WaterHeater (Kettle) temperature is not seen by Alexa

roher · August 13, 2023, 8:51pm

Hello!
I have recently integrated my smart kettle with Openhab (via Bluetooth), and of course decided to add it to Alexa in order to control it by voice.
First of all, I didn’t find a kettle in the capabilities list (despite Alexa has “Kettle” in its’ smart devices), so I have used “WaterHeater” instead.

Second, here’s how I have configured it in Openhab:

Here is the kettle current temperature item in Openhab:

And here is how it is shown in the Alexa app:

See - temperature is always frozen at “-50 C”. The rest of functionality works - switching the device on/off and setting target temperature.
So, how can I fix the current temperature in Alexa?

jeshab · August 14, 2023, 3:48pm

Try to delete and rediscover your device on the Alexa side.

If that doesn’t work, can you please provide the OH version you are running and the JSON output of your Kettle_CurrentTemperature item using the Developer Tools > API Explorer?

roher · August 14, 2023, 7:37pm

Hi, rediscovering the device didn’t help.
My Openhab version is 4.0.1-1
And here is the item JSON:

{
  "link": "http://172.16.0.98:8080/rest/items/Kettle_CurrentTemperature",
  "state": "35 °C",
  "unitSymbol": "°C",
  "metadata": {
    "alexa": {
      "value": "WaterHeater.CurrentTemperature",
      "config": {
        "scale": "CELSIUS"
      }
    },
    "semantics": {
      "value": "Point_Measurement",
      "config": {
        "relatesTo": "Property_Temperature",
        "isPointOf": "Kettle"
      }
    }
  },
  "editable": true,
  "type": "Number:Temperature",
  "name": "Kettle_CurrentTemperature",
  "label": "Current Temperature",
  "category": "temperature",
  "tags": [
    "Measurement",
    "Temperature",
    "Point"
  ],
  "groupNames": [
    "Kettle"
  ]
}

jeshab · August 15, 2023, 12:32am

Thanks for the information. I was able to replicate your issue. Basically, the state for a given Number with a dimension which doesn’t have a defined state presentation was not reported back to Alexa. This is why you weren’t seeing the proper state on the Alexa side.

Prior to OH 4.0, I believe a default state presentation was always defined preventing this issue from occurring. Anyway, I have pushed a change to fix this issue and should be released to the live skill in the next few days.

In the meantime, the workaround would be to set your item state presentation.

roher · August 15, 2023, 5:58am

Hi, thank you for such a quick turnaround - the WA has helped