Hi!
I have some issues with integrating rollershutters into alexa. I have rollershutters with position state (0-100) in OH.
When i give the alexa metadata “blinds” to a rollershutter item in OH, i can discover a new device in the alexa app. I can even control it with alexa commands like “Rollo Wintergarten hoch.” I can not control it via the Alexa app, because it looks like shown in the pic below.
However, when i build groups within the Alexa App and add multiple blinds, i can not use the command “open blinds in livingroom.” Alexa then says, that this command does not work with device “x” or she does not know what to do.
I am pretty sure i did something wrong with the metadata. How do i get this right?
You can provide a screenshot of how you configure the item metadata in MainUI.
If you configure your item as Blind, you should see the below control page. However, I can’t confirm if this is supported with in the Alexa app in your language. Maybe someone using the app in German can confirm. If you directly get the settings page when selecting a device, it usually means it is not supported.
As far as Alexa groups, semantic requests, such as open, close, lower or raise, are not supported at the group level. You can resolve this by exposing an OH group as a single endpoint.
Hey @jeshab, ty for your help!
I found out something interisting. Whenever i crreate a new random rollershutter item in OH it works perfectly with the Alexa metadata “blind.” Then i can see a similar menu like you show above. However, this is only true, if the item metadata auto-update ist set to true. My blinds report a status, so i dont want to set all the items to autoupdate false.
Do you have a suggestion for a workaroud? Maybe proxy–items for all the rollershutters?
Maybe you know something more simple?
Do i get this right? I sould create a Group item in OH with all the rollershutter-items as members. Then expose the group item as a rollershutter itself to Alexa?
That’s actually interesting. While a non-retrievable Mode generic attribute can be controlled in the Alexa app, a non-retrievable RangeValue generic attribute isn’t. It looks like Amazon didn’t implement that use case in the app. I will open a ticket with their development support but I won’t expect much at this point in term of resolving this in the short term.
For reference, a retrievable PositionState attribute is composed of a retrievable RangeValue attribute to track and control the position and a non-retrievable Mode attribute to send Rollershutter commands.
You can force the Alexa metadata parameter retrievable=true on your item. You will need to toggle twice in MainUI to do so. It needs to show as parameter when you look at the metadata code tab. This will take precedence over autoupdate="false". However doing so will affect the state reporting on Alexa requests since I assume the state is not updated right away after a command is issued.
Correct. That way you can control the group and each members separately on the Alexa side. Make sure to set the member base type for the group you are creating.
