Please follow the instructions below to enable voice control of your garage doors through Alexa with SimpleCommands:
Step 1: Enable alexa support for SimpleCommands - Alexa Smart Home Skill (kloee for SC)
Note: There are two steps to take on the alexa side. First add the 'kloee for SC skill' and second 'Enable the skill'. When you enable the skill you may be prompted for your SimpleCommand credentials to link your SimpleCommands account.
Step 2: Select the SimpleCommands items or routines that you wish to use with alexa.
Step 3: Select 'Enable Voice Companion.
Step 4: Enable, edit and save the commands you wish to enable for alexa.
Step 5: Tell 'alexa, discover devices'
Alexa should discover your selected SimpleCommands phrases as Alexa scenes.
Step 6: Execute SimpleCommand via alexa scene
To run a scene with your voice, say, "Alexa, turn on [scene name]", or "Alexa, start [scene name]".
To get started, go to the App Store or Google Play store and download SimpleCommands!
Comments
That explains it. I'll stop trying to get it to work and will keep watching your site. Thank you John!
So, MyQ through Alexa stopped working. When I tried to re-install everything I noticed that MyQ is missing from the "Add a connection" menu in SC... Am I doing something wrong or are our worst fears coming true?
Hi Michael,
I cannot recreate your issue. Have you tried closing out of the app entirely and opening up again? Are you experiencing this issue on mobile or the online dashboard?
-John
Hi John,
Happened on both mobile and in the dashboard. I deleted everything and recreated the connections, actions and scenes in Alexa, and it is working again. Not sure what happened, feels like the connection dropped somewhere :-)
Love you guys , I been waiting for this integration with myQ forever
Between the instructions and comments I got this working in 15 mins and Alexa home and auto is obediently executing the commands!!!!!!!!
In order to get this to work, I first had to create the "open garage door," and "close garage door" routines in SC. I don't know if this was because I was redoing the setup, or if one always has to create the routines first. (I had it working in our old house. When we moved into a new house, I had to setup a new MyQ controller/hub.) Once I created the routines in SC, then Alexa was able to add them as new scenes, and the rest worked as described above. Long story short, if you don't have open/close garage door routines in SC, then there won't be anything for Alexa to detect. That is, you may have to create them on your own. Also, when you do create the routines, don't worry about adding a trigger. All you need is the action, i.e. either open or close. Hope this helps.
Thanks for the walkthrough Mark!
Thanks for the great info. Followed the setup instructions and it works great. I'm curious though, do you k how of a way for Alexa to require a password to open the garage door? For security reasons it would be helpful.
Matt,
At this time this feature isn't available with the kloee for SC Alexa skill.
-John
Matt, you can just change your "phrase" in Alexa and add a PIN number to it... so you have to say "Alexa, open the garage 1234" instead of just "Open the garage"... then, the simple phrase "open the garage" won't do anything. I haven't tried this, but it seems to work in my head. lol
Jigar, funny you suggest that. I just saw that in another forum and tried it and it works. However, you cannot use numbers you can only use letter so you have to spell out the passcode ie. "Alexa, Open the garage door one two three four". It works perfectly. I even tested just "open the garage door" and nothing works.
As for Geofencing, I read somewhere on here in a different article that it was being worked on improved. Has that been done? And, how does it work when there are two apps involved. ie. If I'm home and my wife is coming home, I'd like for the garage door to open and when she leaves in the morning, for it to close. And the same for me. If she happens to stay home and I leave, I'd like for the garage door to close and same for when I return. How would this work?
ALSO! Just to give you guys some more ideas for using this. I have some cool routines set up:
1. Leaving the house: I say "Alexa, I'm leaving" and all lights and tv turn off, Ring arms in away mode and my garage door opens up.
2. Fail Safe: I added the close garage routine to my goodnight sequence, this way, in case I've had a dinner party or something or had guests in/out of the garage all day whenever I say "Alexa, goodnight" it turns everything off, arms Ring AND closes the garage (just in case).
3: Daily auto close: I've also created a routine to automatically close my garage at 9am every morning... this is just in case me or my spouse or mom or someone forgets to close the door when leaving for work. No matter what, it closes automatically at 9am just in case.
Jigar,
How does the "auto-close at 9 pm" work for you? I have a schedule set up in MyQ to Close my garage door at both 9 pm and 12 am every evening in the event we forget to close it at any point during the night. The problem is, I've found that it will actually open it sometimes as if it is just triggering the door to action regardless of open or close.
Matt,
I'm not sure why yours would do that... I've got it set in my "MyQ" app under the "Schedule" section to close my garage doors. In the event they are already closed, it doesn't do anything. It's a close only command. Maybe we have different myq setups? I have the door openers with the built in wifi as opposed to the add on myq module.
If you continue to have problems like that with the MyQ app, maybe delete that routine in that app and create a new one using simple commands and see if that sends the "close only" command rather than just triggering the button.
Matt,
I have the same issue. I’ve found that mine is because one of the two garage door sensors shows the door as open even when it is closed. As a result, my task that shuts the garage door at 8:00pm will sometimes open the door instead.
I found out that the status of the door is misreported by having the app send me an alert if either of the garage doors is open longer than five minutes. I frequently get a message about the one door being open. So I now have a camera inside the garage so I can tell if it is telling me the truth.
I’m hoping to find out why it isn’t reporting correctly. If anyone knows, I’d appreciate hearing from you. I’ve checked the battery and it seems to be good. Both of the sensors are brand new.
LOVE this and so glad I found it, I was starting to loose hope and was thinking about making my own mechanical smart switch solution of some kind to connect to MyQ. Is there still plans to add a skill to report garage door status for myQ? I got the open and close commands working, the process was simple.
Tim,
You can use our Home Status skill to check the status of your garage door via Alexa! https://simplecommands.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/360041134033
-John
Thanks John, works great!
It's a bunch of C****...
It seems the Home Status skill is missing? Alexa can't find it when I search for it.
You can now get the current garage door state via alexa with this skill . https://www.amazon.com/Wispify-Home-Status/dp/B082TZZKN5/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=home+status&qid=1578237497&sr=8-1
Thanks for adding this Current State functionality to the skill, John. Works great!
Ops..my mistake.. it works but Alexa did not discover devices but added them anyway. It took about a10 minutes before it started working. hummm
Hey John, it seems this Home Status skill is not available on amazon.ca, I can only see it on amazon.com
Are there plans to get this skill into Amazon.ca store? Right now I have open and close working but not status. Thanks!
Thanks so much for this informative content! As a Broomfield, Colorado-based small-business owner in the garage door industry, I look forward to your future features on garage door opener technology and more. For similar resources on garage door openers, app-based and otherwise, please check out our blog at https://www.abettergaragedoorinc.com/garage-doors/resources.
Hi All, New here. I am trying to get this to work, but I cannot even get the the MyQ account connected to simplecommands. I am 100% sure I am entering the correct username(email) and password that I use in the MyQ app when I am trying to create the connection between SC and MyQ, but I keep receiving an error message "Invalid credentials, please try again later". Has MyQ shut down this integration?
I just got the MyQ today and it is up and working. I am trying to connect it to Alexa via this app, but I cannot get the "Scenes" option to even come up under "Devices" on the Alexa app.
Would appreciate any assistance to try to figure out what I am missing or may be doing wrong.
@ Andrea Smith - If you read my post from 11/2/19, I describe how you first have to create open and close routines in the SimpleCommands app. These routines will be discovered by Alexa as scenes, assuming you have already enabled the "kloee for SC" skill in Alexa. Once you have done all of the above, go to Devices in the Alexa app, scroll left on the icons at the top, and you should be able to see the SC routines as scenes in Alexa. The best way to use the scenes is to make Alexa routines that call the specific close and open scenes. Otherwise, you'll have to keep asking Alexa to change this scene or that. It makes more sense to write a routine where you tell Alexa to close the garage door, and then Alexa changes the scene for you. Make sense?
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