regal spade
Hi all.
What is the best way to change a switch to a light, so that I can tell Alexa "light on" to switch on the light?
Only today I discovered that you can add a helper to change the device type. This seemed like the perfect solution to me, because that would make the switch appear as a light both in Home Assistant as well as in the Alexa app. Apart from that it doesn't work. 🙁
The light reacts very strangely in the Alex app. It looks like it's unresponsive, but you can switch it on or off via the app's GUI (although the graphical switch in the app will not properly reflect the actual device status). However, Alexa devices will not be able to find a lamp with the given name.
I then found out that you can also change the device type for the "switch" entity itself. That doesn't work any better, same problem. I wonder whether this is any different to adding a helper, or is it essentially the same under the hood?
Finally, I can leave the switch as a switch in HA, and only change the device type in the Alex app. That's what I have been using so far, but it obviously has the disadvantage that the device type is wrong in HA.
Having played with these settings, I'm now at a point where I can't get it running for Alexa devices anymore. Whatever I do, Alexa devices will be unable to turn on or off a lamp. 🙁
I told Alexa to "detect devices" after each change, so that's not it.
Any help, please?