Is there a straightforward guide to using Edge? Since the “transition,” all of my Alexa automation for announcements has stopped, which was key to most of the devices I use. I only have a handful, and most of these will soon be disconnected.
I have had my Smartthings V2 for well over four years. Now, it seems I am trying to figure things out from scratch. Honestly, it should not be this difficult. However, I may be naive. I have learned to minimize my smart home devices to an absolute minimum.
Note: Before posting, I drafted and deleted a rant on all the issues I have had with SmartThings.
Edge shouldn’t have too much to do with Alexa announcements unless you were using a particular kind of virtual device, in which case you just have to use the edge driver version of that same kind of device and then everything should work again.
So let’s just start with one announcement which stopped working. What specifically triggered that announcement?
Can you show us a screenshot of both the Alexa routine and the SmartThings routine?
Also, do you have a SmartThings/Aeotec hub, and if so, which model?
Meanwhile, here’s the community FAQ on triggering Alexa routines from SmartThings. It has been updated for the new architecture.
The announcement was triggered by leak dectors. One is a SmartThings sensor, and I just replaced the other one with a new Zooz sensor.
Unfortunately, the routines are gone. I am trying to create new ones, but it will not let me select Alexa for announcements. It does not show up. My Ring Doorbell works to announce motion, but it is connected directly to Alexa. I have installed the Alexa Contact virtual device. Maybe I need to create a virtual water sensor edge virtual devices? I have not been able to get the sensor to show up in Alexa.
In the previous architecture, I had Alexa show up in smarthings as a speaker.
It took me some time to figure this out, but I finally resolved the problem. It took about two hours, even when I thought I had figured it out. The trick was using the “AlexaSwitch” instead of the others I tried. VEdge is one of those things that is easy once you figure it out.
In case someone stumbles on this with the same problem, I had to:
Download a vEdge driver; I downloaded a set in my case.
Create a VEdge AlexaSwitch in SmarThings - this was the name of the VEdge driver in the set I added to SmartThings
Create a routine for the VEdge switch to turn on when the water sensor is triggered
Go over to Alexa and create a routine for the VEdge Alexa
In the Alexa routine, I can now trigger the announcement in Alexa.
