Integrating a Samsung dual oven with Alexa

Devices & Integrations
1

Hi. I’ve installed a NV7B42205AK Samsung Dual oven and successfully connected it to the SmartThings app on my mobile phone. I’ve also installed the SmartThings skill in Alexa.

I can operate the oven through the SmartThings app.

My wife has a tremor, so I’d like to create some ‘presets’ such as ‘Plate warming’ that starts one of the ovens at a predetermined temperature. Ideally, I’d like to execute the preset via an Alexa voice command (either directly or via an http call) but a button in the SmartThings app would be second best.

So far I’ve tried a manually run routine and Alexa commands without success.

I create a new routine, choose ‘Manually run’ for ‘If’, tap ‘Add what this routine will do’, tap ‘control devices’ only to see ‘No devices found’ in the ‘Select devices’ page. I’ve tried putting various things in the search box: “Oven” (the name of my oven), “Flex upper oven” (the name of one of the two components), “upper”, “lower”, “main” - all give ‘No devices found’.

FWIW, when trying to add an ‘If’ condition, I see ‘Device status’ is greyed out.

Does that mean I can’t use my oven in a routine? Did I miss a step?

The SmartThings app gives several suggestions for Alexa commands. The only one that does anything is “Set oven to xxx” but all it does is switch the oven’s light on! I’ve tried “Set oven to upper”, “Set oven to lower” and “Set oven to main” but they all do the same thing. It doesn’t matter whether I have the upper or lower oven selected, the selection doesn’t change.

However, it proves that Alexa is connecting OK.

Other commands start out promising so, if I say “Set oven temperature” Alexa asks me for a temperature but, when I reply, says “Hmm. I’m not quite sure what went wrong”.

All commands end up with “Hmm. I’m not quite sure what went wrong”.

I’ve tried messing around with the remote setting but I get the same result however it’s set. The WiFi light is solid.

Again, does that mean I can’t use my oven with Alexa? Have I missed something.

Can you help? I’m a retired developer familiar with web stuff and I’ve quite a bit of experience with home automation using various platforms, but this is my first foray into SmartThings,

Andy

2

Just as a data point, I also have an older Samsung dual oven (natural gas) and none of the functions that affect the oven work. SmartThings gets the status updates fine so I can see the burner on/off reflected in the app on an iPhone and receive notifications for things like preheat done but the synchronize time and set temperature do nothing. Granted the gas based ranges are prohibited from remote control because of the possibility of ignition failure and a subsequent explosion so I pretty much assumed that the developer just prevented all inbound changes and not those that just affected the usage of gas. Never worth my time to pursue further so I can’t provide and definitives.

3

Thanks for getting back. I can control the oven settings using SmartThings, so I can set temperature, mode of cooking and time to cook and send that to the oven. I see separate tabs for each oven and they work independently. I just want to go a step further.

Andy

4

One of the frustrations of the ST app is that attributes that you can control manually on the device card and/or dashboard might not be exposed for automations. That’s likely what is happening. Why the device owners who create the profiles for the app don’t expose them is anybody’s guess.

If you go to the Advanced Web App and look in the Attributes section, you can see all the Attributes/Capabilities that are defined for the device. You will also see Commands that are available that might not be exposed in the app as well.

My suggestion would be to use a 3rd party tool like sharptools.io or Action Tiles to create a dashboard for the actions you want to perform. Not voice activated but with a touch enabled device you could have buttons to push.

1 Like
5

As it happens, I’d already had a look at that, and there is some promising stuff in there. I’m OK with JSON so could have a go at creating a simple app that, say, sets the temperature as a test.

But I’m unclear what I can do with the app. Ideally, I’d like to run it as a scene from Alexa - is that possible? An alternative would be to run it via an http request but, from what I’ve seen, that requires some complex authorisation stuff (I don’t have a SmartThings hub) - is that right?

Andy

6

I’ve managed to answer my own question.

I created a virtual switch in SmartThings which then turned up as a switch in Alexa.

I then cobbled together a rule using examples here, and advice about adding arguments here that:

  • Waits for the virtual switch to turn on
  • Executes command setOvenSetpoint on the main oven with argument 200

Now when the oven is running, turning the virtual device to “on” in Alexa changes the main oven temperature to 200. It’s now trivial to set up a voice command to turn the switch on and, after a few seconds, turn it off again.

Now for trying some other settings to see if I can create the presets I’m looking for.

Phew!

Andy

7

In case someone stumbles across this thread…

Temperature setting using the above works OK. Either you have to select a cooking option, or the cooker needs to be running. Either way I can change the temperature using a voice command. I set up a separate Alexa routine, SmartThings virtual device, and SmartThings rule for each temperature preset; and for each of the top and bottom ovens. Tedious, but it works.

I was able to: set up a rule that executes the ovenOperatingState / stop command on both the top and bottom oven; link it to a virtual switch; and create routines to set the virtual switch on then off again. Useful as a way to turn the ovens off by voice and as part of our “Kitchen off” routine that turns everything in the kitchen off.

I managed to get the ovenOperatingState / start command working - it emulates the feature presented by the SmartThings app - but it does nothing unless you first select a heating option for the target oven. Even then, you can’t omit the time argument. So that’s, more or less, useless.

Andy

1 Like