Helping Alexa to understand Strings

Configuration Voice Assistant
1

I’d like to create a few colour based entities to represent the bins I have to put out this week
E.g. (Blue, Green, White, Brown)

Is there any way to have Alexa see this? I’ve checked and it doesn’t seem that anything offers a string to reveal, but wondering if there is some other way I’ve missed

E.g I would like a routine that, when I ask “Alexa, which bins are collected this week” it will respond “This weeks bins are [green] [blue]” because those entities are true

or similar

Any way?

2

This isn’t exactly what you asked for, but it is I normally handle Alexa-HA interactions. In if, I use something similar to query which rooms have open windows.

Instead of trying to get Alexa to “see” your bin entities, have your routine run a Home Assistant script like the following…

tts_weekly_bins:
  alias: Notify - Alexa - List This Weeks Bins
  sequence:
  - service: notify.alexa_media_last_called
    data:
      data:
        type: tts
      message: '{{bins}}'
  variables:
    bins: |-
      {% set  ib = expand('input_boolean.green_bin', 'input_boolean.blue_bin', 
      'input_boolean.white_bin', 'input_boolean.brown_bin')
      | selectattr('state','eq','on')  |
      map(attribute='name') | list %} 
      {% set qty = ib | count %} 
      {% if qty != 0 %} 
      This weeks bins are {{' and '.join((ib | join(', ')).rsplit(', ', 1)) }}.
      {% else %} 
      There is no bin selected for this week. 
      {% endif %}
3

Interesting, I think I’m missing something in my Alexa setup… I don’t have the Alexa.Notify action…
(Just for clarity I’m not using nabu casa and have Alexa set up via Lambda and cloudflare)

4

The custom skill/lambda covers exposing HA to Alexa, to expose Alexa to HA you need the Alexa Media Player custom integration (available in HACS). Once set up, AMP will give you the notify.alexa_media_ services.

5

Ah thank you! Yes that’ll be it, will definitely get that installed

Just want to confirm how that works - so I’d set that up and then (I’m presuming) that I have an item revealed to alexa (bin_request Boolean for instance) and then when I ask, I get the routine to toggle that and then when HA receives the state change it pushes the notify action - is that right?

6

You can do it that way if you like, but if you do you will need to make sure to reset the boolean to ‘off’ at the end of you script or automation. Instead, you can avoid that (as well as avoiding creating a separate boolean) by putting the notification action in a script. HA scripts should appear as scenes in the Alexa app, and as such can be the end target of a routine. In the Alexa routine editor you click Add Action > Smart Home > Control Scene then find your scipt’s name in the list.

7

Oh that seems way simpler!
Thanks - will give that a crack over the next few days and see how I get on!!