Alexa Skill and Homematic Thermostat

Apps & Services Amazon Alexa
1

Hi,

has anyone configured a Homematic Thermostat in openhab to control it with alexa?
The thermostat has a heatingmode channel, but this is readonly.
To set the heating mode to manual, auto or boost you have to write values to other channels.

How can this be controlled with the alexa-skill?

Kind regards
Thomas

2

How did you configure your thermostat in OH?

3

Hi,

by the way:
is there a way to easy export item definitions as text, so i can post the configuration here in the forum?

I configured the thermostat as follows:

  1. I created a group for the thermostat with alexa-metadata “value: thermostat”.

  2. Underneath the group I configured items for currenttemperature and settemperature.
    (alexa-metadata “value: Thermostat.CurrentTemperature” and “value: Thermostat.SetTemperature”)

This is working as it should be.

  1. I have 4 items for the following channels:
    switch auto_mode
    switch boost_mode
    string control_mode
    number manu_mode

control_mode is the read-only value, which holds the status of the thermostat.
If you want to change the status, for example you have to switch auto_mode to on.
Then the thermostat switches to auto_mode, control_mode receives the value auto_mode and the switch turns back to off.

If you want to switch to manual mode, you have to send the temperature to manu_mode.
Then the thermostat switches to the desired temperature in manual mode, control_mode receives the value manu_mode

Is this enough or do you have any other questions?

Kind regards
Thomas

4

Use the API explorer in Developers Tools and query the /items/{itemname} endpoint specifying the metadata selector as “alexa”. Make sure to use code fences when pasting the output.

Did you create a proxy item that interacts with all these items when changing mode or do you actually control each item separately in OH?

5

Using a proxy item is the hint I was searching for. I will give it a try…