Between this thread, the official github, and several others I was able to get my private OpenHAB Cloud and Alexa working. I couldn’t have done it without these other resources; however, as a lot of it is outdated and incomplete, it wasn’t easy to piece it together. Additionally, there are complications due to outdated package versions and some things not working as they did when the package was set up.
I’ve consolidated a tutorial as of doing this in August 2020. I’ve tried to capture most of the key steps, but it’s possible that I’ve missed something since it was reconstructed from what was not initially a smooth install. It’s a lengthy tutorial, so I’ve uploaded it as a PDF, although I know it’s not great for commenting and editing.
Disclaimer: My understanding of OpenHAB and Alexa is very superficial, at the end-user level. I struggled through this but eventually got it all working. I’m sure that there are errors and better ways, and I’d appreciate corrections and additions. I hope it helps someone else get through it easier than I did.
My environments:
OpenHAB Cloud on AWS EC2 (t2.micro) instance running Ubuntu 20.04
OpenHAB server on Raspberry Pi 3B running Openhabian 2.5.7-1
OpenHAB Cloud Summary
Set up Virtual Private Server (I used AWS EC2, t2.micro, Ubuntu 20.04)
a. Set up Key Pair for SSH authentication
b. Set an elastic (static) IP address
c. Set up firewall / security rules to allow SSH (22), HTTP (80), HTTPS (443)
d. Register a domain name
e. Set up DNS (I used AWS Route 53)
Update and install dependencies
Install Node.js (ver 7.10.1) and NPM
Clone and Configure the OpenHAB-cloud code
Configure nginx (basic setup and testing)
Install letsencrypt and certbot for https certificate and auto renewal
Configure nginx for OpenHAB Cloud, start and test
Apply patch to prevent registration by others
Set up OpenHAB Cloud to run as a service
Alexa Skill Summary
Create AWS Developer account
Create Access Key
Create Security Profile
Create new Security Role
Install Alexa Skills Kit Command Line Interface (ASK-CLI)
One question:
if I have one private with skill alexa deployed, how can I share with other accounts that are using my private cloud (obviously with different alexa account each)?is it possible?
What would you like to do / achieve ?
The skill needs to be shared with the others. As it is a private ( developer ) skill I think you can invite others to test your skill but as far as I remember that is limited to specific amount of time.
If I remember right it is not necessary to create your own ‘private’ skill. You can use the official one and let it point to your private cloud connector.
I haven’t done that but as far as I remember that is the case.
Difference between them is that they connect to different endpoints in the Amazon cloud as your copy runs in a different instance in the cloud.
That‘s the issue with private skils i think, they are available only for your account. Therefore, this seems not to be an openHAB related issue and should be adressed to amazon.