I am trying to control two sets of Z-Wave blinds via Alexa. A group doesn't work because asking Alexa to turn blinds on and off just sounds strange. Instead, I used Room Lighting and set up an Activator Device of the type shades. I can control the two sets of blinds from within the Room Lighting automation and they adjust to the level set in the table. The state of the Activator Device and of the two individual devices changes to reflect the correct state of the blinds.
What doesn't seem to work is how Alexa controls these blinds. I can ask Alexa to open the blinds and they open to 99 even though the Activator Device has them set at 50 and the individual devices also have a setting of 50 for an open command. I also noticed that the state for the Activator Device and the individual devices never changes.
This is my first time using Room Lighting for anything. I'm just looking for a way to control two sets of blinds with one command from Alexa. Is there something I'm overlooking or is there a better way to do this?
Look at the blind setting in the alexa app, gear upper right corner. Go into "choose device type" and make sure "other/switch" is selected. I think the default for Alexa is lights when it sees any type switch. That should help with the open command instead of having to say on. It MIGHT help with them opening to the wrong setting too.
If not, what blinds are you using and which driver?
I assume you're talking about the group I originally created and added to Alexa. That does show as "other / switch". I can only control it by telling it to turn on / off or to open to some specific level.
The Activator Device I created shows up as blinds in the Alexa app. I can also control them by setting them to a specific level, but asking Alexa to open them will open them to 100% regardless of the setting in the Activator device.
I also tried a virtual switch set as virtual blinds, but that didn't work. Alexa treats it like a switch.
No, I meant the individual blinds in the alexa app, assuming you added them in the Amazon Echo Skill Integration app and they are in the Alexa App.
Also, did you try to set the open position in the integration app
What I did was use virutual shades instead of Activator devices. Then in Room Lighting used it as a switch to turn on or off which seemed to work better for me way back. I never changed it after all of the updates to the integration. This will not allow the group to be adjusted to a different postion but it does work to open them to the preset positions in Room Lighting which I believe is what you are trying to solve
I just installed some smartwings zigbee shades, have a handful of the zwave ones as well. I ended up just adding them to alexa via the hubitat integration, then within Alexa changing the device to a shade. Then within Alexa, just set up voice commands to open a group, or smaller group of shades. can do full open/close, partial. Works for others in the house as well.
Yes, as far as I can tell, Amazon requires you (the skill developer, so Hubitat) to match the "open" voice command to a specific percent, i.e., there is no way to treat it as a special thing even though Hubitat has a command with this name that would probably be a better match.
The suggestion from @CaptWoody sounds like what you're looking for (assuming either 100 or 50 rather than some arbitrary percentage is what you're looking for; this possibility was attempted but scrapped due to complexity). This exact kind of thing is why this feature was added in platform 2.4.4.
Of course, an Alexa routine to do something custom, as it sounds like you may have done, is also a possibility.
