Echo/Alexa Cover not Working

Configuration
1

I have a defined garage door cover component:

- platform: template
    covers:
      north_garage_door:
        friendly_name: 'North Garage Door'
        value_template: "{{ is_state('binary_sensor.garage_door_north_position_sensor', 'on') }}"
        open_cover:
          service: script.turn_on
          entity_id: script.open_gdn
        close_cover:
          service: script.turn_on
          entity_id: script.close_gdn
        stop_cover:
          service: switch.turn_on
          entity_id: switch.garage_door_north_operator_switch
        icon_template: "{% if not is_state('binary_sensor.garage_door_north_position_sensor', 'off') %}mdi:garage-open{% else %}mdi:garage{% endif %}"

it is exposed to the Echo using Haaska.

it is being seen in the Alexa app as a home assistant cover:

ex2
ex21029×230 23 KB

But…

when I tell Alexa to “open” or “close” the north garage door, it replies with “north garage door doesn’t support that”.

All of the other devices exposed thru haaska still work.

I tried to hide it from haaska and expose it thru emulated_hue and then it gets seen as a “dimmable light” and i get the same response from Alexa.

Am I missing something? I thought that this worked at one time.

Any help at all would be appreciated.

2

Does haaska support covers?

For emulated hue, it would expect ‘turn on/turn off’ as I don’t think it supports covers.

3

I think so…

I’m pretty sure…

:thinking:

I thought it worked a couple of months ago (which is the last time I needed to use it).

The haaska github repo states that it does. And it shows up as a cover in the alexa app when exposed thru haaska.

when exposed as emulated_hue it shows up as a dimmable light.

4

right, so with emulated hue you’ll have to use turn_on / turn_off. As for hasska, i’m not sure why. I moved away from hasska last year

5

I really like haaska for its functionality. Especially for the covers. I can (could…) Use normal language to open/close them. Its going to suck if that doesn’t work anymore.

I put in an issue on the haaska github page. Maybe I’ll see if that gets any traction there.

6

That’s probably a good idea if it just stopped working.

7

Hi @finity - did you get your natural speech for covers working again with haaska? I’ve been struggling to get this working and I hope it’s not simply that it’s currently broken (or perhaps I hope that it is, and that it will get fixed!)

I think I have haaska working correctly, Alexa is discovering all my exposed devices, and I can control all of them (lights, blinds etc) with an on/off instruction. However ‘Alexa, open the bedroom blinds’ still get’s the "Bedroom blinds doesn’t support that.

I notice that my blinds show up as doors in Smart Home in the Alexa app. and if I try and set them as covers in the entity_config section - it changes them to ‘other’.

If it’s not currently an Amazon problem - I feel like I’m missing one crucial component - but in spite of going over the install and configuration several times - I have no idea what it is. Any suggestions?

8

@Mark_Davies

From my understanding, Haaska currently doesn’t support “open”/“close” commands. Someone on the Haaska github page told me it never did but I could have sworn that for the first couple of months that it did.

The reason they gave was that open/close were reserved words in Alexa so Hasska wasn’t allowed to use them.

So the only way to operate those devices at the moment is to use “turn on”.

But if anyone has any updated information I’m happy to hear it. :slight_smile:

EDIT: And I just checked again using the Alexa Cloud component and it still doesn’t work to say “open”.

I’m not sure why that wouldn’t work since the HA program is integrated into Alexa. Or however that works… Somehow they are officially intertwined now.

9

@finity I’m sure I had read that haaska allowed for more natural commands too. Things are moving so fast with AWS that it may have worked at one time, but alas no longer. As a compromise I’ve been using scenes, with the voice command ‘Alexa, turn on close the living room blind’. That has been a little easier to remember

HOWEVER! Since starting this particular project, Amazon have added Routines - and they totally accept any action words, so last night after messaging you - I finally got the result I wanted . . . ‘Alexa, Open the Living Room Blind’ totally works as a Routine.

After all the work getting haaska up and running, I’m a little loathed to dump it, but emulated_hue would give me everything I need to operate with Alexa routines, and probably perform a little quicker.

The one thing I don’t get this way is the ability to add the blinds to Smart Home Groups. It would have been awesome to say ‘Alexa, Open the blinds’ and have the Living room blinds open based on Alexa knowing my location, It works great with my lights.

Is there any benefits from using haaska/hass cloud over emulated_hue that I’m forgetting?

10

Thanks for that info!

Now I’ll have to see if the HA cloud can do the same thing.

the only thing that I can think of is that emulated_hue had the ability to set off_maps_to_on. I used it to turn off a fan that I needed to actually turn on a switch to turn the fan off. So if I said “Turn off” it actually turned the switch on.

It was easy enough to solve with a script but emulated_hue worked pretty simply. Maybe there’s a way to do the same thing with HA cloud that haven’t seen yet tho.