I'm trying to better understand if and how this plugin can assist in providing a virtual garage door that's easy to control via voice. I'd like to be able to ask my Alexa devices to open/close the garage door and have the door do that. I can currently accomplish this with the garage door integration that Alexa already knows about, but the Alexa devices want me to verbally state a PIN to take action (which I understand is for security, but the concept of me having to state my PIN out loud seems relatively insecure).

Can I use this plugin to establish a virtual garage door device that Alexa knows about, and when I ask to open the garage door, the virtual device would trigger an automation in Home Assistant to control the real garage door (which HA already knows about)?

I don't know what garage door integration you use, but I find it unlikely that any Insteon device (real or virtual) would allow you to bypass the PIN requirement required by Alexa.

Can Home assistant control the door without a PIN?

@dwengrovitz , I am assuming you have some kind of Alexa skill for a commercial garage door opener. Which one? Sounds like your code is a function of that skill. What I think you are trying to accomplish is to get away from that proprietary skill and get to a home automation friendly one, either through the eisy or home assistant . This integration is tailored to either the Ratgdo device or network interfaces you have manually added to your eisy. Ratgdo is a device to handle the MyQ family of openers (liftmaster for example) or it can contect to generic contactor style doors. I originally wrote it to connect to my network interfaces before I got the Ratgdo. Btw: there Is another plugin on the store which is specific to the Ratgdo. As far as voice control, it’s the same setup for any Eisy device, use the UD Alexa skill. Set up in the portal.

I don’t use Home Assistant anymore, the Eisy is my core integrator. When I can’t find a plugin that meets my needs I write it. I found the overhead for HA to be onerous.

Hope this helps

Mine is very simple, with Alexa defining it as an on/off device, setting a variable. Program logic then handles all the details such allowing by time of day, alarm status, etc.

21 hours ago, oberkc said:

Can Home assistant control the door without a PIN?

I am not entirely sure - it can open the garage door via the app UI (without a PIN) but the voice control I am using in HA is currently Alexa - and that seems to require the PIN.

11 hours ago, sjenkins said:

Hope this helps

Thanks - it does. I am currently using a Genie opener, which has an integration for HA but not eisy (that I know of). I'm mainly trying to get around the commercial integration and what appears to be Alexa's requirement to provide a verbal PIN when opening the door by voice.

10 hours ago, Guy Lavoie said:

Mine is very simple, with Alexa defining it as an on/off device, setting a variable. Program logic then handles all the details such allowing by time of day, alarm status, etc

Thanks, Guy - I'm familiar with setting up a virtual device and letting Alexa see it as on/off then triggering an automation of some sort. I just wasn't sure if the voice control would then have to be "turn on the garage door" vs "open the garage door" which seems a bit less natural for others in the house.

I'll keep playing around with more ideas on this - but I appreciate you guys all providing some input!

Yes, the word for open vs turn on may or may not work. Try opening a light and see what happens. Here at home we're all set up in French with Alexa and "ouvre/ferme" works both ways.

The ud alexa interface allows you to pick a state variable and decide on/off open/close raise/lower

Edited Thursday at 05:39 AM2 days by sjenkins

While I don't use HA, I understand that it integrates well with the ISY (or whatever term you want to use). Given this, and given that you can open the door from HA, would it not be simple enough to create a virtual switch (or, possibly two virtual switches)..add the virtual switch(es) to HA, and to Alexa...trigger programs from HA based on the state of the virtual switch...and create a couple of routines in Alexa:

when

I say "Open Garage Door"

Turn on a virtual switch

when

I say "close garage door"

Turn off a virtual switch (or turn on a second virtual switch)

There are certainly a few details to be worked out, but this seems like a promising start to a concept using virtual switches.

On the other hand, it would also surprise me if you could not do this directly with an Alexa routine and bypass the virtual switch intermediary. Can one not trigger an HA action from an Alexa routine?

Edited yesterday at 10:27 AM1 day by oberkc

After a few trial and error exercises, I ended up configuring up a virtual switch and setting that up as a device with open/close status via the ISY portal. That exposed the device to Amazon/Alexa for voice control (e.g., open or close the door), and the eisy integration for Home Assistant exposed the virtual switch there for initiating an automation, which successfully bypasses the requirement to verbally provide the PIN. Works great - thanks all for your comments and input!

5 hours ago, dwengrovitz said:

After a few trial and error exercises, I ended up configuring up a virtual switch and setting that up as a device with open/close status via the ISY portal.

I am glad it is working for you. Not being a user of HA, I was not certain what happens in HA when one turns on an Insteon virtual switch that is already on, or off when already so. I was also suspecting problems in keeping things in sync when garage doors are operated by means other than the virtual switch, or whether that is even an issue. I know, also, that Alexa is easily confused when you have multiple devices with similar words in the name, such as garage, and that it might be helpful to remove the genie skill from Alexa to avoid some of that confusion.

Hopefully those concerns were unfounded or that you found good ways to handle them.

10 hours ago, oberkc said:

it might be helpful to remove the genie skill from Alexa to avoid some of that confusion

Yes ... this was absolutely the case. I ended up removing the Genie skill from Alexa to help minimize any confusion. We'll have to do more testing to see how that goes over time.

Edited 2 hours ago2 hr by dwengrovitz