New SmartThings Alexa skill (2020)

Yeah, that’s why I suggested it. Sometimes migrations get wonky so it’s best to start from scratch.

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hate to say this but with so many vendors out there and now amazon eero pro 6 will come out with a wifi + zigbee hub, I don’t see how ST will stick around much longer in my house. most of my pain point now is with ST app and it’s only because of the hub, now that I have multiple smart home gadgets from different vendors now that supports Alexa… so once eero pro 6 ships and it’s proven that it can replace ST, I am out of this eco system, because for the past 2 years, it’s nothing but troubleshooting when ST makes a move without thinking about their customers first.

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It has essentially the same zigbee hub in it that the echo show 10 and echo plus have. The Zigbee part runs fine, but there’s no Z wave support, and the rules you can set up are much less complex, just what you can do with an Alexa routine. (One really obvious limitation: you can’t set up a virtual three-way for lights, because there’s no way to have one light come on because another light came on.)

So it’s definitely a competitor to smartthings, but it’s not a replacement feature for feature. It just comes down to what you need.

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you are right, i still need the z-wave support…
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See the Other Hubs section of the forum.

https://community.smartthings.com/c/general-smartthings/other-hubs/105

Hubs that support both Zwave and Zigbee exist, for example:

  1. Hubitat. Most similar to ST. Tiny company.

  2. Abode. Great video integration plus HomeKit support. Doesn’t support the level of complexity that ST and Hubitat do.

  3. Vera. Some hub models support Zigbee HA 1.2, I don’t think any support Zigbee 3.0 yet. You can write your own code and get a lot of complexity.

  4. Zipato zipabox. You need strong technical skills for this, but you can add all kinds of radios to it, including Zigbee, Z wave, and enocean.

  5. Blue by ADT (called LifeShield until ADT bought them about two years ago). This is the direction ADT decided to go for their DIY product instead of the dual logo smartthings/ADT system. Security focused, it has Zigbee, zwave, and a proprietary frequency. But rule logic depends on IFTTT And it’s limited in the devices it can work with.

  6. Toshiba Symbio. Introduced in 2017 with zigbee, Z wave, and Alexa built-in, but they crippled it by limiting the number of rules you could have and it just never took off. You still see it sold some places, but support has been discontinued and the app no longer works. just including it so you know not to buy it. :wink:

Anyway, we should take any further discussion about any of this to the other hubs section, but I just wanted to say these do exist now.

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Loss of smartthings would mean dumbing down your smart home.

Not necessarily. Hubitat, Vera, or Zipato can all support rules of equal complexity to SmartThings. Each, like smartthings itself, has pluses and minuses, so each person has to choose for themselves what the best match is to their own needs and preferences, or even if they want to run more than one.

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My turn again…

My “I’m home scene” fires inconsistently since the update and migration.

The scenario - if my location is away and my virtual “away delay” switch is off, when my z-wave Yale lock is unlocked then the “I’m home” scene is triggered.

When I say “goodbye” the goodbye scene is triggered which includes an “away delay” virtual switch that stays on for 15 minutes. This is to prevent everything from turning on if we forgot something and reenter the house.

I rebuilt this under the new app.

It won’t fire if I’ve been away for a while. It will fire if I say goodbye, physically turn off the away delay in the app, and unlock the door.

It almost seems as if the device monitor is sleeping after a certain time of inactivity.

I can fire the scene manually so I know it’s good.

I’m about to start troubleshooting it, just checking if there is anything known about this.

Thanks!

I don’t know if I’m understanding the logic for the automations.

For location… Is it as a location changes or the state before an input?

I want it to run the I’m home routine, but only if the location is away and the away delay switch is off.

Now when I add location as a condition or precondition, any scenes that set location are unavailable… This is getting ugly.

Ok… So if your scene sets a location, it cannot be triggered I. an automation that is triggered off of location. The location change has to be set in the automation itself. This has to be broken logic in the automation app or o am completely misunderstanding how to use this.

I’m home, and I leave so I run the goodbye routine which in the routine sets the location to away.

When I arrive home and unlock the door, I want it to run the I’m home routine, but only if the preconditions of location state = away and the away delay switch = off.

Got tired of messing with it.

I created virtual switch called I’m home trigger. I used the smartlight smartapp to automatically turn on the switch when the front door unlocks but only if the location is away and the away delay switch is off. This also can trigger the I’m home routine.

My goodbye routine turns the I’m home trigger off and sets the location to away.

In the smartthings automations when the I’m home trigger switch is turned on, it executes the I’m home routine. Edit - I’ve removed this as the smartlight app can trigger scenes too

This works flawlessly. Now to add in all the other activities back in the routines… Yay. :unamused:

Another thing I just remembered - Alexa won’t execute a skill that has a lock action in it. I was fighting with it not importing my goodbye routine and remembered. I removed the kitchen door lock from the scene and it was automatically discovered in Alexa.

The old behavior was it would import it but Alexa would give you an error explaining why it couldn’t run it. Apparently it won’t import at all now and no message as to why.

Update
Since TP-link link kasa is now in ST I added the stuff to my routines. Apparently it’s too many devices as when I deleted some and shifted the responsibility to Alexa, my routines started working better.

Talk about frustrating. I did get a message in ST when trying to run it, but the error just said “not all devices were able to be controlled” nice specificity there…

I probably am not asking this in the right place, but I can’t find a way to post a new problem.

Ever since the new smartthings app came out my alexa routines that use smartthings contact sensors triggers twice. For example, when the front door is opened, smartthings tigers alexa routine to simply announce “Front Door Open”. Alexa plays this twice. I have deleted and reinstalled virtually everything related to this. I was thinking that the old smartthings had been triggering this routine before the new smartthings app, and thought possibly both the old and new were triggering alexa routines. so, I waited until Smartthings eliminated the old app. The problem remains. I bought a Sonos speaker to handle voice stuff as Alexa voice routines were just broken by Smartthings not working well with it. But the wife does not like it, and there is only one speaker. I have echo devices all over the house and can select which ones announce what.

Any help on this? I have tried creating new routines that do same type of things, and all announce twice.

You don’t happen to have it set up in both the Classic App and the new app perchance?

I thought that too. But the front door routine was created after the crossover to the new app. I did the change over 2 months ago. I still think ST has the old stuff running parallel to the new. I used the new apps automated change over stuff to upgrade to the new app.

Check to make sure your device’s aren’t duplicated in Alexa.

Did that way back, but thanks

Is the old Alexa groovy smartapp still installed?

Im not sure what that is. But there is nothing Alexa under the ST SmartApps

I am having a terrible time with my new Samsung Q 70 T. Alexa will not turn on the TV, nor will she open applications such as Netflix or prime video. She does not recognize any installed applications like sling or spectrum TV. I have contacted Samsung and smart things and have received no solution. I contacted Alexa support to make sure it was nothing on their end and they said SmartThings is responsible for enabling the commands and Alexa is only the middle person. Alexa keeps saying that we don’t have any enabled video skills when we ask her to perform simple commands such as opening Netflix. The TV actually turned on one time when we asked Alexa to turn it on and I was surprised.

We have the smart things app and Alexa installed properly, the TV is named TV, we have enabled everything we need to. It seems SmartThings it’s just not reliable. Is there any fix or update coming? It’s disappointing to not be able to utilize the intuitive features of the television. Currently we are going to take this television back and purchase a different Manufacture since the smart things and Alexa was a huge deal to us.

Edit: We have had some luck saying, “Alexa open Netflix or prime video on Samsung TV”. But we have to see it specifically like that or it will not open.

Was that enabled in the skill? I have a 2019 Q70 and have never tried it. @Lars can you open specific apps on Samsung TVs via Alexa?

Jimmy, She will tell me I don’t have any enabled video skills when I try to open Netflix or prime or spectrum TV or sling. It was not an enabled video skill. She’s done it a few times when we say specifically “Alexa open next Netfix on samsung TV”.

Sling, spectrum tv, and Netflix are not options when we go to video skills on the Alexa app. It’s my understanding that Alexa/Smart things is supposed to be able to open these without enabling a video skill as they are basic commands? Or am I incorrect

The regular SmartThings skill does not yet support app launch. However, I am not familiar with the capabilities of the built in Alexa like for the Q70T.