Alexa, Smartthings and HomeKit: simulated TV?

Hi everyone,
I have set-up a few routines in the morning to wake up the kids with a progressive lighting and music, remind them that it’s 15 minutes before leaving, that it’s sports day… I have done so with Alexa and it works like a charm. The only down side is that sometimes we rent the house or it’s a bank holiday and there should be no routines executed during those times. I have to manually go into Alexa and disable everything and re-enable it. A bit tedious and not wife friendly and ought to be automated!

What I have done to automate is the following:

  • Created some new modes in Smartthings (Vacation, House Rented).
  • Created virtual garages in Smartthings (so they get exposed in the Alexa routines)
  • Set up some rules in Webcore so that the Virtual Garages opens on certain conditions (not vacation, workdays, time of day…)
  • Set-up routines in Alexa that are triggered by the Virtual Garages.

It seems to work well.

The only missing piece for me is I would like to be able to select the house mode (Home, Vacation, House Rented…) directly from HomeKit which is where we control everything in a user friendly way.
Ideally I would want a dropdown which lists the different modes available. I noticed the dropdown is possible since this is what I get to select inputs on my TV button on the home app.

Would you know how I could create a Simulated TV in Smartthings that gets pushed to HomeKit via Homebridge and where the Input buttons would be listed in a dropdown?

Maybe I am over complicating and there is a much simpler way to do this and I am all ears!

Thanks!

tagging @pizzinini

I have a homekit enabled TV that has the list of inputs, so I know what you mean. I am not aware of anyone who has created that kind of device for Homekit. I am not sure if it is possible to translate Smartthings output into such a device.

I use @tonesto7 's app and plugin and it generates a switch in Homekit for each mode/routine. I keep the switches on my Home favorites page for quick access and/or have created Homekit scenes for the ones I use the most.

Another idea is to create a virtual presence device that also has switch & occupancy capabilities that I also added to Homebridge. I turn it on when I have guests visiting to limit automations including execution of routines.

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Thank you. I will go with the button route!
My TV is not HomeKit enabled but I use the webos tv homebridge plugin, this is what made me think that maybe it’s possible to create a simulated TV In Smartthings that gets pushed to HomeKit via homebridge.