Official Alexa Smart Home Skill for openHAB 2

Can you explain, I guess I don’t understand what feature you are talking about.

You can group your Items like here ( http://docs.openhab.org/addons/io/homekit/readme.html#additional-notes ) , but this seems to me like a workaround.

I think it is just designed that way at the moment, it does not look like a workaround:

Great news - well done on getting this launched. It’s a milestone :slight_smile: :heart_eyes: :smile:

Hi,
I received my Alexa Echo Dot yesterday. It took very little time to get it all set up and to control my lights and switches using voice only.

However, in 1 out of 5 attempts, Alexa responds with “Sorry, the device is not responding”. In some cases, the lights are turned on anyway (with a few additional seconds of delay). In most of the cases where Alexa says “not responding”, nothing happens at all.

If I go to http://alexa.amazon.com, to check on these devices, the status of them is also “offline”.

Anyone an idea on the cause? A network glitch between MyOpenHAB and Amazon, maybe?

There are a lot of outages on the openHABcloud since a couple of days, I’m seeing the exactly same behavior as you are describing …

Same. I wonder if the recent issues with S3 have caused the problems?

No - unfortunately, the node.js server of myopenHAB.org currently struggles a bit.
@digitaldan is intensely looking into it and tries to find solutions for it, but it is not that straight forward as many different factors seem to come together and the cause for sudden server halts is not easily identifiable. We are monitoring the service and currently restart the server as quickly as we manage to, if it hangs again.
I hope that there’ll be a better solution than that soon.

@digitaldan: Hi, I think I have the same problems as @Rob_Pope. In my living room I have three thermostats. What I want to do is that by telling Alexa: “Set Wohnzimmerheizung to 22 degrees” all three Thermostat will be updated. From your link to the HomeKit group syntax and the setup from @Rob_Pope I came up with this items configuration:

Group GWz "Wohnzimmerheizung" ["Thermostat"]

Number WZHeizung1 "Wohnzimmerheizkörper links [%.1f °C]" <heating> (GWz) ["TargetTemperature"]
Number WZTemp "Wohnzimmer Temperatur [%.1f °C]" <temperature> (GWz) ["CurrentTemperature"]
Number WZHeizung2 "Wohnzimmerheizkörper mitte [%.1f °C]" <heating> (GWz) ["TargetTemperature"]
Number WZHeizung3 "Wohnzimmerheizkörper rechts [%.1f °C]" <heating> (GWz) ["TargetTemperature"]
String DummyCoolingMode "Dummy Cooling Mode" (GWz) ["homekit:HeatingCoolingMode"]

The item DummyCoolingMode is updated by following rule:

rule "Set Cooling Mode"
when
        Item WZTemp received update
then
        DummyCoolingMode.postUpdate("AUTO")
end

When I tell Alexa to change the temperature I get the “device does not support that command” answer from her.
Can you or someone see any mistakes in my setup?

Could it be that you have to say
"Setze Wohnzimmerheizkörper links auf 22"

German language is not the clue but the label “Wohnzimmerheizkörper links” which needs to include the e.g. “links”

Because of @sihui post I thought I have to call the group label. Also “Heizkörper links” is the item for the left thermostat of the three in the living room. Therefore I would only change one instead of all three.

That is what I have encountered during my test with Alexa.
When I try to use the label name of the items in that group Alexa does not know those devices.
Also they are not discovered during “Device search”, only the group.

The workaround

  1. define a Number Item (kind of virtual room themostat),
  2. label it “Wohnzimmertemperatur”
  3. and switch the dedicated thermostats via a rule.
1 Like

Will the skill in the future be able to get Alexa to speak to you? I.e. The temperature in Living room is 21 degree and in bathroom it is 22 degree or similar.

If I enable this skill I need to deactive the HUE emulator since it uses the exact same syntax right, and delete all my smart devices in the alexa app and rerun the discovery?

What is currently the benefit of the skill vs the HUE emulator?

I’ve exactly the same questions.
I think HUE isn’t able to get the temperature.

As the alexa skill worked quiet unreliable the last days I switched back to HUE. But now I get lots of duplicate items in http://alexa.amazon.de ->Smart Home.
I fear that just deactivating the skill doesn’t remove everything? Or how can items duplicate, even when I delete all items and make a fresh discovery?

Having a number of problems getting this to work on a brand new OH2 install (OpenHabian)
I have another thread open about MyOpenHab.org not seeing any of my devices but thought another issue/misunderstanding might better be handled in this thread.

Was not clear to me in this Alexa Skills original post as to whether or not HomeKit Integration Service needs to be installed and configured in OH2 or just make sure to include tags as seen in HomeKit setups.

I am at a total loss as to why I cant get my Alexa working with a clean OH2 setup and I only added 5 total Z-Wave dimmers items and configured them via .items file (example)

Dimmer Kitchen_Lights "Kitchen" <light> [ "Lighting" ] {channel="zwave:device:15a5de49c6a:node4:switch_dimmer" }

They work via the Paper UI interface I just cant get Alexa (or MyOpenHab) to see these devices

UGH!!! I need a :beer:

No.

Yes.

@digitaldan Hi Dan,
I’ve problems with my alexa, as I switched from the Smart Home Skill back to HUE emulation. (HUE emulation works more reliable at the moment and I’m going to swich back when this myopenhab works more stable).
But now I’ve lots of duplicated items in my amazon alexa page. Even when I clear all items on this page a make acompletly new discovery. There should be 58 item, but alexa always finds 77. This 19 items are duplicates. Because of this duplication these items are not switchable anymore. alexa says she doesn’t know which one to switch.
Do you know this phenomenon and how to get rid of it?
Thanks for your help.

Kind regards,
Michael

Did you remove the openHAB skill in your Alexa app ? If not please do so, otherwise you will not get rid of your duplicates.

This works great for me. Thank you.
But the rollershutter-items can’t seem to discover on Alexa. My items like below

Rollershutter LRoomCurtain “Livingroom Curtain” (gLRoom, gCurtain) [“Switchable”]