I am using Vera Plus to control Zigbee light switches, and OpenHAB 2 to automate these light switches. This allows me to keep local control of my home automation and not depend on the cloud for basic control. The wish for home automation control that is cloud independent is why I don’t want Alexa Echo Plus to be my Zigbee controller for devices.
For the additional luxury of voice command, I am willing to cede control to the Amazon Cloud. Thank you for this Alexa OpenHAB 2 skill, and of course, OpenHAB! Everything is working very well.
I’ve added my Vera Plus devices to OpenHAB 2 as items, then add these items using: [ “Lighting” ] flag to Alexa Smart Home.
Alexa has a new ESP feature, where you can group an Alexa Echo in the same room as your devices under Alexa Smart Home, and say “Alexa, turn off lights” to turn off all the lights in only that room. As expected, smart appliance switches, even when connected to lights, are not affected by this command.
Smart light switches connected to Alexa Echo Plus (Zigbee hub) will be seen a lights, and can be controlled as above. However, the same light switches controlled by Vera Plus hub, exported to OpenHAB 2 and added to Alexa Smart Home are not seen as lights, and thus not listen to “Alexa turn off lights” commands.
Is this an extra attribute that must be set by the Alexa OpenHAB 2 skill on the devices it exposes to Alexa so that she sees them as lights?
Thanks. Hopefully this is the case, and that it’s a simple update for OpenHAB Alexa skill to use the new API for lights to work as “real” lights, and perhaps even differentiation between lights and appliances. As of right now, Alexa does partially think the OpenHAB controlled lights are lights, because “Alexa, turn off kitchen lights” will work (regardless of whether item is light or appliance switch, which is bothersome), but ESP “Alexa, turn off lights” in the same room as an Alexa doesn’t.
I finally got around to setting this up and i’m a little confused. I have all my items tagged properly ( with [“Lighting”] in my .item file ) and Alexa can discover them all just fine and quickly but if I try to use Alexa to control any of them I get “device is unresponsive” or “server is unresponsive”. I’m not sure where to begin, it seems like the communication all the way through is fine and myopenhab shows online, nor do I see any disconnects in my openhab.log file.
Are there just general issues at the moment if so, is there somewhere that can be checked like http://downforeveryoneorjustme.com or something on the openhab.org website i’m missing? I’m running the just released 2.2 version on Openhabian for what it’s worth.
Regarding Groups In Alexa App
It seems like Smart Home Groups are enabled in the Alexa App. You can create a group and name it(e.g. “Kitchen”) and then selected the echo that’s in that area and the devices in that area. Then, In theory, I should be able to say “Turn off the lights” when I’m in the kitchen.
It doesn’t work. Alexa responds: “Sorry, I didn’t find lights”
Has anyone gotten this to work yet? Is the verbal command correct?
Related to the Smart Skill itself, Alexa fails to find one of my Z-wave devices. I can see it just fine and control it from the panel UI… but Alexa can’t see it. How do I debug that?
Maybe you have to create a group with a simple groupname in Alexa APP e.g. “Kitchen”. Then put your device into the group.
EDIT: In your given example you have to tell: “Alexa what is Elias temperature’s temperature?” Because your device has the label ‘Elias Temperature’. So you have to tell it doubled. Maybe you can also shorten your label to ‘Elias’ or ‘Oliver’.
There is mention of “Homekit style grouping” and the items being Tagged and to see the Homekit Binding readme, but we do not have to install the HomeKit binding.
Are we LIMITED by the homekit binding or is that just referenced for the typical syntax?
I have a number of Contacts on my doors (alarmdecoder) and sprinklers (modbus) and want to add some to my Garage Door “Alexa is the garage door open?”
What needs to be done to get other OpenHAB Items supported?
After a quick look I think Contacts are the only other items that may need support.
(edit)
humm… I just found and looked at the API Reference and there is NO support to Query any devices besides a themostat!
I was looking at other Alexa skills, like Scout (Alarm System) and they have additional commands where you tell alexa to ask (or Tell) SKILL-NAME something, like:
Alexa, ask Scout about the bedroom window sensor.
Can the opehnab skill support that?
Alexa ask openhab about Garage Door
Where “Garage Door” is a tag or some other configurable field in the item/thing.
I am new to RPi3 / openhab2 so please bear with me. I have openHAB2 image installed on my pi and by using the paper UI I was able to install the Z-wave add-ons and bindings and discover my lights. I can control then from the PI and I have setup Openhab cloud and can access and control my lights from my phone.
I installed the Amazon Skill and I could not discover any of my devices. I manually added a couple of items to my items config file and Alexa can see those and tries to control them but alas they do not respond to her attempts.
I am sure it is some thing where I am not connecting the dots do to extreme n00b syndrom.
I have read and read and searched and searched but alas I find no answers.
If I setup items in the PaperUI will alexa discover them or do I need to have a hand built Items file?
I am just discovering the PaperUI has its own database storing all of the configurations but it does not seem to write anything to the Items file, is that my problem?
Not looking for exact steps to resolve this just information and a shove in the right direction.
Thanks in advance for any assistance you can provide.
Alex, Yes I have although I am not sure I am understanding everything I read. I came away with the understanding that Alexa got its information from the OpenHAB cloud connector, Thus my confusion,
My openhab Cloud connection works with my cell Phone to control the Z-wave lights in question but Alexa cannot, unless something in my manually created Items config file is stopping it from finding my Openhab working items.
Here is what is in my Items file or I am missing a tag ore something.
// This is the items File
// Light Switches
Switch DiningRMLight “Dining Room Light”[“Lighting”]
Switch LivingRMLight “Living Room Light”[“Lighting”]
Unfortunately I do not know how to query the Database to see what the working items are called or configured
