Our outside gates have sensors on them and an outdoor siren sounds if they're opened. The rule that turns on the siren only fires if a virtual switch is on. We control the switch via Alexa voice commands by saying, "Alexa, turn off (or turn on) the gate alarm" to Echo Dots that are on our patio and in the garage.
Here's the issue: When I tell Alexa to turn on the gate alarm, she (it) issues the acknowledgement tone and I know the virtual switch has been turned on. The problem is that when I tell Alexa to turn the switch off, there is no acknowledgement tone provided and I don't know if she heard the command correctly and turned the switch off, even when the command was heard and the virtual switch was turned off. This means that in situations where Alexa didn't hear the command, we assume she did and then the alarm goes off when someone opens a gate and it scares the crap out of everyone and annoys the neighbors.
Does anyone know why an acknowledgement is given for the voice command, "Turn on the gate alarm" but not for the command "Turn off the gate alarm?"
I'm going to go out on a limb and say the problem lies with "alarm" being in the name. To avoid thieves from turning off alarms from outside a house, that action is probably blocked.
I'm not sure why you wouldn't get the same response for each action, but it should be possible to ask Alexa is it is closed or if it is open and get the appropriate response. At least that way you will know whether she heard the request and took action.
That's definitely a possibility, easy test try changing the name.
Another thing I thought of, is check if you have "Brief" mode turned on. Try turning that off and you get more vocal responses. I think you can just ask Alexa to enable/disable brief mode.
You could get really creative and have a red bulb somewhere that turns on when the alarm is armed? Or even something simple like a push alert when it turns on/off so you know for sure it worked on the Hubitat end.
Alexa is very finicky about device naming. I have a Hunter Simpleconnect fan and light in my bedroom. I call one the bedroom fan and the other the bedroom fan light. If I tell Alexa to turn on the bedroom lights, she turns on the lights, but also turns on the fan. That would not be so bad, but when I tell her to turn off the bedroom lights, she turns off all the lights, but the bedroom fan remains running. I have to turn it off manually. Bummer! I love Alexa, but like teenagers, she sometimes does her own thing.
