Alexa and Entity State Feedback

Third party integrations Node-RED
1

Hello everybody,

I’m a little lost; (

I’ve tried more and more with Home Assistant over the past few weeks and now it works really well.
With Node Red and Alexa, I have now managed to turn the plugs and lights off and on.

But I would also like to be able to ask Alexa about individual devices.
For example:

  • what is the temperature of the pool
  • or what is the charge level of the car battery.
    …

But at the moment I have no idea how to implement it.
Can someone give me a good tip on how I can query Alexa for individual entity states?

Many Thanks

2

AFAIK, you could do some tricks to get to Alexa to respond to questions like that first one, but that second one and many others I know no way for her to understand them and there’s no clean way of achieving that.

What I do, idea I grabbed from a person that uploaded some HA video to YT, is instead of making a full question, just name the device, in this case:

  • pool’s temperature
  • car battery level

Create a routine for each device that when you say, for example “pool’s temperature”, it triggers some device in HA with which you can trigger your flows. It avoids the limitations in Alexa’s understanding while you make sentences the simplest possible way so they’re easy to remember.

3

I have create a Solution :slight_smile:
(Thanks to dynamicdave )

I solve them with the Blueprints of Alexa. ( Pure fun with Alexa and Alexa Skills - #26 by Yagyu - Share Your Projects - Node-RED Forum )
I Create Q&A for me
something like: “Alexa, what is the Temperature of the Pool”
and create an Answer “One Moment, i check the Temperature of the Pool”

Then i create flows which use Input trigger “Temperature of The Pool” / can see Details in the linked Thread.

So this works for me :slight_smile:

1 Like
4

@Yagyu But when you make such questions, doesn’t alexa complain because there’s not such device or whatever?