Simulated Sensor in Alexa

1

I’m trying to find a way to use the Amazon Smart Plugs in HA and as part of another conversation, someone suggested setting up a simulated sensor in HA which would be seen in Alexa. I’ve created a sensor according to the instructions and this is what I have in my configuration.yaml file:

sensor:
  - platform: simulated
    name: 'simulated relative humidity'
    unit: '%'
    amplitude: 0 # Turns off the periodic contribution
    mean: 50
    spread: 10
    seed: 999
    relative_to_epoch: false

However, this doesn’t appear in Alexa. After installing the Alexa skill for HA and discovering new devices, Alexa picked up everything from HA, including my Hive sensors which weren’t showing previously, so I know that much is working.

The idea, I think is that I will use the dummy sensor in a routine on Alexa. So, I’ll use HA to change the state of the sensor when at sunset. This should trigger the routine in Alexa and turn on the Amazon smart plugs.

Does this look feasible, and can someone point me in the right direction for creating this simulated sensor so that it appears in Alexa.

I’m on the trial for HA cloud and would happily pay for it if I can get this working.

2

Why not use an input boolean?

These are my go to dummy or ‘fake’ switches. I know they are supported by emulated_hue, not sure about other alexa options.

3

Sadly not. I created one and ran a discovery in Alexa. It found the input but it won’t see it as a valid device to trigger a routine.