Good Evening All –
This is my first post on the board. I’ve had my hub for about 3 months and am loving it and the whole dream-come-true living on the Enterprise thing. I’ve had pretty great success with getting my stuff integrated so far with all the incredible user projects on here. The SmartThings-Alexa arsenal is as powerful as it is I believe mainly because of relationship both companies establish and maintain with their users and how seriously they take their contribution to the development process.
The Project:
I’m trying to put together an App/DTH combo that will allow me to add a Frigidaire window Air Conditioner to both SmartThings (for automatic temperature-related control and a remotely visible indicator of its status) and Alexa.
My hardware setup includes:
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A BroadLink RM Pro IR blaster
- RM Bridge running on an Android server which allows it to be controlled by several means other than the native phone-app-only method
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Simple Control / Simple Hub (Roomie Remote)
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Also have a Mac and Synology NAS if servers need to be run
CoRE, Ask Alexa and Echo Assistant are installed and working beautifully aside from this project to be.
Currently I have the HTTP URLs generated by RM Bridge tied to 14 separate buttons on Simple Hub. Although they can be integrated as is, they are viewed as 14 devices by SmartThings and Alexa, resulting in the requisite on/off terminology for voice control, which feels really unnatural when you’re adjusting temperature settings.
My goal is to create a contained simulated/virtual device with all 14 commands (on, off, cool, fan_only, temp_up, temp_down, fan_faster, fan_slower, remote_sensing_on, remote_sensing_off, auto_fan, energy_saver, timer_on and timer_sleep) and incorporating a temperature sensor (any one of Aeon Multisensor 6, Iris Motion Sensor, SmartThings Multipurpose Sensor or Blink Camera).
The first place I started was with beckyricha’s Broadlink-RM-SmartThings-Alexa and her SmartThings-TV-Channels project. The latter also requires separate device switches for each TV channel consisting of multiple 0-9 remote button presses.
ady624’s RokuManager is brilliant and seemed like a great place to start, but I decided I’d ask the experts before either spending countless hours before realizing I went down the wrong road or if perhaps I’m overcomplicating it and there is a simpler way that I’ve not stumbled upon despite how much I’ve researched. I think at this point I’m oversaturated with information on the topic and am uncertain which way to go with it.
The BroadLink IR codes are also able to be executed with Python using mjg59’s python-broadlink and davorf’s BlackBeanControl code (regrets to both as new Community users may only add 2 links)) and I’ve done so successfully with other devices.
I would sincerely appreciate any thoughts, ideas, advice or links you all might be able to share and am so grateful to this community for all I’ve learned from you thus far.
Regards,
JD