How to announce a temperature

Trying to implement a work-around for no thermostat support in Alexa. I set up a virtual momentary switch that when turned on, I want the current thermostat temperature to be announced on my speakers.

This is what I tried...set up a rule which will run when the switch goes on, which will run another rule to report the temperature. Here is the temperature reporting rule:

When I click Done on the rule, the speaker says "Thermostat temperature is" but doesn't say the temperature value. I also turned the switch on, same thing happens.

Should the temperature value be announced? If not, what would be the best way to announce the temperature?

That's probably because there is no event value. There is no event causing the rule to fire, just you saving it. If the rule were to fire because of an event, then maybe it would speak the temperature that caused the rule to fire. Try it with a virtual temp sensor. Set it to speak when greater than a value and then set the virtual so that the rule changes from false to true and I'm willing to be dollars to donuts you'll get your value in the spoken message.

Well, look at that...I tried to put in that rule into Rule Machine and THAT locked up my Hub. LMAO . Wonder if they'll try to blame this on webCoRE too?

I build the rule with a value instead of !=0 and it works when the rule changes from False to True. But all you have to do is in another rule force evaluate the rule and the temp is announced correctly regardless of whether it is changing from False to True. So, you just need to force evaluate the rule you have from whatever else you are doing in Rule Machine and it should announce the temp. I just tried this and it's working perfectly.

I tried using "=50" and for true and false announce the value, still not coming out.

Could you post a screen print of your rule? Maybe I'm not understanding what you are doing.

Like I said, if you want it to just announce the temp, you need two rules. The first can be anything that will always equal true...so the rule you have with not equal to 0 would be fine. Then you need a second rule to evaluate the first. This is the first rule I have. (But when I save this one, I get the current temp announced)


But to get the temp on demand, you need a rule with this action:

If I change the temp of the temp sensor, and then turn on the switch test, it announces the new temp. But i have to manually call for the temp to be announced. It won't do it when it changes. That is, of course, unless you had a triggered rule or a trigger.

If you want to use a custom app then Message Central will do this for you.

Trigger with the switch
Use the %temp% variable in the message

Just select your temp sensor/thermostat as the weather device

Andy

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