Yes, echo can dim the lights via a smart dimmer or via the bulbs themselves.
I have 5 ge link bulbs in my kitchen. I was going to replace them with dimmable dumb bulbs and a smart switch, but my wife said no.
She likes being able to control the bulbs individually our as a group. For example, the coffee light, she can turn just that one on and have it dim. She doesn’t like a lot of light before she had her coffee.
Can it do it both ways if I have the GE Links and the Smart Switch? Or is that when my kitchen blows up?
Don’t use a dimmer control switch (smart or dumb) that controls the load to smart dimmable bulbs or the dimmer switch may burn out. You can use a smart dimmer control switch that is not on the same circuit and have the smart bulbs follow it. So it just depends on the exact set up
Actually your kitchen would be safe… But the bathroom of the guy that lives the town’s over would definitely go nuclear.
Don’t ask, there’s not an explanation. Just believe and let it happen.
I am using a dimmer on one circuit with smart dimming bulbs… the one partially behind the large tv mounted on the wall that I really don’t want to take down the give access to the dimmer switch to swap it… you can figure out why.
I have 4 zigbee bulbs in it… 3 osram and one Phillips (all white)… I had to add the Phillips as apparently 4 of the osram did not have enough draw to get rid of flickering and humming …
the Phillips must draw more… I just left the switch in place and mounted a cooper 6500af battery switch next to it and so far am good to go.
One other place I also used the cooper is where I has a 4 way switchs and one did not have neutral running to it.
The other two switches I was able to replace fine, and just wired the last one always on… and
put a cover plate over it and stuck the 9500rf on top.
Hey probably cheaper than getting an electrician to run a neutral… I may revisit it as see if one the wires going to it can be removed from the other circuit and have everything still work to run my own neutral using it…
I actually just got a couple of the ge link bulbs too and have decided I’m going to remove all the switches and replace them with a Lutron Remote.
Anyone else find it turns on Hue lights at a range of dimmed power? Even when last use was full bright.
My come on at whatever they were set to last.
The problem with “open the garage door” vs. “close the garage door,” at least in my case, is mine is set up on a relay. I have the relay set as a momentary contact switch, so when you turn it on, it toggles off a second later. That causes the garage door to open or close, and then to reset to the “off” state to be prepared for the next time you activate it.
Here’s the catch – when you say “Alexa, open the garage door,” that interprets this as turning the relay on – which makes it open, and then the switch toggles back off. The specific command I see in the log is “Turn on Garage Door Relay”
But when you say “Alexa, close the garage door,” it sends the following command: “Turn off Garage Door Relay.” Since the relay is already “off” at that moment, it doesn’t activate. So to close the garage door, I actually have to again say “open the garage door.”
Anyone have an elegant/easy solution for this?
Thanks.
I would think you could write a virtual device to represent the true state of the “switch” and then just issues the relay when it makes sense.
for example a virtual switch in the on status should issue the relay for off but not issue the replay when asked to be turned on again. When the virtual switch was in a status of off it would to the opposite issuing a relay command when the on command is issued and doing nothing if asked to be turned off again.
This is how the zwave garage door units such as the GD00Z behave. Issue open twice and it ignores second request. Issue close twice and again it will ignore the close request for the second request (or an subsequent close request for that matter).
How do you monitor the state of the door, do you have a tilt sensor or something ? That could be incorporated into a smart app, if tilt says open then only accept close command, if tilt sensor says closed only issue open.
Ideally get yourself a UL safety approved zwave garage door opener and you will not have this issue.
Try using a virtual switch. When the door is open, the switch is on. When the switch goes off, the door closed.
Btw, what garage door controller are you using?
I was actually amazed that “open/close” commands works on the Echo. I tested this with Alexa Helper and was able to open and close the garage door (using a Zwave garage door opener). This device DOES respond to open when the relay is telling it the door is closed, and will close the door only when the door is seen as open. This will help me on my app, however, it sounds like you are simply using a REAL relay that is normally closed. I think there is a way to set up a relay with a sensor as a garage door solution…have you tried that?
By the way, the Alexa Helper app is here: [RELEASE] Alexa Helper
my IFTTT and amazon echo has suddenly stopped working with smart things hub. Anyone have any similar experiences?
There is an entire thread on this…Echo control is down…Support is working on it…
Weird…mine works…
It seems to be not everybody…Mine is not working…
Echo is working. The SmartThings/Echo integration is failing as are many other external integrations, including IFT TT, harmony, SmartTiles and others. If you are using the official smartthings integration, echo will say OK, but then nothing will happen.
The issue is being tracked in the known issues section of the community created wiki:
http://thingsthataresmart.wiki/index.php?title=Bug:External_Integrations_fail(Echo,_Harmony,_IFTTT,_SmartTiles)
I am wondering if it’s possible to create custom voice commands voor Amazon Echo.
I saw that it is partial possible: http://www.cnet.com/how-to/how-to-craft-your-own-custom-voice-commands-for-amazon-echos-alexa/
But you have to say “Alexa trigger” before your custom command. In that case i don’t see it as Custom since i would like that i only need to say “Alexa” and create the rest of the command. This is because im Dutch, we don’t speak english in our home (and my wife is bad in english). So i need custom-custom commands 
ST and Amazon echo have an official integration… Ok, but why is it limited?
After browsing the “Alexa skills” section this morning I came across several smart home skills. Each of these allows for something we do not have in our official integration…
Device status.
You can say, Alexa, ask Vivint if my home security system is armed.
Or
Alexa, ask homeseer what is the status of the light on the back porch .
It would seen that with an official integration this would be possible. Especially since ST knows the current status of a connected device.
That “ask [name]” deal is a skill someone programmed. It’s not part of Echo’s built in integrations like the home automation stuff. Maybe you knew that, but I wanted to be clear. Now the question is “Why does Smart Things not have an official Echo skill already programmed?”. With that, you could get status and such fairly easily.
It’s definitely possible. If I had the time, I could probably fairly easily write one (any programmer probably could), the whole thing is fairly easy to do. It just hasn’t really been done yet. Unfortunately, I don’t have the time to dive into something like that right now.