A dumb but hopefully easy question on Alexa thermostat control

Third party integrations
1

What words do you use to get Alexa to set the thermostat temperature to a different value?

I’m testing a smoker control that is using a generic thermostat but when I tell Alexa to “set the smoker to 250 degrees” I get a response of “I’m not quite sure what went wrong”.

The setpoint I’m changing it to is within the setpoint min max range.

I can control the thermostat mode from Alexa just fine (heat or off).

Am I not using the right words, the wrong integration, is it a bug or does Alexa not support voice control of the thermostat setpoint?

2

Alexa set … bla bla to xxx percent/number?

3

I just tried again without the degrees part (“Alexa, set the smoker to 250”) and got exactly the same response as above.

4

I’ve had a few situations where she just didn’t like the phrases I was using for things and i usually end up creating a routine with that phrase and that in turn changes the brightness of a “virtual bulb” and use that to kick off automations… but I don’t know if that’s possible for you if you need many possible temperatures available… but anyway that’s my work-around when she is being a pain with certain phrases

5

I have an ecobee thermostat with Alexa built-in. I find Google is better at controlling it than Alexa!

What works for me with Alexa, call the device “the heat” when in heating mode. If you call it by name, it gets confused. Same for cooling. Say “the AC” and never the device name nor air conditioner.

6

I guess I could make something like that work since I would typically only need a few common temperatures.

I’ll look into it.

I just tried that but since I have a switch called “Tank Heater” that I use to control my fish tank heater I get a response back “Tank Heater doesn’t support that” since it thinks the “heat” I’m referring to is that switch.

thanks for the replies, tho.

Someone has to have a thermostat they control with Alexa, tho, and knows what the “magical incantation” :wink: is to use to get it to work.

7

Also I don’t often use Alexa to change my temperature but I know on the occasions I have it is usually use the phrase “living room thermostat to XX degrees” or set the “the heat to XX degrees”. But I also only have one “thermostat” exposed to Alexa so I don’t know if that makes it easier

8

Same response.

here is the thermostat code just in case I’m doing something wrong there:

climate:
  - platform: generic_thermostat
    name: Smoker Box
    heater: input_boolean.smoker_thermostat_dummy_switch
    target_sensor: sensor.smoker_box_temperature
    min_temp: 200
    max_temp: 350
    ac_mode: false
    target_temp: 200
    hot_tolerance: 15
    initial_hvac_mode: "heat"
    precision: 0.1

it switches between heat & idle fine from Alexa and I can change the setpoint thru the UI just not from Alexa.

9

If you don’t have an actual thermostat connected, using the word “thermostat” should also work.

10

Nope, same response.

“I’m not quite sure what went wrong”.

It’s the only climate device I have in my system.

11

I just happed to come across this discussion. For what it’s worth, I just set this up to see if I could make it work. I made sure to have a unique and easy Name in Alexa. For example, I made one of mine “Home Thermostat” and the other “Son’s Air Conditioning”. Both work when I say “Alexa (raise / lower) (“home thermostat” / “son’s air conditioning”) by xx degrees.” It worked every time for me. I could get Alexa to tell me the temperature when asked, but NOT the actual setpoint. So, not ideal, but I think this should work for anyone.

P.S. I was even able to change the thermostat from off to cooling, etc.

2 Likes
12

Thanks for the response.

I gave up on using it for the use I had intended but if I get some time I’ll give it another try.