So, I was bored to see all those “device not responding” banners in the Alexa app and I created a new plug-in:
This will update your devices’ status to HA-Bridge and Alexa will finally reflect the correct status!
Just install, insert the HA-Bridge IP and port and you’re done. It will work with lights and scenes (scenes just to update the status and remove the “device not responding” banner). Colors are not supported, because it’s missing from HA-Bridge.
It will work with Vera bridged on openLuup, but HA-Bridge accessing the Vera’s device directly (there’s a special variable, look at the logs).
Very beta, feedback appreciated as always
I hope they’ll add a way to query the status via voice soon
This is amazing. I recently configured the HA-Bridge to allow me to control my VERA Z-wave devices from my harmony remote and was looking at using the PUT method to Update bridge internal light state. Managed to install BETA version in 5 minutes and setup (have customer port and wasn’t an issue once IP and port loaded). Devices updating in HA and Harmony within a few seconds… amazing.
Didn’t know this existed, but have been reading the Github install. Looks like this can replace the Vera implementation, which according to both Amazon and Aeotec hasn’t been updated in eons. It is tedious to use the Vera login service and set up temp names and enable devices to expose for discovery, to only then not even see the status of a device due to “not responding”. If Vera knows the state, there is clearly a bug in the Vera skill.
So, for this all to work, just need to install/configure this, and use some Hue skill within Alexa I presume. Does this support items not lights - for example, exposing and seeing the humidity level on a sensor? Don’t believe Alexa is that advanced yet…
Another good question - any iPhone apps that work with HA Bridge? Anything like the Vera app or another 3rd party like Samsung i’m pretty sure you can’t point directly at an IP address (if your Vera is protected and you want to access via SSL VPN on iPhone).
Currently, thinking the following would be a good architecture:
Vera partially decoupled to use local services. Perhaps only enabling the ra service on 232 for Vera iPhone app control and remote access. (Unless another iPhone app would work for all devices?)
Vera with Reactor to automate / alert on everything.
Vera with 3rd party apps like Honeywell/Ecobee, etc. (Unless this is easy to move to HA Bridge - but you would lose potentially access to non-light devices as Vera wouldn’t be exposing these and Alexa doesn’t really support them, yet.)
HA Bridge as the shim between Vera and Alexa services. (Since the Vera native cloud based implementation is broken and hasn’t been updated in a while.)
Would still be stuck using a combination of the Vera app and Alexa app on the iPhone, but things would be at least controllable and provide true updated status.
it’s stored internally, in its database. if you call http://192.168.1.XX:8080/api/lights, you should see all your mapped devices, look for state then on. that’s the state you’ll see in the alexa app.
no need to install skills. it’s all done locally, so extremely fast. only lights, dimmers, color lights and roller shutters are supported. scenes are emulated as lights, but that’s the same thing with the vera skill. I have virtual devices to trigger scenes.
unfortunately, this won’t work outside of your house because it’s local only. that’s not a problem for me, since things are fully automated and I need manual control just for lights when I’m inside.
/api/lights should work, and that’s what Alexa will call to get lights/scenes/rooms. Ha-Bridge is written in Java, otherwise I’d contributed with some code to support sensors.
If you see the correct status is just because you’re lucky Try to turn on the light with your Vera and you’ll notice that the device status will not be sync’ed.
All that said, it’s very lightweight. It will subscribe for dimmers/lights variables with a watch, and just call the corresponding endpoint to update the status. It will update all the devices on startup, and you could obviously force an update with the corresponding UpdateStatus action.
I’ll probably release a minor update tomorrow, based on the first days of uptime on my production system.
