Ecolink Z-wave Plus Flood/Freeze Sensor and Amazon Alexa app

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#1

I have a Hubitat elevations Z-wave controller.
I am able to pair the Hubitat elevations with
the Exolink Flood/Freeze sensor.
My issue is I can not get my Amazon Alexa app on my iPhone
to see the sensor.

Has anyone run into this issue before?
When I disable and enable the Hubitat Skill on my iPhone it sees the Ecolink sensor i the list of devices. But in the Amazon Alexa app's list the list of all devices the water sensor is not listed.
I was hoping to have Alexa announce when the sensor detected water.

#2

You need to create a virtual switch attached to the sensor, then through the alexa skill in HE make it available to Alexa.

#3

Thank you,
Now I will need to learn how to create a virtual switch in Hubitat elevations.
Where do I learn how to do that?

#4

Go to devices, add device, virtual device. Name the device, choose virtual x driver. Save

#5

Actually i think it is unfortunately a little more complicated than this. Alexa doesn't let you set routines that are triggered by switches.

#6

OK I am learning a little bit about getting around in Hubitat elevations.
I was able to create a virtual contact switch in HE and I am able to create a virtual motion sensor unfortunately I can not seem to create the Bsic Rule that lets my EcoLink water senor set and reset them.
I was able to create a virtual switch that I could activate with a Basic Rule using the Water sensor.
I was able to use the water sensor state to set or reset or the virtual switch.
I can not figure out how to activate and deactivate a virtual motion sensor.
Likewise I could not figure out how to open or close the virtual contact switch,
What am I missing in the Basic Rule setup? Do I need to import another App?
I installed the Hubitat Safety Monitor which really moved my project along. Now I think I can send multiple, as in repeating every 15 minutes, notifications to my phone. I would still like to get the Alexa to make the announcement so that anybody in the house could be alerted to an issue in the basement not relying on me to have my phone on or by me.

#7

Yes it does... I have several. Such as: Ecolink firefighter hears alarm from nest thermostat, it turns on virtual switch. Alexa sees virtual switch turned on, sets routine to turn on my hood fan (bosch connected via cloud and wifi). Works just dandy (even though I've switched to the home connect integration the virtual switch still work fine)

#8

Interesting. Doesn't work for me. Are you using a virtual motion switch, perhaps?

#9

As an alternative, you could use the very flexible Echo Speaks app in conjunction with HSM...

Screen Shot 2022-01-12 at 3.22.30 PM
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#10

There are a few options for this:

  1. Instead of virtual switch, use a custom device that has both Motion Sensor and Switch capabilities (Switch to turn on/off from basic rule; motion to trigger alexa routines) such as: [RELEASE] Virtual Switch Universal Device Type (uDTH) - good for Alexa, IFTTT, HSM, and other integrations

  2. Use a virtual Motion device and RM (Rule Machine - a more complex built-in app for automations), which can call the custom Active/Inactive commands on the virtual device, instead of Basic Rule.

  3. Instead of using Alexa routine to trigger the announcement, use [BETA] Echo Speaks V4 (a community/custom App by @tonesto7 ) to send the announcements directly.
    Echo Speaks also has the ability to configure automations through something called "Actions", which looks like this:

    Screen Shot 2022-01-12 at 12.23.26 PM
    Screen Shot 2022-01-12 at 12.23.26 PM1658×1166 75.9 KB

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#11

Thank you team.
Update I tried to use the Rule Machine to set my virtual contact switch but I
was not successful. I still can not set the two states of a virtual-contact-switch..
On the good news side Alexa can see the virtual-contact-switch when i tried
to setup the announcement. It was that I had set the virtual-switch and did not
set the virtual-contact-switch when I was trying to setup Alexa announcement.
Having coupled my water sensor to the virtual-switch with two basic rules.
I created a separate basic rule for each of the states of the water sensor.

Now does anyone have a script that will allow the HE to join my virtual-contact-switch
to the water sensor?

#12

No sooner did click submit then I saw the responses about that custom device looks great.
I'll give it try. This will be my first attempt at coding in the HE
Gettinig more response that's great.
On using the the Brad5 the Echo speaks is written for the smart home is the HE fully syntactically
compatible with the code on github for the smarthome?

#14

This is the rule I use

image
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#15

ACK!!!!!! I just jecked the driver for my virtual switch. It's cwilsons virtual switch to contact driver. That's how I was doing it..

Exposed the switch as a contact to alexa. The switch gets tripped by econlink firefighter. The virtual contact then trips the alexa routine..

Import this

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() {
}

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#16

I like this code 'snippet'
I think that what it looks like to me.
I have done c coding years ago. I know about python programming.
I do not know if these code snipets are being interpreted by the HE firmware or is there some compiling steps needed to make them effective. I know nothing about this development environment. Where can i get a newbie introduction to this development coding instruction step by step?
Thanks

#17

Just go to driver code, new driver and paste that in, then save. Boom new virtual driver. Create your virtual switch, use that driver. Go to the device page and see how it works

#18

Thank you to rlithgow1
I finally have Alexa announcing "Alert Sump Pump Failure" when my water sensor senses water.
Of course we can try to go to the next step and have the virtual-switch which I tried to use as an enable and disable to text notification also work with being able to have Alexa announce every 15 minutes that the Sump Pump Failed until someone acknowledges the failure by toggling the virtual-switch to disable all announcements and notification.
So far I used what rlthgow1 gave me as the code snippet, as I call it, but I used two Rule machines rules to set and reset the newly created virtual device. So that the new virtual device should always reflect the state of the water sensor.
Again Thank You all.

1 Like
#19

@stuart.serekis I am doing this exact thing. I use the [RELEASE] Virtual Switch Universal Device Type (uDTH) - good for Alexa, IFTTT, HSM, and other integrations to create a switch with motion capabilities that is accessible to Alexa. Turn it on when there is an issue. You can automatically turn it off after a certain period of time. Then setup an Alexa Routine in the Alexa Phone App to either "Announce" or "Say" what you want when that switch is turned on (Alexa will see that motion is detected to trigger the routine). You can use "Announce" to have the message go over multiple devices, or "Say" to go over just one Alexa device. If you use Announce, Alexa will chime first before saying the message. If you use Say, it will just say it with no chime.

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