All items were emulated as dimmable lights. You could ask Alexa to turn your wall plug to 50%. Not exactly correct. And actually people were complaining about that situation as well:
https://github.com/openhab/openhab2-addons/issues/4321
The OSRAM Plug emulation works in Europe. I’m fairly sure there is a plug that is recognised by Alexa US. Amazon wouldn’t add that feature just for the European market.
There is a official plug from amazon itself…
I guess that would be the non-hue-emulation path to do it - it would not get the hue-emulation benefits like “works with apple home-kit and Google and Alexa” in one go.
the fix that worked for me was to go to PaperUI -> Configuration -> Services -> Hue Emulation -> Configure, and then set ‘White item tags’ to be “Lighting,Switchable” instead of (just) “Lighting”.
I think I then had to do ‘discover devices’ again on Alexa.
I’ve done some experimenting and have come to the conclusion that US echos just do not support the “On/Off plug-in unit” type.
Did you try pairing plug-ins with a v1 Hue hub? If so, which plugs?
No, I ran it through a reverse proxy with a filter so I can alter the details. Basically, I’ve concluded that the manufacturer and model are irrelevant, since the echo will take any garbage in those fields and still recognize the device if it’s a supported type, like “Dimmable Light”. But it won’t recognize any devices of the type “On/Off plug-in unit” or “On/Off light” no matter what I put for the other fields. I would love to be wrong, but im fairy confident in my conclusions.
This hadn’t worked for me, so I’d changed ‘Switch item tags’ from Switchable to Lighting. After seeing your post, I tried again and it still didn’t work. Then I noticed you didn’t have a space separating them, and it worked. So for others using this workaround, don’t put a space between the tags!
Hmmm. Based on what I’ve gleaned from @David_Graeff in the issue, it seemed like the device details do matter, and that we might find one that is supported in the US. Switchable tags currently work outside the US, possibly due to the Osram plug (which is what is being used) is not available (and illegal due to the frequencies used) in the US. Something from Sylvania would be a US equivalent device.
The first thing I tried was replacing the OSRAM details with the Sylvania details I could find (Manufacturer Sylvania, Model 72922). I also tried some other known details such as those found in this project: https://github.com/ebaauw/homebridge-hue
Edit: accidentally pasted wrong link
This issue should be resolved. Space between items shouldn’t matter of course.
This would mean to map Switchables to Dimmable Lights for non European locales.
It either means, Amazon removed this functionality in newer firmwares or Amazon added a feature for the European product start, that was not in the original firmware (I can hardly imagine they did this).
Unfortunately, all evidence at hand shows this to be the case. Even if there is an On/Off plug-in unit that is supported by the US echos, it is already 100% apparent that they’re running a different feature set by the fact that they don’t support the OSRAM unit like the EU echos do.
IMHO Alexa local discovery is/will be deprecated and all future support will be skills/cloud integration. As an example Logitech’s choice to remove the local API on the Harmony remotes under the guise of a security vulnerability. This done ostensibly to monetize the data collected. Amazon via skills puts the burden of integration on the manufacturer
Not entirely sure on that to be honest. At the same time they are trying to perform local voice recognision of HA related commands and try to make Alexa work offline to some degree.
Hi @all,
i am from Germany and faced a similar issue:
After i’ve updated to openHAB 2.4 ALEXA doesn’t find items tagged as “Switchable” any more.
I left the Hue Emulation configuration at standard settings exept I turned on the ‘Amazon Echo device discovery fix’.
After reading several posts I did a quick test just to see what’s discovered at all:
With the following configuration ALEXA discoveres only “Lighting” and “ColorLighting” devices.
Switch test04 "test 04" ["Switchable"]
Switch test05 "test 05" ["Lighting"]
Switch test06 "test 06" ["ColorLighting"]
Dimmer test07 "test 07" ["Switchable"]
Dimmer test08 "test 08" ["Lighting"]
Dimmer test09 "test 09" ["ColorLighting"]
Color test10 "test 10" ["Switchable"]
Color test11 "test 11" ["Lighting"]
Color test12 "test 12" ["ColorLighting"]
So only test05, 06, 08, 09, 11 and 12 are discovered. (I tried discovering from Echo, Echo Spot, WebIF and Alexa App with same results)
I also tested with the ‘HUE Essentials’ App on my smartphone, where all devices are discovered correctly.
The items tagged as “Switchable” are discovered as ‘Osram Lightify Plug Model Plug 01’.
Therefore I assume it’s a problem an Amazon’s side.
Has anyone figuered out a solution for this issue?
Amazon is slowly fading out local Hue support apparently (and especially now as they have Echo Plus etc).
Some devices can still recognise Osram Plugs, others can’t. There is no pattern. Workaround is of course to change the tag for Switchables to “Lighting”.
Thanks for the fast reply.
So a solution is to use myopenhab instead?
This adds a latency of about 2 seconds to each command. I rather live with an undocumented local hue support, personally. But it’s your choice of course.
Hi David,
I live im Germany too and I have several Alexa devices (Echo, Spot, Show) and none of them regonices the OSRAM unit. I had to change all my Openhab items to “Lighting”.
Best regrads,
Michael
When did you purchase your Echos? Maybe Osram is not supported at all any more in new Echo batches?