WTH - Add "Spoken" attribute to automations

Archive Month of "What the heck?!" (2020)
1

I use a 4 letter identifier to my aliases so that I can do a quick search in the States of the Development took for all automations for that room. As an example I use “KITC -” for any kitchen automation. I really like this arrangement, but not really good if I want to issue commands via Alexa.

Example:

- id: '5494448332262'
  alias: "KITC - Hutch Light - On"
  description: Turn ON the overhead Hutch Light

It would be great to have a new attribute field such as “spoken” so that we can enter the text that we want for voice assistant controls such as:

- id: '5494448332262'
  alias: "KITC - Hutch Light - On"
  description: Turn ON the overhead Hutch Light
  spoken: "Hutch Light"

I would be OK to say:
Alexa turn on Hutch light - for On
Alexa turn on Hutch light Off - for Off

2

I assume you mean “scripts” instead of “automations”??? If so, you might want to change the topic title.

3

Unless this already exist and I am not aware about it, it was meant for automations

4

But your example code looks like they are scripts, not automations. So I’m confused.

5

For clarity, I just showed what I thought was the more relevant piece of the automation, but my current automation looks like below, just adding “spoken:” to the second one to give us the feature,

- id: '5494448332262'
  alias: "KITC - Hutch Light - On"
  description: Turn ON the overhead Hutch Light
  trigger:
    platform: time
    at: '20:45:00'
  action:
    service: switch.turn_on
    data:
      entity_id: switch.hutch_light
6

Ah, ok. Now that I look back at your original snippets, they’re obviously automations, not scripts. Duh! Sorry. :sweat_smile:

FWIW, I don’t use Alexa or anything like that. So you’re triggering an automation that way? I guess maybe that’s what threw me off. I would have thought you would be running a script that way, not triggering an automation. But I guess it doesn’t really matter either way.

7

You can add own attributes to a entity.

example:

  automation.after_restart_ser_boolean_to_on:
    search: KITC

image

Sadly the filter attributes in developer tools does not work as expected, at least not for me.
But if that filter works then that could be your four letter identifier and you can leave the name as you want to speak to your Alexa devices.

1 Like