Official Alexa Smart Home Skill for openHAB 2

Patrick_S · December 9, 2018, 5:26pm

Hey Anjana,
thanks for your help!

Yes
Yes
I cant see any errors relating to this (there are some for my zwave controller (offline), but they resolve themselves after a few seconds (going online))

I just tried to build the skill myself (v3 and v2) and was able to link everything together, but still no luck in discovering my devices. Is there a way to confirm, that the my self built skill is reaching openhab? So the logs show the errors if I start the discovery but this can also be due to the official skill, which is still installed. I fear to disable it, since then I wont be able to use even the “old” devices.

If it is working, I am open to either repair my own skill or the official version.
So everything is working fine, even Alexa with the known devices, but i cannot figure out how to discover the new ones.

UPDATE: I found, that its not the skill or the plugin but some of my items appear to be malfunctioning. I found it, since it is working if I just try it with one item file but not with all of them. So I have to investigate more on these files than on the actual skill.
For my personal interest: You made a normal portforward, installed the basic auth method and then just pointed the skill to your domain rather than to myopenhab.org?
Thanks again

anjana55 · December 10, 2018, 3:17am

Good that you are making progress…

I didn’t do any port forwards. I had a AWS server with openhab-cloud running. Used oauth from amazon to authorize and the skilled talked to openhab-cloud through basic authorization. Follow this tutorial and ask any question when you get in to trouble.

Patrick_S · December 10, 2018, 11:06am

Hey anjana,

I did all this and it is working.
My question was, how you mitigated the cloud connector. If I point the skill to my own domain with openhab available to the outside (secured and so on) instead of the myopenhab.org it should work too, right? (From what I understood, that is, what you did with openhab on AWS?)

anjana55 · December 10, 2018, 6:04pm

So here’s how it works…
The cloud connector resides in your OpenHAB installation which (I assume) sits at your home. You don’t have to migrate this anywhere, but you have to point it to your OpenHAB-Cloud instance by changing baseURL in :/etc/openhab2/services/openhabcloud.cfg

Minimal configuration would looks like this:

baseURL=https://your-openHAB.com/
mode=remote
expose=lights,SW2_bedroom_light,SW2_bathroom_light,SW2_ceiling_light

You don’t point your skill to your openhab, but to your openhab-cloud (I assume this is what you intended). You do this by adding user:pass and openhab-cloud url in your /opt/openhab-alexa/config.js file. First few lines should looks like this:

module.exports = {
    userpass: 'you@yourdomain.com:yourpasswd',
    host: 'your-ohcloud.com',
    port: 443,
    path: '/rest/items/',

What I did from OpenHAB-cloud at AWS is as below:

Got openhab cloud up and running
Installed openhab-alexa
Changed config.js and .env files
Deploy lambada function
Configure Alexa skill
Discovery and enjoy!

Hope this helps and open for further questions.

stefanbanu · December 10, 2018, 10:04pm

Thanks @anjana55 !
The tutorial confirm to me that my configuration was correct.
But the discorer result is null.
So, I tried to troubleshoot and I found the log on the aws site (cloudwatch management console).
But the log is unclear or at least say nothing:

2018-12-10T21:43:23.847Z 9e2fc3d9-fcc4-11e8-89c7-0f4400460260 Discovery:
{
“header”: {
“messageId”: “c316e28c-770f-421d-8ec4-97718ce3da8b”,
“name”: “DiscoverAppliancesResponse”,
“namespace”: “Alexa.ConnectedHome.Discovery”,
“payloadVersion”: “2”
},
“payload”: {
“discoveredAppliances”: [
{
“actions”: [
“turnOn”,
“turnOff”
],
“applianceTypes”: [
“LIGHT”
],
“applianceId”: “KitchenLights”,
“manufacturerName”: “openHAB”,
“modelName”: “Lighting”,
“version”: “2”,
“friendlyName”: “Kitchen Lights”,
“friendlyDescription”: “Switch KitchenLights Lighting via openHAB”,
“isReachable”: true,
“additionalApplianceDetails”: {
“itemType”: “Switch”,
“itemTag”: “Lighting”,
“openhabVersion”: “2”
}
},

and so on, listing all the devices that have a tag like Lighting or Switchable, but the app on the mobile device does not show any new device. The last line is:

END RequestId: 9e2fc3d9-fcc4-11e8-89c7-0f4400460260

Hmmm, seems the lamba function is called by the skill, do its job, but doesn’t give any feedback to the Alexa skill
What can be wrong in my configuration?
Thank you

niccodemi · December 11, 2018, 1:37am

I’ve got power meter connected to openhab via modbus binding. Is it possible for Alexa to read power consumption value when asked for it (same like for temperature)? Which tag would I have to use instead of CurrentTemperature?

anjana55 · December 11, 2018, 2:02am

Can you confirm that you are using Payload V2 in your alexa skill?

anjana55 · December 11, 2018, 2:08am

This should be possible. Read Version 3 (V3) Item mapping section over here https://github.com/openhab/openhab-alexa/tree/v3

stefanbanu · December 11, 2018, 6:18am

@anjana55 , Yes it is version 2.

niccodemi · December 11, 2018, 1:34pm

thanks, how do I migrate from V2 to V3?

Rangarid · December 11, 2018, 3:18pm

Check the readme in v3 branch, everything is in there.

Somewhere around here:
https://github.com/openhab/openhab-alexa/tree/v3#item-configuration

niccodemi · December 12, 2018, 2:09am

I changed below .items line

Switch rellaundry0900   "Laundry Fan" (gDevicesoldhouse) [ "Switchable" ]

to

Switch rellaundry0900   "Laundry Fan" (gDevicesoldhouse) {alexa="PowerController.powerState"}

The .items file is refreshed without errors but when I try to re-discover devices on alexa.amazon.com the new item doesn’t show up. Is there anything else I have to change / update?

I am running Openhab version 2.4.0.M7

anjana55 · December 12, 2018, 3:03am

If you see these discovery logs, that meant your skill actually called lambada for discovery function, but lambada may not returning whats discovered back to the skill.

In that case only thing I can think of is you maybe having some value such as a ARN wrong in your .env file. Im running out of ideas here

stefanbanu · December 12, 2018, 5:03pm

SOLVED!
I’ve tried with a clean .items file with only few lines and it worked well.
so, it seems my .items file is too large
Thanks a lot to all for support and patience

jjennings308 · December 12, 2018, 5:14pm

Is this setup to work on the standard myopenhab.org cloud? I do not have items exposed because it is not required with the current version.

jjennings308 · December 12, 2018, 7:37pm

As I look at this more, this is the skill on the alexa side of things and not the myopenhab.org side, correct? If that is correct, are there plans to upgrade the current skill to this new version?

TIA

digitaldan · December 14, 2018, 4:47pm

Hi All, sorry for the delayed response here, I have been traveling for the last week. Our skill is in review now, we had submitted it on Dec 2nd for the second time after being rejected without any feedback why, I am guessing there was an issue with our demo server, but I can’t tell for sure. I just reached out to our contact to try and understand whats holding the release of the skill up.

Timmi · December 14, 2018, 4:50pm

Hi guys,
I’m running openHAB 2.3.0. I tried to add another device to my existing devices inside the Alexa Skill. But I’m not able to find it when I’m searching for new devices inside the alexa webpage.
All my current devices are shown as “offline”.

So I deleted all of them on the webpage an searched again. I don’t get any device into the skill anymore.

Is there currently a problem with the skill connection?
Any idea how to troubleshoot further?

Best regards
Timmi

dotorg · December 26, 2018, 2:50pm

Any updates on the approval? Its weird they’re taking so long without any communication.

I’m debating doing a private install to get onto the v3 skill, but I’d hate to burn a couple hours on it and have a surprise release of the official version a day or two later!

l_grave · December 30, 2018, 12:29pm

Would it be possible to filter the json output of items to items that actually use the alexa tags? Since I am having trouble getting items discovered, which is caused (I believe) by the size of the json output.