Alexa Routine Trigger on device sensor state

Third party integrations
1

Hi all,

I have read a lot on the Alexa announcement trigger from home assistant subject. A lot of it requires a lot of work around and custom scripts etc of which I could not get any of it working no matter what I tried. I am running home assistant on a raspberry pi running Raspbian Jesse and it is installed in a python virtual environment.

Over the weekend I stumbled upon something interesting. I created a template window sensor (opening device class) and triggered it based on whether I switch a particular light switch on or off. this works flawlessly. I imported the device into Alexa through home assistant cloud and what do you know? The device is there and also updating in the Alexa app as I switched the light on and off in home assistant. The sensor showed opening/closing in the app.

Here’s the kicker. When I created a new routine with the trigger set to this device, I COULD PICK THE DEVICE IN THE LIST!! Something that I gathered was not working through home assistant cloud. I created a new routine, and under “when this happens” I picked “device” and my dummy sensor. Under actions, I chose speak and entered a phrase.

So now we have a routine set up that is supposed to trigger on the working sensor in the Alex app. The problem is, the routine does not fire when the sensor state changes.

I do believe this is more of an issue in the Alexa app rather than with home assistant, the sensor or home assistant cloud. Thoughts?

Has anyone managed to get something like this working in the fashion outlined above without using custom scripts etc?

Looking forward to the responses.

Thanks
J

2

Couple of things:

  1. I ran into the same problem, and my fix was to disable and reenable the skill
    (in my case I’m using Haaska skill).
  2. There have been reports that this doesn’t work when using HA Cloud
    How to trigger Alexa routines from Home Assistant
3

I tried using the Haaska python/bash script. I eventually gave up. I read the same reports however, my understanding was that you could not pick up the sensor in the routine via home assistant cloud. I will attempt to disable and re-enable the routine to check if that works.

4

Hello, same problem here. Using the HA Cloud i can pick my sensors to trigger routines through the app (and the app does see the changes if i open/close a sensor) the routine never fires.

I’ve tried reinstalling the skill but that didn’t help much.

5

Yeah it does not seem to be working. And I think it might have underlying issues too. Afte I added this sensor, my devices in my routines and groups disappears. I am then forced to disable and re-enable the ha skills after which i have to set up all my routines and custom alexa groups from scratch. It happened a second time now so I am giving up on this dream.

6

Same issue here! Doesnt make sense to to work. Since its a subscribed service can we have any feedback from Nabucasa developers? Tried other questions by support email and got no feedback.