Rollershutter items in a group. Is this supposed to work?

Setup, Configuration and Use Items & Sitemaps
1

I have items for every rollershutter in my house. Rules for every item handle the commands up, down and stop.

Now I have added all rollershutters of the living room in a group.
I changed the type of the group item from “Group” to “Rollershutter”.

My assumption was that when I press e.g. on the down-arror of the rollershutter group item, all items in the group should receive the command.

Is this the way this should work? Because it doesn’t work…
Nothing happens when I press a button of the rollershutter group item.

This is the code of the rollershutter group item:

label: Rollläden
type: Rollershutter
category: rollershutter
groupNames:
  - gLivingRoom
groupType: None
function: null
tags:
  - Blinds

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grafik1914×1080 141 KB

2

The group needs to stay a group, if you change it to rollershutter it’s not longer a group. Therefore you need to revert the change.

Instead you can edit the group item and set the “members based type” to rollershutter instead + an aggregation function as per your preference.

Then you should get the behavior you want.

1 Like
3

OK, I changed it as you described, but I don’t have the rollershutter control in the UI for the group item, when I do it this way.

Group item code now:

label: Rollläden
type: Group
category: rollershutter
groupNames:
  - gLivingRoom
groupType: Rollershutter
function:
  name: MAX
tags:
  - Blinds

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grafik794×712 16.4 KB

4

MainUI makes a best guess based on available information as to what sort of control/widget to show for each Item type. But it can’t always get it right. That’s why there is the “Default Standalone Widget” and “Default List Item Widget” metadata. There you can define exactly how you want the widget to appear.

In general, because an Equipment in the semantic model is made up of Point Items and it’s the Point Items that have the controls and the state, MainUI doesn’t show any controls for an Equipment Group no matter the Group type.

1 Like
5

Thank you very much! Works like a charm! :slight_smile:

6

I can now control my rollershutters via the group item in MainUI,
but Alexa doesn’t know how to handle this item.

When I ask Alexa to open or close the item, it keeps telling me that it does not know how to do this to the item.
It does work with the single rollershutter items, but not with the group item.
Is there a special trick for this?

I’m confused by the documentation:

where it says

Only functional groups (no group type) can be configured as group endpoint. State derived groups will be considered as single endpoints based on their defined group type.

Is this related to my problem?

edit:
I see in the logs, that my items did not receive the command “UP” or “DOWN”, but 0 or 100.
Seems to be caused by the action mapping in the Alexa metadata.

For the single rollershutter items, it looks like this:

Close=DOWN
Open=UP
Lower=DOWN
Raise=UP
Stop=STOP

For the rollershutter group item, it looks like this:

Close=0
Open=100
Lower=0
Raise=100

Unfortunately, you cannot edit the action mappings for the groupt item :frowning:

edit 2: My mistake: You can edit the action mappings for the group item. The box showed the default values in a way that looked “disabled” to me. But the box is actually empty and can be overriden.

7

I can’t say because you don’t show your Alexa metadata.

What that part of the docs means is you have to treat the config of the Group Item as if it were a stand alone Rollershutter Item, not a Group endpoint. Group endpoints are used to collect related Items, such as all the sensors and setpoints for a HVAC thermostat.

I don’t use Alexa so I can’t comment on more than what’s in the docs. How are you seeing those mappings? Why can you not edit it?

8

Sorry my mistake:

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grafik1305×956 23.7 KB

The action mappings looked disabled to me, but it is not. It’s actually only showing the defaults. If you start editing, the box is empty.
I will change the action mappings and see if that fixes the problem. :slight_smile:

9

The updated action making should fix your issue with Alexa.

I have the experience, that the underlying issue is, that Alexa’s definition of rollershutter positions is different:

OH is treating 100 as closed, while alexa is treating 100 as open.

Instead of updating the action mapping I would therefore prefer to use the “inverted” option.

With the inverted option you can also ask Alexa to close the rollershutter e.g. to 20%

10

Unfortunately, it still does not work.
I removed the item from Alexa and readded it, but this also did not fix the problem.
I also created a group item for a second room and did the action mapping correct, but Alexa also cannot handle this item.

It keeps telling me that it does not know how to do this :frowning:

edit: OK, this is really strange. Only some of the commands work. OPEN and CLOSE do work, but UP and DOWN, Alexa tells me that it does not know how to do this ???
Do I need to add UP and DOWN explicitly to the action mappings? The normal rollershutter items do not require this.

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grafik806×896 19.3 KB

11

Not sure about this.
I only use open and close or the % value as commands.

But if it’s working in general, than I assume it’s more an alexa issue to use the right wording instead of an OH issue

12

Yep, I also think that is some Alexa issue.

The documentation says that it only supports the action mappings, that I already specified:

The Alexa API currently provides Close, Open, Lower and Raise interactions, removing the need for the Alexa routine workaround to control certain devices such as blinds or doors.
13

You shouldn’t have to configure the action mappings. What you are seeing in MainUI is just a placeholder example. The skill has defined default settings based on the item (group)type per the documentation.

It would be helpful if you could provide the exact utterances you are using for the voice requests. You may want to refer to this post for more information on that topic.

14

Well, for a rollershutter item I get a default avtion mapping like
grafik

but for the group item, I get
grafik

But my rollershutter items cannot handle values like 0 or 100, I handle the commands UP, DOWN, STOP in the rules of the items.

When I say “Rollläden Esszimmer hoch”, it does not work.
When I say “Rolläden Esszimmer auf”, it does work.

15

There is a difference between defaults, as you highlighted in your first screenshot, which you can edit when you select the field and a placeholder example which is just an indication on how to configure a given parameter and isn’t representative of its actual default value. Anyway, this is only a display issue since the skill will use the documented defaults.

Now, as you may have noticed, there is indeed a bug in MainUI with the Alexa metadata not displaying the defaults for group type based items. I have already submitted a fix for this one.

Have you tried the utterance examples that are listed in the referenced post?

16

Yes, it does work as described!