Firstly, please accept my apologies for any stupid questions. I’m savvy with smart tech and wanted to take the next step with home assistant green. I fear it may be a step too far….
I want to create an automation that combines several existing Alexa routines and voice commands into one automation.
I’m looking to turn on the tv, turn on the receiver, turn on the hue sync box and lights, set the living room lights to the required state, change the hdmi on the receiver and the tv. All of this can be done through Alexa but it takes several commands to get there. I want just a single command.
I’ve tried using ChatGPT (I’m sure you will all tell me that was foolish) but have been going round in circles not getting anywhere.
Can what I want be done and if so, how do I do it?
Welcome. There are no stupid questions, only stupid answers. Where have I heard that before?
Yes it can be done, but if this really is your first automation you’re setting yourself quite a challenge by combining Alexa routines, voice commands, a Hue hub and a TV integration. Practice on something simple first till you get the hang of triggers and actions.
Don’t expect to be able to transfer things like Alexa routines straight into Home Assistant. It does things differently. You need to focus on what you want to achieve, not how you want to achieve it.
I see: you want a “hey Alexa. I’m home” and everything springs into life. Wait, even your arrival is detected too, so it happens automagically. Achievable? Definitely.
My comment: There are simple user guides that will step you through this process that are kept up to date and relevant by each vendor that you may find are more up to date than AI that may have been (sadly) taught on out of date material. Go directly to the HomeAssistant website and the website for each device and see there.
Alexa routines can’t be combined? You may not need the power and flexibility HomeAssistant offers if all the devices integrate to Alexa.
All the things you have outlined are small steps that you have to solve individually. Then the puppeteer steps in, pulling all the strings in the right order. If Alexa’s promises won’t do it, then HomeAssistant beckons.
Deep reading and understanding will be essential. Relying on AI is a process that seems to have already let you down. Yes, tweaking yaml code will become second nature.
Post what you have done, including any code and error logs (correctly formatted) if you come across obstacles.
Assuming that you have Alexa integrated into HA. If not you will need to set up the integration via some cloud method, either Nabu Casa or HAASKA or I’m not sure if there are any other options.
Then I would create an input boolean helper that gets exposed to Alexa via HA.
then create an automation that triggers by that boolean helper turning on that does all of those desired actions above within HA itself (Alexa won’t do anything except turn on the boolean). At the end of the automation the last step will be to turn the boolean help back off.
then set up an Alexa routine that when you say, for example, “TV time” Alexa will turn on the HA boolean helper.
Then HA will see that boolean turn on and trigger all of your automation steps.
I started out only using Alexa for my smart home until I also purchased HA Green. The key to doing what you want is, as spoken above, taking it one step at a time. Automate one item in HA Green that Alexa is doing for you. Get it perfected and then move to the next. Soon you will be confident enough (and knowledgeable enough) to create huge automations that make your house feel magical. LOL
Now a word of caution about mixing HA with Alexa. Originally, I created booleans in HA that would signal Alexa to execute a routine. This worked flawlessly since I already had routines built in Alexa and just used HA to tell Alexa when I wanted her to execute those routines. The routines didn’t always work 100% of the times, but they were fairly reliable. Then I started wanting HA to do everything so that I could control the reliability and only needed Alexa to be the voice for my home automations. This is where the caution comes in. Amazon has a bad habit of updating their API rather constantly which breaks the HA-Alexa pipeline. When that happens, I lose all my voice responses, like now. Typically HA will update Alexa Devices within a week, but until then, I have silent automations.
So what is another good reason to have HA do everything? HA introduced their Voice Assistant PE last year. My goal is to eventually move away from Alexa (and the cloud) and do everything locally. If that is also your goal, I would recommend moving as much as possible to HA automations. If your goal is to just use HA to make your automations easier in Alexa, then maybe just creating a boolean that signals Alexa to run a routine is more what you want. Nice thing about HA is that you can do whatever you can dream up.
You’re mixing up Alexa media player functionality via either the built-in Alexa Devices integration or the custom Alexa Media Player integration (which lately hasn’t worked as well as it has in the past) and Alexa voice control via HA (which works pretty much every time as it always has).
those two things are completely separate and distinct from each other even tho may seem to be related.
