Alexa, Turn On the Gate

Third party integrations
1

Hi folks,
I have a problem with Home Assistant <=> Alexa.

I have my gate, set-up as a cover entity.

When I want to open the gate, “Alexa, Open the Gate” is no more accepted.
Instead, I need to use “Alexa, Turn On the Gate”.

I am sure that I am doing something wrong.

Here is my configuration, I use a Sonoff Basic.

cover:
  - platform: mqtt
    name: "Gate"
    command_topic: "cmnd/sf-gate/power"
    state_topic: "stat/gate-state/POWER2"
    payload_open: "ON"
    payload_close: "ON"

Thank you all! :slight_smile:

2

You could create Routine in Alexa

I don’t think Alexa recognize HA devices as cover entity and only know them as switch or light.

3

Personally I built a custom switch in HA for my gate. Hopefully you can adapt to your use-case:

- platform: template
  switches:
   front_drive_gate:
     friendly_name: "Front Driveway Gate"
     value_template: "{{ is_state('binary_sensor.front_gate_contact', 'on') }}"
     turn_on:
       service: switch.toggle
       data:
         entity_id: switch.front_gate
     turn_off:
       service: switch.toggle
       data:
         entity_id: switch.front_gate
     entity_picture_template: >-
       {% if is_state('binary_sensor.front_gate_contact', 'on') %}
         /local/gate-open.png?v=5
       {% else %}
         /local/gate-closed.png?v=5
       {% endif %}
4

Thank you all! I was asking because until 1/2 weeks ago I was able to open the gate, now I need to turn on the gate. Thought that some Alexa’s update broke my configuration.

@Markus99, are you able to open and not turn on your gate with Alexa?

5

Open gate never worked for me because Alexa had as switch. I forget until now I changed from cover to switch before try to use in Alexa.

How does Alexa show device in Alexa app? Does it show as cover?

6

I ended up using routines for some of my stuff. There is a post about making a “dummy” or “virtual” light quite awhile back and that has worked great for me. You can make the routine use any wording you want, only downside is with the recent emulated hue issues if the bulb gets removed from Alexa you have to go back through and setup the brightness for every routine again.

7

Personally I use Google assistant / Google home and not Alexa. To be honest I haven’t set up the Google Assistant integration with home assistant but rather use ( and please don’t judge me) IFTTT. I’ve simply built a handful of IFTTT recipes (GA->HA webhook) which launch various scripts to handle turning on and off for opening and closing devices.

It’s certainly not my preferred long-term solution but for now it works and I just don’t have the time available though spare to dig in further.