Official Alexa Smart Home Skill for openHAB 2

The skill makes use of Amzon Smart Home Skill API, so it is limited to included arguments/commands.
A full reference can be found here.
Please note that some commands are limited to US versions atm.

Even though this was not meant for me, thanks for providing this link :-). Seems like the command to get the current temperature is available in the US only.

I would still be interested to know how to know which commits are included in the release version…

1 Like

I agree, and actually for the next push I was planning on marking release versions on the github release page (Releases · openhab/openhab-alexa · GitHub) , I just started doing this for the openHAB cloud code (Releases · openhab/openhab-cloud · GitHub)

2 Likes

@digitaldan Perfect, thanks!
By the way, did you see my comment on this closed git issue about the Lighting tag for Color items?

Hi @dominicdesu, do I need to run the version from GitHub to have the query current temperature facility available to me?

Hi,

I have a question related to the names of your Alexa controlled items.

I have the following switch:

Switch KNX_GV_Haard_AanUit_4_3_3				"Haard - schakelaar"			<fire>							(gGV_Living) 		{ knx="4/3/4" }

FYI, “Haard” is Dutch for “fireplace”.

All my items are labeled with Dutch names. Obviously, that does not work with Alexa.

So I have added this item:

Switch Alexa_Haard									"Fireplace"								<fire>				(gAlexa) 	[ "Switchable" ]	{ knx="4/3/4" }

So I can ask Alexa to turn on/off the fireplace. This works fine.

So I’m about to duplicate all my items and give them English labels. But before I do that, isn’t there a better approach for that? How do you guys deal with multi-language labels?

You don’t need to duplicate as you can set different labels in your sitemaps.
Please have a look at the sitemap concept:
http://docs.openhab.org/configuration/sitemaps.html#concepts

Sorry, no idea, I only know that Alexa (independent of openHAB) doesn’t support querying the current temperature in German yet, I don’t know if it should work in the English openHAB skill…

See me excel approach above, thats how i do multi language, synonym approach… Works fine for me at least(except that you need to say licht on instead of licht an …)

I have the same request. I use hue emulation for harmony remote an they popup in alexa as lux lught. This is all good, but as soon as i activate openHab skill, all of those items double up. Need separate tag for alexa, is that big change?

Great timing, I was just thinking about asking this on the thread today. So originally the thought was it would be very convenient to be able to tag a item once and it automagically worked across all voice applications. In practice, this is acutally not that useful. Personally I want different items exposed to homekit, alexa and hueemulation.

That being said, homekit has added a config option to require (or not) a “homekit” tag on items in addition to the type tag (like Lighting). We could do this for Hueemualtion, but Alexa is 100% using the rest API on OH, so we have no binding to configure.

So, the question is do we make a breaking change and require a “Alexa” tag? Is there another way of doing this? Ideally we would not break people’s current configurations, but I also don’t want to create a mess by trying to support backwards compatibility was such a new feature.

All I have just pushed out color support, this is both to turn on/off/+/- color items and also supports the new color API features (US only for now) to set the HSB value of a color item (Alexa, turn light red)

1 Like

Vote YES. But adding requirement for tag in hue emulation would bring less impact to existing users.

Another YES … :slight_smile:

Is it possible that Alexa read the number item tagged with CurrentTemperature? Something like “Alexa, read temperature from bathroom”?

@Huaba No. Not with actual smarthome skill. Therefore a custom skill is needed.

Kay

Hi guys,

First of all thanks for the good work. I am struggling to get my items discovered by the Alexa skill (probably becuase I am doing something incorrectly). I had a look to the code and looks like my item should be picked up but it doesn’t. I am trying to control milight bulbs.

The item in the file looks like this:

Dimmer milight_bedroom_brightness   	(gLightsBedroom,gLights) 		    [ "Switchable" ] {channel="milight:rgbwLed:F0FE6B1690E4:3:ledbrightness"} 

The request from the rest API for that item returns:

  "link": "https://home.myopenhab.org/rest/items/milight_bedroom_brightness",
  "state": "OFF",
  "stateDescription": {
    "minimum": 0,
    "maximum": 100,
    "step": 1,
    "pattern": "%d",
    "readOnly": false,
    "options": []
  },
  "type": "Switch",
  "name": "milight_bedroom_brightness",
  "tags": [
    "Switchable"
  ],
  "groupNames": [
    "gLightsBedroom",
    "gLights"
  ]
}

Also tried with Lighting:

Dimmer milight_livingroom_brightness  	(gLightsLivingRoom,gLights) 		[ "Lighting" ] {channel="milight:rgbwLed:F0FE6B1690E4:4:ledbrightness"} 
{
  "link": "https://home.myopenhab.org/rest/items/milight_livingroom_brightness",
  "state": "0",
  "stateDescription": {
    "minimum": 0,
    "maximum": 100,
    "step": 1,
    "pattern": "%d",
    "readOnly": false,
    "options": []
  },
  "type": "Dimmer",
  "name": "milight_livingroom_brightness",
  "tags": [
    "Lighting"
  ],
  "groupNames": [
    "gLightsLivingRoom",
    "gLights"
  ]
}

Any clue what should I be doing differently??

Thank you so much in advance.

Hi,
I am a beginner that have just manage to set up HAB2 and Alexa. Most part I get to work, but not switching off the TV (switching on is never possible). I can switch it off by using the basic UI:

Item:
Switch LgTvPower “TV” (GF_Living) [ “Lighting” ] {lgtv=“ON:LGTV1:POWER”}

Sitemap:
Switch item=LgTvPower mappings=[ON=“Power Off”]

I have a connection to Alexa, but I never manage to switch off the TV.

I also tried to switch the TV off by a rule, but I only manage to switch off the LED and the Yamaha

rule "Test ON"
when
Item Test_1 changed from OFF to ON
then
{
LED_Kitchen.sendCommand(OFF)
Yamaha_Power.sendCommand(OFF)
LgTvPower.sendCommand(OFF)
}

end

What have I done wrong?

I’m not sure if this matters, but here you write ON:

A here OFF:

Does the button map work on the site map?

Is this relevant for ALEXA Skill at all? Move to new topic?