. I basically just need COOL and HEAT. So I created a dummy switch “Heat” with just ON/OFF functions. So “ON” sends command to set AC mode to Heat (already configured before with rules) and “OFF” sends command to set AC mode to Cool.

Now I got what I need.:slight_smile: I could also create another dummy switch for the dry/auto options but no need (for now).

Thank you for help and most of all ideas!
M