For quite a while I was able to say “Alexa, open overhead garage door” and it would do so without requesting a PIN. I use this every day when leaving the house and when arriving home (in the car). A couple day ago, I got onboarded on Alexa+ (OMG, it just does whatever it wants!) and it stopped working.
Over the years I have implemented several circumventions of this requirement. With the last one that I can recall being a template entity called “Cargo Bay” and I believe I was able to use open/close with that. Then “turn on” overhead garage door worked, then I noticed that “open” also worked… until now.
I have a Chamberlain GDO with a RATGDO.
Recently I updated to the latest HA beta, latest ESPHome version, and redid my RATGDO implementation as mine was customized in a way it was hard to update it (I had to find code changes and change them in my code) - now I use the add/remove/replace functions in ESPHome. I may have made other changes to anything in HA that affected this without knowing.
I usually keep track of how I accomplish something as I know I’ll forget otherwise but I have no notes on this.
Anyone manage to open/close their overhead garage door without being forced to provide a pin using the correct natural language “Alexa - open overhead garage door”?
BTW - In Google Home / Gemini - I am able to open it without a PIN so a stop gap is to use that in the car.
Please no security related lectures… I choose what risks I can live with.
@tmjpugh - In the app you can enable voice opening but you are also forced to enter a PIN. The process of giving it the PIN is quite slow and when trying it, something did not work correctly and it went on wasting your time making silly comments on how it had another brain fart (it said that at least it was consistent in that regard - making mistakes).
Pin or no pin is an option but I forget where. I stop using Alexa many months ago. I think I created routine and then pin was not needed. Basically create a custom voice command in Alexa app and it bypass pin requirement
@aruffell why don’t you create a virtual Toggle button in HA and share that with Alexa? That way you can create a routine in Alexa that Toggles the button ON when you say “Open the Garage Door”, and let HA do the actual command to open the garage.
@tmjpugh & @Holydoc - I don’t do any automation in the alexa app, so I am not familiar with it but I will look into it.
My biggest “want” is to be able to use “Open overhead garage door” otherwise I can easily do this in a number of ways.
Thinking about it, if the device class “Garage” is what tells Alexa that it is a security device, I could just change that in my ESPHome RATGDO, or I could create a template cover called “Overhead Garage Door” (and thus rename the actual one) and have it interact with Alexa. If Alexa ignores the name of the cover, then it would not be able to tell the difference between a window shade and the overhead garage door if I don’t classify it as such. I’ll have to test this and report back…
PS - Too bad there isn’t the same setting for Alexa:
By changing the device_class from garage to awning in ESPHome (RATDGO), Alexa no longer requires a PIN. I’ll keep looking for an alternative as now the Overhead Garage Door control in ESPHome and alexa app are now incorrect, but that is just nitpicking
PS: Using shutter as the device_class fixes this in part as the controls in ESPHome are the same used for Garage. In the Alexa app it looks like a shade, but I don’t really care about that as I try to avoid the app as much as possible given it is so bad.
GDO with a RATGDO.
