Hopefully Agnes from Zooz @agnes.zooz sees this. (edited to add link)
I installed my new Zooz ZEN16 relay as a garage door opener. It has 1.02 firmware and I'm using the new driver and app.
1st) I HIGHLY recommend if you are already using this relay that you completely remove it from Habitat, exclude it from Z-wave, and start over. I can not even begin describe all the issues I had before I did that (like it opening and closing on its own every 15 seconds. The neighbor lady actually came over thinking I was sending a distress signal!), I think I spend 4-5 hours on this. Also, the printed instructions that come with the the relay have an error under "Troubleshooting". To add the relay back to the z-wave network you press the z-wave button 3 times, NOT 4-5 times. Pressing it 4-5 times will not work.
Question) Everything seems to be working now on the Habitat side. However, I can not control it through Alexa. I've advertised it in the Amazon Echo Skill. But Alexa will not open or close the garage door, she just ignores me (no tone, no error); however, she will tell me the status of the garage door (e.g. "Alexa, is the garage door open" tells me if it is or not). I also can not open or close it via the app (it is listed as a type "Contact Sensor" if that helps). Do I control it via the relay? That doesn't seem like a good idea as that wouldn't give me the status.
Anyone have any ideas (or can tag someone from Zooz).
To tag someone, use @ and start typing their name. @John.Herron
Garage doors are weird things sometimes, I believe Alexa actively blocks them from being used by voice, it did the last I knew anyhow. I think people get around this by making it a switch, and saying "turn on the garage door" . I think you have to create a virtual switch in Hubitat, and tie that to the garage door switch.
Hubitat, or Alexa app?
Agnes can handle hardware stuff, but doesn't use Hubitat. So if it is Hubitat related, we can try without her.
The "Garage Door" is listed as a "Contact Sensor" in the Alexa app.
I was using a WiFi garage door opener and it was working fine with with "Unlock garage door", "Lock garaged door", it would prompt for a password to lock. It also would give status.
I'm tagging zooz because this is a new garage door driver that they just released. Perhaps they can make it appear as a lock, rather than a garage door to Alexa?
This is really easy to do yourself by creating a virtual lock (which is exposed to Alexa) and then creating a rule that uses locked/unlocked status to control your Garage door. Alternatively, you could ask @krlaframboise if it would be possible to modify his app such that lock capability is also added to the child devices that I'm guessing his app creates,
Hi John, we recommend pressing the button 4-5 times only in the troubleshooting section in case the 3 clicks didn't work because that usually means the sequence wasn't performed quickly enough and didn't register with the device so adding 1-2 clicks may help the device register a full 3-click sequence. The inclusion and exclusion instructions both mention 3-clicks to add and remove the device. Sorry if that was confusing!
We've only tested the Z-Wave functionality on HE and haven't tried Alexa yet since it's a third party integration but we'll see what can be done here. The workaround suggested by @aaiyar seems like a great idea and once we verify that it works well, we'll add it to the SmartApp instructions. Thank you for your patience!
How was your WiFi garage door opener connect to Alexa?
I wasn't aware that Alexa supported locks so that password feature must be somewhat new and I'll be surprised if the Hubitat Skill supports it.
Unfortunately adding the lock capability to the garage door child driver won't solve the problem because last time I checked, it wasn't possible to change the type of device within Alexa.
If I added the lock capability and Alexa still sees it as a contact sensor then that didn't accomplish anything, but if Alexa sees it as a lock then all users will lose the ability to get the open/closed status of the door because she'd refer to it as locked/unlocked.
Making the app create an optional lock child that stays in sync with the door child might be an option, but if the Hubitat Skill supports that password feature and it utilizes the lock codes aspect of an actual device then it won't be as simple as implementing the lock attribute and lock/unlock commands.
Zooz owns the code so I'll discuss it with Agnes to see if there's a workable solution, but the workaround @aaiyar provided should allow you to control it with Alexa.
@John.Herron, let us know if that password feature in Alexa works with the Virtual Lock device you create.
Your rule to activate the garage door when the lock is activated would look something like:
I can confirm that virtual locks exposed to Alexa by Hubitat can be controlled by Alexa as locks. You will need to set a (numeric) password in the Alexa app for an unlock command.
@aaiyar, thank you. I managed to get it to work with Alexa (before I saw this) creating a virtual lock, and then four rules (I am SURE there is an easier way). I needed to keep the virtual lock and the Garage Door driver in sync with each other for both open and close (so four scenarios). I'm sure this could be simplified but it is working fine (I would love one rule that did all of this, maybe after I learn a little more). Yes, I had to set an Alexa numeric password. As @krlaframboise points out (or I think this is what he is pointing out) it would be better to implement the password in the driver/app and pass this to Alexa. That way there could be multiple passcodes/users (great for AirB&B type uses) and have logging of who used it when.
For now, I'm really happy with this. I can even check the status of the garage door with Alexa ("Alexa, is the garage door locked"). And I have tiles on a dashboard that I use on my car headunit (can open/close/check status on the garage door from anywhere). Now I need to work on a rule to close the garage door if it has been opened more than xx minutes. All of this is why I dumped a perfectly functional WiFi garage door controller (that even had an Android widget, but the widget was really ugly. That might have been the primary reason ).
I've spent so much money in the last 3 weeks to avoid Wink's subscription on new automation , its going to be years before I recoup the cost. But its definitely worth it.
I considered providing an example of syncing it both ways, but I was concerned that it could potentially put the device into a loop and I didn't want to be responsible for that.
Nope, I was saying that I hope it doesn't work that way because it would complicate everything.
Since the password functionality is handled by Alexa, the only things that need to be implemented in a custom lock handler is the lock attribute and the lock and unlock commands.
Alexa will only take one passcode. So I was thinking it would nice if it could pass the passcode to Hubitat to verify as I believe your code can handle multiple passcodes. Getting logging info on who opened it at one time would also be nice. But, for my uses I'm happy. I've opened and closed it at least 20 times, by both Alexa and HE and have had no issues yet.
Passing information between Hubitat and Alexa is handled by the Alexa Skill so I'm pretty sure that's not currently possible.
That password feature also sounds like something built into Alexa and that would explain why it works with the Hubitat integration.
If I'm right then I highly doubt that password is exposed through the Skill API which would also make passing it to Hubitat not possible.
That being said, I wasn't even aware that Alexa added support for locks until yesterday and my comments above are based on a lot of assumptions so I might be wrong...
@krlaframboise, it does look like I'm getting some occasional looping from trying to keep the virtual lock and the Zooz Garage Door in sync with each other. It doesn't happen very often (perhaps 1 out of 15 times) and it seems to only happen when closing via Hubitat (it reopens the garage door after about 15 seconds after being fully closed). My guess is that if the sync rule finishes before the garage door completely closes (during the "closing" part of the cycle) that all is fine.
Any ideas on how this might be avoided? Is there a way to change the state of virtual switch without triggering any rules that are watching it? This way the sync rule would always work but it would trigger looping. Or perhaps there is something more elegant or simpler that I'm overlooking (I'm pretty new at all this).
I disabled all my old rules and my virtual lock. I then installed this one and everything seems to be working great! Thank you @krlaframboise, this is just what was needed! The syncing seems to be very quick and so far no more phantom openings (I'll check back if I notice anything).
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