Hi.
I've recently built a HE driver for my receiver. It woks well and I can control power, volume and input selection through HE.
When I tried to expose it to Alexa (using the standard Alexa Skill and HE app) it is only detected by Alexa as a switch.
Any suggestions how I can expose it (or a virtual device that interfaces with it) through Alexa? I thought I could use a dimmer, but I don't like the way the voice commands for dimmer would work here.
I can live with Input source being converted to custom switches ("Alexa switch AV to Apple TV" can be a virtual switch), but don't want to set the volume as a dimmer.
Ideas and/or suggestions?
Unless you also want to write a custom Alexa Skill, you'll have to stick with the capabilities that Hubitat's Alexa Skill supports. These are things like switches, dimmers, thermostats, etc.
But working with what is available, there are still other ways you could do this. For example, your driver could create child switches that you can turn on or off (e.g., to activate Apple TV or whichever). This virtual switch would be controllable by Alexa, of course. If you don't like the voice command you have to do to make this happen, you could create an Alexa Routine triggered by a more friendly phrase that just turns on this switch. And if you don't want to (or don't know how to) make your driver create child devices, you could use a virtual switch to do effectively the same thing if coupled with some automation on the hub (e.g., a RM Rule or anything that works) to perform the desired action on your driver in response to events from the switch.
I don't see a good way to do volume without pretending it's a dimmer, given the capabilities available, but Alexa Routines triggered with a phrase like "turn the volume up" and some automation on Hubitat, again perhaps then triggering some switch on your hub and an automation there that does what you need, like the above, might work to get what you want.
That's the general idea, at least!
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Thanks!
I can definitely expose a dimmer capability from the driver, though I find that.. inelegant...
A virtual dimmer and RM will work better.
Thanks
