Gone off my rocker adding Alexa to my house. Now have smart home, dumb resident. So old I can't remember all the commands I have created. Have been working on garage door opening.
Have two Chamberlain and one Craftsman garage door openers. Craftsman is just a rebranded Chamberlain. From what I've read Chamberlain will not add Alexa because they don't think they can monetize it and have some other BS scheme. Found a YouTube short on a home built using a 1 channel 5 volt $15.95 board that does the trick. If you ask Alexa to "turn on the garage door" it sends a one shot jolt to the motor board that opens or closes the door. Pretty neat. Minor problem is that you can't directly say "open the garage door" or "close the garage door". Need to create an Alexa Routine that allows you to say that. Great! Second prong of the puzzle taken care of in that can use the words "open" and "close". Remaining problem is that without looking at the garage door I don't know if it is actually open or closed. If its already open and I say "Alexa open the door", the 1 channel board sends a small jolt which tells the Chameberlain to do just the opposite of what it last did. Thus, since it is actually open already, it closes the door even though I said "open". Or just the opposite if I say "close"' if it is already closed.
I guess my next step is to see if I can find some type of logic device that will give me status of the door and either skip the net effect of my command or execute it based on current status of the door. I know there are door sensors that will tell if a door is open or closed. But how do I get that result into Alexa and have it act to execute the command or skip it? Got my BS in ME back in '69 but electrical stuff (EE100 -101) still a mystery. Am working my way through a course on Python programming which seems to interface with Alexa. Probably some Boolean logic that will eventually solve my problem but just wondering if anyone else is screwing around with this and already solved the problems. Thanks for any thoughts or help.
Tom