Can't get Alexa to trigger light effects via Home Assistant Cloud

Configuration Voice Assistant
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I’m a recent Home Assistant Cloud sign-up, and the setup was easy as pie. I have two RGB lights exposed so far: A set of Nanoleaf Shapes, and a homemade ESPHome controller for a 12V RGB LED strip.

Alexa detected and controls them wonderfully for on/off, solid colors, and brightness, but I haven’t had any luck triggering effects yet. They’re all available in Home Assistant and can be activated there, Siri has no issues with the effects when the Nanoleafs are connected directly to Apple Home, but the effects don’t appear in the Alexa app. “Alexa, set the Nanoleafs to the Northern Lights effect” isn’t understood. No luck with the ESPHome light either.

Any tips for getting the effect integrated into Alexa? This was about 90% of the reason I signed up for the Cloud service, so I’m hoping I can solve it.

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It’s a bit of a workaround, but if you can control the lighting effects through HA, you could write a script to do it, expose it to Alexa, then set up an Alexa routine to launch it.

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I’m 99% sure Alexa does not support effects. And looking at the home assistant side, it does not expose effects to Alexa. So even if Alexa did support effects, HA would need to support exposing effects.

Your only option is to set up an intent or a script that sets the effects you want.

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