I believe I searched the forum pretty thoroughly and couldn’t find anything on this. My GoControl GD00Z-4 Garage Door opener had the custom DTH that made it appear as a switch to Alexa. Now that we have hit the cut off for custom device handlers and were migrated over to Edge, I switched it over to the “Z-Wave Garage Door Opener” Edge driver in the Smartthings app. This works fine in the app to open and close. However, I’ve lost the ability to control it by voice through Alexa. Is there something similar I can do for Edge to continue this? Security aside, this is a very handy feature for our household. Any help would be greatly appreciated!
Alexa can only see devices that have certain capabilities, one of which is the “switch” type. The Zwave Garage Door Opener driver doesn’t expose this capability, so Alexa will ignore it.
A common workaround is to use a virtual device of some type that exposes a hidden switch that mirrors some other component - like a momentary button. You can then setup rules so that when the virtual momentary is pressed, do some action (like opening or closing your garage door device).
Name your virtual switch whatever you’d like in Alexa and she’ll respond to commands. You can also create custom voice commands (using Alexa routines) that will operate the shared virtual switch if that makes more sense logically (saying “turn on the garage door” may not make sense, but you can create a custom command that would match.)
There are several options for virtual switches, some of the community ones (vEdge and Virtual Hub) are popular.
Its also worth mentioning that if you’ve never considered it, allowing the garage door to OPEN from Alexa can be a big security issue. Anyone can scream thru the cracks of a window and ask her to open your door.
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First of all - thank you! You are a rockstar. That was exactly what I needed. I appreciate the commentary on the security and I am more than aware of the risks. Not to downplay this, but I always give the device a name that is not garage related. However, I know there is still plenty of risk here. Anyways, much appreciated once again. I knew D-Day was coming for my opener and Smartthings was kind enough to leave it for the last day of the shutdown of the old DTH api and my searches specific to the opener were fruitless.
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Glad you got it sorted out!
Another option to consider is to use a virtual lock (like a door lock) with one of the virtual driver sets. Alexa can see and operate those as well, and can ask for the unlock code when opening via voice. Tie the virtual lock to the garage door or to other virtual switches via routines as needed.