Turn on / off your smart home device(excludes smart home cameras).
"Turn on / off [device]."
Set the brightness (for compatible lights).
“Set [device] to level [##].”
“Set [device] to [##] brightness.”
"Brighten / dim [device]."
Set the color and shades of white (for compatible lights).
"Set the [device] to blue."
"Set the [device] to soft white."
"Make the [device] warmer / cooler."
Control a door lock.
"Is the [device] door locked?"
"Lock the [device] door."
"Unlock the [device] door."
Tip: When you enable "Unlock by Voice" in the Alexa app, you must also set a 4-digit code that is required when unlocking your smart locks. Each lock can have a unique code.
The new Alexa Skill will enable you to use your devices just as before, but with even more control. You can change the color of lights (that support it) and control locks.
If you had the previous Alexa App enabled, you will need to remove it as well as remove the devices in the Alexa App, or via the Alexa website. The Alexa website is the recommended way since you’ll be able to remove all devices at once.
You setup the pin code in the Alexa app. Just select the lock and go into the settings. It will give you the option to enable unlock by app and unlock by voice. It will ask you for a pin code then.
Hue devices are excluded from our Alexa skill because they should already be found by Alexa. If we added them there would be two groups for each. One from Hue itself and the other from Hubitat.
That should be a native Hue feature. Do you have the Hue skill installed?
If you are wanting to mix Hue devices with non hue devices into one group, you can either create a group in Hubitat or in the Alexa app with all the devices you want in a group.
No, the Hue skill will not duplicate devices. I’m surprised you don’t see the groups already though. In my experience it seems like each echo has the skill already enabled by default, which is why it can find Hue devices without actually enabling the Hue skill in the Alexa store.
@coreylista great work on this skill. I believe you were working on the Echosistant project for ST. Can we expect more of those features over time with this skill?
@ritchierich Thanks! We decided to go with a Smart Home Skill first to get the main Alexa compatibility going as soon as we could. A custom skill would be required to do the special things we were doing with EchoSistant. Free text speech is still the holy grail and all the smart home assistants are becoming smarter and smarter as time goes by, but we would still love to bring it to its full potential on Hubitat. It's on the list but the list is still pretty large!
Hmmm...that's unfortunate. I had disabled the Hue skill in Alexa so I could manage the Hue lights through Hubitat (Hubitat talks to the Hue hub, and Alexa talks to Hubitat). That allows rules to respond much more quickly to light state changes.
Drat, I should've read the whole thread before switching to the new app.
It's also kind of misleading that both the app in Hubitat and the Alexa skill will let me select the Hue lights, but they don't show up when I discover devices. (I did see the message in the Hubitat app about incompatible devices being ignored, but those should probably be pre-filtered.)
So glad I stumbled across this thread, I've been trying my best to use the Alex App (not skill, we don't have it in the UK as yet). And wondered why I didn't see duplication (as I have all of them connected in ST), I don't have the Hue skill linked, as I did all my bulbs via ST. I'm still missing a few devices in Alexa though, it simply wont find the none Hue devices using the smart app.
But at least I now know why I don't see all my lights. Thanks!
@coreylista Any chance the app/skill will be updated to let Hue devices work? Users already have the ability to exclude Hues by simply not selecting them in the set of controlled devices (and silently ignoring them is kind of confusing), It would be a nice option to be able to let control flow through Hubitat.
Letting Alexa control Hues through Hubitat makes for much snapper interactions with Hubitat rules, and also allows me to exclude all the default Hue groups and scenes from Alexa. (I much prefer the level of control I get through Hubitat there.)
You could always revert to an earlier build, and you'll get the Amazon Echo App back, then update to the latest build without installing the Amazon Echo Skill app, but that's not a great long-term plan. If you have issues and need to uninstall the Amazon Echo App, you won't be able to reinstall it afterward
For now, to get most of what you're looking for, you could use virtual dimmers and virtual switches, tied to the Hue devices with RM.
I'm with @jason0x43, right now I don't mind the way things are but I would rather the control come from Hubitat and not Hue. All those default Hue scenes just really make things complicated in Alexa.
