Quick clarification: I meant to write ‘switch.my_switch’ as the example entity at 4:38, since it’s a switch entity not a light. No big deal since it’s just an example anyway, but I wanted to point that out in case it caused any confusion.
Excellent tutorial! Fortunately for this noob, you hit all the important points while explaining *why* you made the choices/settings/assumptions you did. As a career teacher, I've gotten pretty good at spotting teachers who really know what they're doing as teachers, and you, sir, have the gift. You're *excellent* at anticipating what your viewers need to know (and, thankfully, what they don't!!) while clearly explaining the concepts and settings necessary to make it all work. The pace of the video was perfect, and the "Final Tips" section was a great way to finish. Thank you very much! (BTW, I mashed that Subscribe button within the first 30 seconds!)
This comment made my day! Thank you so much. A lot of work goes into research, planning, and scripting so it definitely doesn’t come as naturally as I would like. 😅 Glad I was able to help!
Didn't integrate Alexa like this yet but want to say thank you for a great video already. I understand all and I bet it works next week when I find time :)
Great Video I do have a question as I have not yet implemented either this method or the Node Red option you have a video on. So I have disconnected all my Hue Lights from the Hub bridge and have paired them directly into Alexa via Zigbee. If I use the emulated hue that you have shown here, will it duplicate all my hue bulbs (potentially different names but the same device)?
Thanks for the tutorial but I encountered an issue. Alexa found the devices I exposed, but when I wanted to turn on/off, it just says server unresponsive.
@SmartHomeTheory what about the Alexa Smart Home Skill? In my opinion my Alexa doesn't even try to search for new devices. When I ask to discover devices, Alexa replies right away saying it could not discover any new smart home devices and finally is giving the advice to enable Smart Home skill in the Alexa App. Looks like in order to enable SMART Home Skill an AWS account is needed which is free for the first 12 month only. Do I need Smart Home skill enabled or there is another way to do it? BTW I got the first Alexa edition (echo), don't know if matters or not.
so, it means that I can control any Wi-Fi device without need to Alexa compatible? and for example when i try to add a Wi-Fi switch to Alexa what should I do? like it can automatically recognize?
@@mariondo00 try to install the app and don't do anything. Just ask alexa to discover the devices, after few mins it will get you many new devices, also esp32 ones and now I can do stuff I never thought
Thanks for the video. On/Off works great (for switch entities) but for light entities Brightness always goes to 100%, as soon as I turn on the device. I can reduce it but Alexa doesn't remember the position, after I turn the device off and always goes to full brightness as soon as I turn it on. For media_player entities volume on TV goes to 100% as well, which is very annoying! Is there a solution on this?
Hmm, I’ve never encountered that problem myself. Very strange. Does this also happen when you turn off/on the device using the Alexa app (not using voice)? Can you also try voice control using the app instead of your speaker? Is your Home Assistant fully up to date? Is your Alexa app fully up to date? Finally try deleting all the devices in Alexa, uninstalling and reinstalling the app, then detect devices again.
I got it working. Alexa has discovered the ZigBee devices I have. However, it can only turn on the lights. When I tell it to turn off, it says "the light is not responding and to check the power supply". Has anyone else had this happen?
One last thing to consider that i just discovered the hard way: because devices and scripts are exposed and seen as lights by alexa/google, it will turn the "all lights on/off" commands to be useless / dangerous, but its a necessary compromise
True. I never ran into this problem but then again I never say lights off but “goodnight” to turn everything off. If you really want to say “lights off” you could set up a routine called “lights off” and add all your actual lights to it. Should work.
Thats what i had to do after unwillingly setting off everything in what looked like the mr robot hacked home scene, safe guarded those key words by creating routines for them that override the default ones 😅
Yep, it's totally worth it and I would always recommend that first. I said as much in my video on Home Assistant Cloud. This is more for those who, for whatever reason, can't or choose not to subscribe.
