Ok, I will try to clarify. I bought a galaxy watch and google assistant on it doesn’t support routines. I want to open a door so I need a virtual switch in order to activate a routine inside smartthings, but I don’t want to say to google “turn on door X” but “open door X”. So i need a window shade or a lock virtual switch but google assistant apparently doesn’t like them, while Alexa perfectly works.
EDIT
Solved. I used mysmartthings to create a virtual devices and it works.
Thank you, this worked but it just seems random. I changed the number to 4 but then it only created 3. At least I have the switches I need now, but it would be good to know what is causing this issue
Yes, I think it’s time to remove the hidden contact from the Alexa switch device. I’ll get that done by end of week.
Will that remove the contact from existing switches? If so, those of us triggering off of the contact in local Smartthings routines will have to add standalone contacts to their alexa switches and change their triggers
To be clear Todd, i should have asked “Will that remove the hidden contact from existing Alexa switches? If so, those of us triggering off of the hidden contact in local Smartthings routines will have to add standalone contacts to their alexa switches and change their triggers from hidden to standalone”
Hello hello! A year later and my vEdge creator itself disappeared and when I go to add device and scan, nothing comes up.
Is it still only working on android devices for discovery?
Hi @TAustin. first of all thanks for all your amazing work, your drivers really solve a lot of shortcomings with ST & have helped me simplify & remove lots of ‘hoops’ that I used to jump through in my setup…
I have a peculiar use case that I believe this vEdge driver can solve, but I’m unable to solve it on my own using Rules API or any similar method due to the API restrictions, I’m not sure if this can be solved in a driver or not… so here’s the case…
I have 4 Nest Thermostats in my house & they control 4 Zones (each Zone has at least 2 rooms/spaces, like Living Room + Kitchen in one zone), while the biggest zone has 4 different rooms & the thermostat is in the hallway.
My problem is that I have lots of Google home speakers around the house, and they are laid out in a way to match the rooms layout, so voice commands work as intended for all devices (lights, TVs, etc) except for the Thermostats… you see Google in all its ‘smartness’ can’t understand this concept and allow you to group rooms into Zones or specify which Thermostat to adjust when you talk to a speaker that doesn’t have a Thermostat into its room. For example the Thermostat in the Living room is for both the Living & Kitchen, when I give a command to the Speaker in the Living room, it’s immediately understand that it needs to apply that to the Living room nest. But when I do that in the Kitchen, it applies that command to all the thermostats in the house. All 4 of them !!! at a certain point Google used to reply back asking which AC/Thermostat I mean when there was none in the room, but it’s not doing that anymore… so the only way is to say to the Kitchen speaker ‘set the Living room thermostat to X degrees every single time’… that’s fine for me, but with my wife & kids, it’s a bit much to ask them to remember which thermostat is in which room etc etc… it’s stupid since Google, for each speaker, allows you to designate a TV & Speaker as the target for Audio/Video commands, so you can always say when I talk to the Kitchen speaker about playing a video, the target is always the Living room TV… they can do that for Audio/Video, but can’t be bothered to do the same for ACs !!
Anyway I’m tired of waiting for them to fix it, so I have an idea that I tried partially, but my setup is so clunky because of many limitations…
The idea is to create Virtual Thermostats using your Driver in each room that doesn’t have a physical one, and Sync that vThermostat to the main one in its zone… so when I talk to Google in the Kitchen, it will apply the command to the vThermostat in the Kitchen, which in turn will ‘sync’ the setting to the physical Nest in the Living room.
So here’s what I tried & where I failed & the limitations I hit
Sorry for the long description but here’s the $1M question - can your vEdge driver be evolved to have a setting to point at a target physical device & stay in sync with it?
BTW this could be super useful for other vEdge device types lie switches, etc as well, but the Thermostat is maybe the most complex to replicate with rules/routines that I think it will be the most efficient… something Like Smart Lighting App’s ‘mirror’ function for Lights/Switches but also two-way…
I don’t want to do anything that disrupts existing setups. So I’m going to think about this some more before I do anything. But I could remove the contact from any NEWLY CREATED Alexa switches, and that wouldn’t affect your existing devices. You’d just need to know that if you want new devices with both a switch and contact, then you may want to use the contact device instead, which has both. But of course the contact isn’t hidden there…
No, you should be getting the creator device created. Are you sure you just haven’t lost it in another room? If it already exists, it won’t be recreated.
Have you looked at some of @Mariano_Colmenarejo’s drivers? He has virtual devices that mirror actual zigbee/zwave devices that might help you.
@TAustin …Thanks for thinking about it. That’s why I asked the question. Truth be told, I would prefer moving to all switches without the hidden contact and only using a standalone synchronized contact. I just never bothered to create standalone contacts with alexa switches that i didn’t use as alexa triggers. But i always used the hidden contact as a trigger in Smartthings and ifttt because ages ago i recall having issues with switches as triggers.
Anyway, one suggestion for Alexa switches without separate contacts is to remove the hidden contact and create the standalone contact with that same name. That would be transparent to users. For alexa switches with a standalone contact already, either flag them for action required or perhaps move the hidden contact to a second standalone synchronized contact and allow it to be deleted after all routines are updated (or leave it if no harm or performance issues).
Anyway, just some rambling thoughts from another Todd.
Thanks again for your efforts for the community
@TAustin I decided to start adding separate contact sensors to all my Alexa switches today in anticipation of any changes that you might make while I’m on vacation but some of then are not creating when i toggle the setting on. Reinstalled the creator and tried again but some work and others don’t. Any ideas? Thanks
I will check it out… Although I’m not sure how this would be able to mirror the actions for the thermostat State/Mode, etc…
Having trouble installing the vEdge creator. I’ve followed the instructions from @TAustin at the beginning of this thread. Logged into my Samsung account, and enrolled my hub. It shows that it’s installed if I look at the channel link. I understand it can take some time, but that was done on Friday, so it’s been almost 48 hours.
However, when I use the SmartThings app to Add Device / Scan for nearby devices, it doesn’t find any new devices, and I do not have a “vEdge Creator V2.94” device anywhere, nor do I have any new/unrecognized devices in any room. I’m running SmartThings v1.7.05 on an iPhone 12 Pro running iOS 16.6 build 20G75
I rebooted my hub as one troubleshooting step, but I’m not sure what else to try.
Any thoughts? I need virtual switches. I’d really like them to be Edge so they’re local to the hub, and it would be nice to have the functionality where Alexa can trigger routines based on their status. This vEdge Creator seems to be the recommended approach, but I can’t figure out why I can’t add the “vEdge Creator V2.94” device.
I had a similar issue and had to turn on “Ask to add new devices” in Smartthings settings
I assume that Alexa routines could test and set the new Alexa switches (without contact sensor). Correct?
Sorry to be a pest @TAustin … maybe this sheds some light to the issue I reported yesterday, but I am stick with this message when I try to create another Alexa Switch …
I ran into the same issue as tpkps. The create a device message would just stay. Ended up backing out of the screen and start the process over. Device created successfully.
I removed and reinstalled creator 2.94 … same issue as above … tried another create on top of it and it created 1 alexa switch immediately. So, I tried to toggle the separate contact off on a number of alexa switches without one. Sometimes turning the switch on and off in between. I seemed to intermittently get a couple of separate contacts to add, but not all of them reliably … can’t figure out if it’s random (i think it is) or if there is a sequence that i am doing which allows the creation of the separate contact
I seem to have figured something out … it appears that if I wait long enough on the screen where the separate contact is toggled, the contact gets created. I can take some time. I think that I impatiently left that screen when it didn’t work. In those cases, the toggle stays on but the contact never gets created. Not sure if this makes sense, but it appears to be what’s happening!
