I have some blinds that use the hunter Douglas setup and I can open and close these using an ifttt trigger. I can create a virtual garage door opener and link it to the ifttt command so that when the virtual switch is opened the blinds open etc, but this still isn’t picked up by Alexa yet.
Any news on when we can have open close commands work on virtual switches?
I assume this is done because some idiots will no doubt link a smart front door lock to it and it won’t be very long until we read about somebody being burgled by intruders shouting “Alexa open the front door”, but do the rest of us have to suffer because of the mistakes idiots will make?
I have some servo operated blinds via esp8266 and @jetpuff device type code, and I have to say on / off for Alexa - it doesn’t work with open/close. Would love to know how to get it to work with open/close, perhaps if the device type was based on a garage door opener?
Instead of a virtual garage door opener, I have a virtual on/off switch tied to my garage door opener. I then looked that virtual switch to Alexa, and can open and close the garage door with that virtual switch.
I use @rboy’s Garage Door Opener DTH with my GD00Z and Alexa responds to open and close commands with no issue. I don’t know how relevant it is, but my device is named “Garage Door” and I also made it part of an Alexa device group called “Garage” for some reason that escapes me now… probably so Alexa would also respond to “open/close the Garage”.
It’s been that long since I last played with smartthings I’d forgot about askalexa. Though I remember it being awesome last time I used it. I will have to revisit that I think now.
Though at the moment I’m having lots of issues with the hub saying it’s disconnected, even though the connection appears fine. Another thread for that though.
I noticed that open and close commands spontaneously started working a few weeks ago. Unfortunately, open and close commands stopped working again on 13 September, and are still not working. What’s been going on, I wonder?
I also lost the ability to use open and close commands around the same time (sometime in the first two weeks of September). I’d been using open/close reliably for weeks, if not months, before they suddenly stopped working.
Good news… The Alexa app now has the ability to create routines. Routines helped me fix the loss of “Alexa, open/close the garage”. That command stopped working this summer, but I was able to set up a routine for “open the garage” and “close the garage”. I assume you can do this for blinds as well.
Thanks everyone - I checked and routines is there! Will have a try soon.
Looks like you can target which Alexa responds. I wonder if this means I can set up multiple ‘Open the blinds’ routines, which will trigger the correct blinds for the room you’re in?
bamarayne
(Jason "The Enabler" as deemed so by @Smart)
19
Unfortunately, no. If you create a routine using only smart home devices, you can not set which Alexa device responds.
The routines are a step in the right direction, but only a small step.
Very soon EchoSistant V5 will be released, and it’s a whole new game that leaves these routines in the dust!
You can do that by setting up a GROUP in Alexa in the Smart Home section. For example, you can create a group called Living Room, and assign the echo in the living room, as well as various lights in the living room to the group. Then when you say, “Alexa, turn off the lights” to your living room echo, it will turn off those lights in the same group as that echo. This will only work for the device types recognized by Alexa. You’ll see the device type of the device after you add it to the group. This is currently limited to a few types. Right now Alexa doesn’t recognize my fan as anything other than a light. So I can’t add it to my living room group and tell that echo to turn on the fan. Hopefully this will evolve.
I just noticed that this approach would help you localize control of your blinds to an echo, but would negate the ability to use a routine to say open or close.
