Hi everyone, I have a few LED strips from Hue and Paulmann. Everything is integrated into Alexa/Echo. Now I’d like to control the LEDs via Home Assistant through Alexa, but I can’t find a solution. Any ideas?
Thanks in advance!
You can send commands to Echo devices to turn them on or off using automations.
Or, you can create input helpers within home assistant and expose those to Alexa and create routines in Alexa side to turn them on or off based on exposed input helpers.
cool idea with the automations. Will try that. Thanks
The purpose of Home Assistant is to control all your devices locally. With a dongle (e.g. Home Assistant Connect ZBT-2 - Home Assistant) and a Zigbee integration (e.g. Zigbee Home Automation - Home Assistant) you can integrate everything directly into Home Assistant.
If for some reason you don't want to do that, you have at least two options:
- Use Alexa Mediaplayer: Home · alandtse/alexa_media_player Wiki · GitHub
- As described by fuatakgun. But I would recommend to package everything into a template light (Template - Home Assistant), as you might need multiple helpers if you want to e.g. control the brightness.
I haven't tried it yet, but there is an integration for that.
Can you clarify what you mean by this statement, because it can be read two ways....
- I'd like to integrate the lights directly into HA, but maintain the ability to control them using Alexa voice commands.
- I'd like to keep the lights directly integrated in Alexa, but add the ability to control them using HA.
My recommendation is always option 1... Centralize control of whatever devices you have in HA, then expose them to other platforms, like Alexa, as necessary. If you have devices that cannot be directly integrated into HA, it is possible to do option 2, but it usually ends up being a hassle.
Basically, I just want to have an on/off switch on my iPhone ‘Home App’. My idea was to pass it to Home Assistant (HA), so I can make it available on the iPhone as an on/off switch. However, it looks like for this case I could bypass HA and just use an Apple automation.
But I can’t find a way in Apple automation to control Alexa and turn a device on or off. There is only an option called ‘Ask Alexa’, but I can’t see how to pass a command or define what Alexa should do.”
I am trying to think of a metaphor to explain your circular logic here.
Your first mistake is using Alexa to control things. You control devices from Home Assistant then use an automation to respond to a command from Alexa. The Echo devices in my home know none of my devices.
Basically, it works like this: Switch is an entity in Home Assistant. You control the switch in a dashboard view which is available using the companion app. If you want to tell Alexa "turn on the Switch", then there are methods to turn that command into a trigger for an automation.
There is a way to do this through your Nabu Casa account but let me take you further into my rabbit hole. (I don't use Nabu Casa for my Alexa connection).
I have over 100 devices like switches or lights or sensors all over the house. I can control or view any of them in a dashboard or on my phone using the companion app. Most of the switches and lights can also respond to a command spoken to Alexa.
My connection to Alexa is using the Node-RED Alexa Home Skill Bridge from Ben Hardill. This is how Ben describes the bridge:
This node and service allows you to create your own "devices" to work with the Amazon Echo's Home Skill system, giving you voice control over basically anything you can interface with Node-RED. There is support for not only things like Belkin WeMo and Philps Hue, but also a whole range of homebrew devices. You can also use Amazon Alexa to kick off seqences of events not just discrete on/off type actions
thanks and I got you way of thinking but as I'm not a HA pro I alway trying to keep it so simple as possible and as less as possible afford as well. Basically I have not that much of devices and I'm using HA only to bypass technical and compatibility issues. Hope that make sense. 
The subtext to what I was trying to tell you is, putting your devices on Alexa first is the hard way to interface with Home Assistant.
I've never done it, but surely someone on these forums can guide you how to do it with Nabu Casa. Yes, there is a subscription, but it is worth it.
Ben Hardill's method is free, but I depend on it so much that I don't mind making a regular donation via GitHub.
BTW, you mentioned cost- Never believe ANY manufacturer that says you must buy their hub/base/controller, or whatever marketing term they are using to trick you into buying more of their hardware.