First, I am new and only partially stupid, I think.
I am trying to set up a rule ( if that is what is needed) to let Alexa know that she has opened my garage door, and also somehow notify me that it has opened, whether by text, email, call, baseball bat to my head, it doesn't matter as ling as I am notified, and I don't know the ways of notification and that is why I mentioned most everyway.
What I have is four openers, the two I am working on now are Liftmaster Elite 8500 and I have a zooz multi-relay zen16 operating the doors with voice control thru Alexa, and I am using the zooz garage door opener app and zWave door/window open/close sensors.
So the doors work great, I can use the hubitat app to open/close doors, the wall switch also works, the remotes work, and Alexa will open and close the doors by my voice, and I have 9 echo devices and they all work fine. My problem is, a couple of minutes after I tell Alexa to open *** door, she tells me that she is having problems communicating with said garage door. She is not having problems, because she opens the door immediately, she just doesn't know it. So how do I inform her the door has opened and also inform me. The contact sensor shows open and closed like it is supposed to, but I guess Alexa doesn't know to look at the sensor for the state. So I am asking for some direction in how and what I do to create these responses. Thank you for any and all help given.
I now know it's true, since this should and probably is pretty easy. I always say that, "if I was any dumber, I'd be dirt. But then that makes me wonder if maybe I'm already dirt and I'm too dumb to know it."
I may not be understanding your issue correctly so apologies in advance. In he Alexa integration do you have this switch enabled?
I do have it enabled as of an hour or two ago, so I am not sure what effect it has. I mean it was not enabled but before I wrote rhis inquiry, as I was trying to create a rule I enabled at that time.
Alexa only gives Hubitat so much time for Hubitat to change the state. I run with this switch off but I occasionally do get her telling me that something has not responded - meaning changed state in the allotted time.
With garage doors, they won’t change their state until they stop moving, so it will miss the time window every time.
This switch tell Alexa to just assume that the action got carried out so she doesn’t wait for an acknowledgement.
Now to answer your question about a notification. The easiest way, since Alexa can see contact sensors, would be to set up two separate alexa routines - one to announce when the contact switch open and the other for when it closes.
Of course you can also do this on the Hubitat side, for instance I send a pushover notification when mine changes, but you can do it many ways.
Thank you for the help, I knew it didn' t bother her to think she didn't communicate with the opener, just wanted to fix it if I could so she would know she did. But I did do as you suggested and I set up text and announcements in Alexa so when the door sensors change states to open or closed she sends me a text message on my phone and anounces it on the 19 Alexa devices I have. I did not at all realize I had purchased 19 dang Alexa's don't get me wrong I love her, but that's too many.
Anyway thanks for the help.
I do have one more thing I would like to know and possibly get help with. So, if I am in the house and tell Alexa to open one of my doors on the seperate garage, and let's say the door is actually already opened, since she doesn't truly know the state of the door, I assume she will in fact trigger the zooz relay and actually close the door. If this is the case, I know there is a rule, or a and/or/not/nor/xor writing that can prevent this from happening, can you help me with this part, or direct me to what app, I will use for it.
I’m not sure this will happen. Technically the Zooz garage door app should take care of this. The Zooz apps knows the current state of the door and if the door is closed already and gets a closed request, the it should not trigger the action. I think you should try it first.
I am using a zen17 on my for but I have wired it up directly to my chamberlain so I have separate buttons for up and down. I did it this way because in the summer we usually open the garage door a couple feel to keep the humidity down in the garage. For sure in this state an open request would have closed the door instead of opening it, so I wired it differently and I am not using the Zooz app. I also have a contact for closed and another contact for fully open. A single zen17 can do all this in one box, the reason I switched from a zen16.
If you try it and it does work as you assumed, then you can definitely handle it RM, but someone else using the Zooz app would be able to support you better.
My other two openers are also Chamberlains and I also have a zen 17 that I am going to use for them, so you actually probably have a whole lot more information that I can use. On those two I have two zigbee door O/C sensors that I purchased for the seperate garage and the zen 16, but they wouldn't reach the hub, so I purchased two zWave sensors since everything else in that garage is zWave anyway and there is also a z range extender there also. I knew when I did the house garage I would need sendors and the zigbee one's would work fine there. When I decided to give it a shot at making the openers work again with Alexa ( since in the beginning they did work with Alexa, until cham/lift removed that ability) I purchased the zen 16 and 17 because I wasn't sure which one would work the doors, if one even would. I bought the 16 and 17, the hubitat elevation, and the extender at the same time, at the time I didn't know that you actually had to have O/C sensors or tilt sensors, so I didn't buy any, until I installed the one garage and started setting up the app and then found out it had to have them to set it up. Tilt sensors wouldnt work on the seperate harage because the doors are 12' roll up doors. Sorry for the useless info and ramblin, anyway, can you and will you if you don' t mind, tell me how you wired and with what else you used to make the 17 work with your chamberlains. I am guessing although I could easily be wrong, that they are myQ? I haven't addef the 17 to mine yet, I thought I mIght give it a shot tomorrow, and I was going to try and wire and set them up the same way I did the 16 and the liftmasters, but honestly it's been 6 or 7 years since I installed them and I'm not sure that they are wired the same. Thanks for the help.
No problem. The extra info is good. Yes my chamberlain is MyQ ready and I had to add the separate RF-Ethernet adapter. I think the newer ones are wifi.
So the zen17 only has two relays, not three like the zen16. But the zen17 also has two contact sensors inputs. I am using these for wired contact sensors instead of using a ST sensor that I had to keep replacing the battery - especially in winter.
I forgot that the motor unit actually had up and down buttons. When I realized that it was just a matter of soldering wires.
If you still want to go down this path, let me know.
Yes, I think the way you set yours up and knowing that it is tested and true is the most logical way to proceed. I am comfortable working with electronics. So you already know that I have the zen 17, two zigbee O/C sensors (which I too can and probably will purchase wired ones, especially if now that you have used yours for a while, you think that is the way to go) and my chamberlains are the WD1000WF openers that have wifi built in and I have battery B/U installed on both. What's the chance that you also have WD1000WF openers, now that would be insane, but possible. Once again Thank You for all of your help and for the guidance you are offering now, I do appreciate it very much.
Let me introduce you to my ex-wife, then we'll see who is more stupid...
Have alexa monitor a virtual switch and use this as the virtual switch driver...Have the virtual switch monitor the contact sensor. So basically what this does is say to Alexa that it's a switch but on hubitat it says it's a contact sensor. Then you expose this to alexa
metadata {
definition (name: "Virtual contact with Switch", namespace: "cwilson08", author: "cwwilson08") {
capability "Sensor"
capability "Contact Sensor"
capability "Switch"
}
}
def on() {
sendEvent(name: "contact", value: "closed")
sendEvent(name: "switch", value: "on")
}
def off() {
sendEvent(name: "contact", value: "open")
sendEvent(name: "switch", value: "off")
}
def installed() {
}
I just checked. I have an LC1000EVC purchased from Lowe’s. I installed it in February 2015 so a little longer ago than I thought.
