Alexa, Vera and Eventghost

Other Devices & Integrations Voice Assistants
1

I like that the beta VERA skill doesn’t require an invocation word so can just use “Alexa, turn on light” etc.
The skill only allows light switches, dimmers and scenes but I discovered that if I create a virtual switch, edit the advanced properties and change it to a binary light it then appears in Alexa app when I discover devices.
As and example I named one “TV” and when I say “Alexa, turn on TV” it turns on the virtual switch. This can be used as a trigger in PLEG and used to do anything, I use it to send a UDP message to eventghost and then eventghost can send a TCP message to my RTI AV processor and turn on the TV, amp etc.

Hope this is of use to someone !

Simon

EDIT: Actually just found out I can bypass eventghost and send a UDP message direct to my RTI processor to trigger a tv on/off macro.

2

The Yale YRD-220 z-wave lock can also be queried and locked through the beta Alexa helper skill.

One problem though: she always asks me which device to check/lock, even though I said “Alexa lock the front door”. I have to repeat “the front door”. Any ideas why it asks this redundant question?

3

I fixed the above by giving the device a custom name (in the Vera Alexa Setup). The Vera device name was “Front Door Lock” but when I gave it a Custom Device Name “Front Door” it made the commands “Lock the Front Door” etc work perfectly.

4

Okay, so back me up a bit… How to create an UDP command from Vera to the device being controlled?

5

[quote=“holdmade, post:1, topic:196566”]I like that the beta VERA skill doesn’t require an invocation word so can just use “Alexa, turn on light” etc.
The skill only allows light switches, dimmers and scenes but I discovered that if I create a virtual switch, edit the advanced properties and change it to a binary light it then appears in Alexa app when I discover devices.[/quote]

What do you change to make it a binary light?

6

In Advanced, change device type to urn:schemas-upnp-org:device:BinaryLight:1, device file to D_BinaryLight1.xml and device json to D_BinaryLight1.json to match a binary light.