So I’ve spent the last 36 hours going down a rabbit whole, and the more I look into it, the more confused I get.
I had a decent understanding on how automations worked, until 2 days ago. I mostly have esp8266s running tasmota, so HA sees my relays as switches, and with the helpers I turn them into lights (I get a light.name_of_device ID)
For my automations I use the call service turn light on/off. It had been working great, and for the most part had no issues setting up automations.
my nightmare started when I check “include devices connected to the echo” on my alexa media player integration. I was trying to access 4 evolux bulbs that only connect via Alexa. By including the echo devices is copied over all the tasmotas Alexa had discovered, basically same devices got added twice once via tasmota integration and a 2nd time via Alexa integration, and seems the Alexa ones took over.
Last night I spent plenty of hours trying to figure it out, but I couldn’t. Figured my easy solution would be to restore to 6 days ago, before I checked on the “include devices …”. After restoring to 6 days ago, none of my tasmota devices say “alexa media player” under the integration field, but I can’t seem to get it to work.
For example, the automation I am trying to do is for a bathroom with two lights. One light is a relay, the other light is an rgb bulb flashed with tasmota.
The automation has two triggers, when motion switch goes on and when motion switch goes off. For actions I am using the “choose” option. If triggered by the “on” trigger, it supposed to turn on both lights, and if triggered by the “off” then option number two runs, which turns off both lights.
Well when I go into the bathroom lights don’t go on, but if I turn lights on via dashboard, go into the bathroom then walk out, when motion goes to “off” it does turn the lights off.
To test if the “on” part of the automation was working I replaced the turn on lights with an mqtt publish instead. The mqtt makes a buzzer make 3 beeps. When I went into the bathroom I did hear the 3 beeps. That means sensor is working correctly, and the “on” trigger is working correctly.
I then went ahead and added another action, to turn on the relay light. When I walked into the bathroom it worked, it made the 3 beeps and the mirror light turned on. Figured I was on the right track (but wasn’t sure what I was doing wrong before).
Next step was to also have it turn on rgb bulb. So went back into the automation, and under the call action I added the rgb light entity next to the mirror one that was already there.
When I walked into the bathroom I did hear the 3 beeps, but the lights didn’t turn on. Figured the rgb bulb was the one creating the issue, so took it off the automation, saved and went back into the bathroom, and nothing. I only get the 3 beeps, but the mirror light won’t turn on.
It seems I figured it out! (had that thought a few times already only to find out I was wrong).
So I first took out the rgb blub from automation, and mirror light wouldn’t go on. I then deleted the 2nd action which was only turning mirror on. I deleted and then added it again, and it worked like a charm. I still don’t understand why I had to delete the 2nd action and add it again, but that got the mirror light working.
So I tried with the rgb bulb, with no setting for the bulb, and it worked! Seems I was playing with some of the rgb settings, and seems “temperature” is not a setting I should have been playing with. Also found out some of the advanced features of rgb stop the lights from turning on like if I try to do the rgbw settings.
Was about to delete my post since it seems I solved the issue, but figure I would still post it in case someone can’t figure out why their call service lights turn on isn’t working, probably using some settings that your bulb doesn’t like and it stops ALL lights from turning on.