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Amazon Alexa

Amazon Alexa is compatible with Home Assistant, allowing it to be used as a voice interface for controlling and automating your home.

Integrating Alexa with HA provides the ability to easily control devices and scenes via voice commands without the need for manual interaction, increasing the comfort and efficiency of managing a smart home.

How to speak to Alexa?

Alexa does not yet support the Czech language, so you need to communicate with it in English, German, French, or Spanish.

I tested the entire integration process with the Amazon Echo Dot product.

Amazon Echo Dot

Amazon Echo Dot (5th Gen)​

  • Sound: 1.7" speaker
  • Wireless connectivity: WiFi 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz, Bluetooth Low Energy Mesh, and Matter
  • Voice assistant: Amazon Alexa
  • Dimensions: 100×100×89 mm
  • Weight: 304 g
1 390 Kč
Koupit na Alza.cz

Amazon Alexa App​

Not only for integration into HA but also for usage, you will need to install the Amazon Alexa app on your mobile phone.

Download on Google PlayDownload on the App Store

Integrating Amazon Alexa into HA​

  1. Home Assistant Cloud - The easiest way to integrate, but it requires a monthly subscription fee.
  2. Manual configuration - A more technically demanding method without monthly fees, which can provide greater flexibility and control.

Home Assistant Cloud​

HA Cloud

To successfully activate Alexa, you first need to have Home Assistant Cloud activated in Home Assistant.

  1. Open the Settings menu and select Voice Assistants.

  2. Activate the Alexa option.

    Alexa HA cloud

  3. Go to the Expose tab and select all the entities you want to link with Alexa.

  4. Download the Alexa app on your mobile phone and activate the Home Assistant Smart Home skill. The procedure can be found in the following images:

Alexa HA cloud

Alexa HA cloud

Manual Configuration​

Warning

The process for manually configuring Alexa integration is quite complex. If you are not confident, I recommend always choosing the method above, which requires a paid Home Assistant Cloud.

Requirements​

  1. Remote access to Home Assistant: Set up access on port 443 with a valid certificate. Details can be found in the Remote Access section.

  2. Amazon Developer Account: To create one, visit the Amazon Developer Portal.

  3. AWS Cloud Account: To use AWS Lambda functions, create an account here.

    info

    AWS Cloud should be free for regular use, as AWS Lambda offers up to 1 million requests and 1 GB of outbound data transfer per month for free.

Creating an Amazon Alexa Smart Home Skill​

  1. Login: Open the Alexa Developer Console and log in with your developer account.

  2. Create a Skill: In the Skills tab, click on Create Skill.

    Alexa HA cloud

  3. Basic Skill Information:

    • Provide a Skill name, for example, Home Assistant.
    • Select English (US) as the default language (Czech is not yet available).

  4. Skill Configuration:

    • For Experience, select Smart home.
    • Choose Smart Home as the Model.
    • Set Hosting service to Provision your own.
    • Ensure Payload version is set to v3.
    • Note down the Skill Id for future use.

    Alexa HA cloud

Creating an AWS Lambda Function​

  • Creating an IAM Role for the Lambda Function

    1. Navigating in AWS:

      • Open the IAM service (Manage access to AWS resources).
      • In the left panel, select Roles and click on Create role.
      • Select Lambda as the AWS service.

      Alexa HA cloud

    2. Adding Permissions: Add Permissions policies named AWSLambdaBasicExecutionRole.

      Alexa HA cloud

    3. Role Settings:

      • Name the new role, for example, AWSLambdaBasicExecutionRole-SmartHome.
      • Complete the role creation.

  • Creating the Lambda Function

    Very Important

    Select the correct region for the Lambda function according to the language set for the Amazon Alexa Smart Home Skill:

    • US East (N.Virginia) for English (US) or English (CA)
    • EU (Ireland) for English (UK), English (IN), German (DE), Spanish (ES), or French (FR)
    • US West (Oregon) for Japanese and English (AU)

    1. Setting the Region: Switch AWS Cloud to the correct region, in this example US East (N.Virginia).

      Alexa HA cloud

    2. Creating the Lambda Function:

      • Open the Lambda service in AWS (Run code without thinking about servers).
      • You should be in the Functions tab.
      • Click on Create function and select Author from scratch.
      • Name the function, for example, SmartHome-US.
      • Choose Python 3.10 as the runtime and leave the architecture as x86_64.
      • Click on Change default execution role, select Use an existing role, and choose the role created in the previous steps.
      • Click on Create function.

      Alexa HA cloud

    3. Lambda Function Settings - Adding a Trigger

      • Click on the created Lambda function and in the Function overview section, click on Add trigger.
      • Select Alexa as the source and change the product to Alexa Smart Home.
      • Enter the Skill ID obtained in the Amazon Alexa Smart Home Skill section.
      • Click on Add.

    4. Lambda Function Settings - Adding Code

      • In the Code section, click on the lambda_function tab and paste the code from GitHub.
      • Click on the Deploy button to save the pasted code.

    5. Lambda Function Settings - Setting Environment Variables

      • The next step is to set the environment variables, which can be found in the Configuration tab and Environment variables.
      • Set the following variables:
        • BASE_URL = https://[YOUR HA URL].
        • NOT_VERIFY_SSL = False - depending on the valid certificate.
        • DEBUG = True - for testing, later change to False.
        • LONG_LIVED_ACCESS_TOKEN - generated in HA.
      • Save.

      Alexa HA cloud

Testing the Lambda Function​

To enable testing, we will jump ahead a bit. Insert the following minimal configuration into the Home Assistant configuration file:

configuration.yaml - minimal configuration
alexa:
    smart_home:

After inserting the configuration, restart Home Assistant.

After the restart, return to the AWS Lambda console and prepare for testing:

  1. Go to the Test tab.

  2. Click on Create new event.

  3. Name your new event, for example, Discovery.

  4. In the Event JSON field, enter the following data:

    {
        "directive": {
            "header": {
                "namespace": "Alexa.Discovery",
                "name": "Discover",
                "payloadVersion": "3",
                "messageId": "1bd5d003-31b9-476f-ad03-71d471922820"
            },
            "payload": {
                "scope": {
                    "type": "BearerToken"
                }
            }
        }
    }

  5. Click the Create button in the upper right corner.

  6. Then press Test.

The result should be a list of your devices in the response from Home Assistant.

Configuring the Smart Home Service Endpoint​

tip

Removing the long-lived access token - I recommend removing the long-lived access token that we will no longer need and changing the DEBUG setting to False.

  1. Copying the Lambda Function ARN: Copy the Amazon Resource Name (ARN) of your Lambda function.

    Alexa HA cloud

  2. Returning to the Alexa Developer Console:

    • Return to the Alexa Developer Console.
    • If you are not already on the Skills page, navigate to it.
    • Find the skill you created and click the Edit link in the Actions column.

  3. Setting the Smart Home Service Endpoint:

    • In the left navigation panel of the Build page, click on SMART HOME.
    • In the 2. Smart Home service endpoint section, fill in the Default endpoint with the ARN you copied from your Lambda function configuration.

  4. Click Save.

Linking the Account​

  1. We should still be on the Alexa Developer Console page and see the 3. Account Linking section with a Setup Account Linking button. Click on it.

  2. Account Linking Form Settings:

    • Check the option Do you allow users to create an account or link to an existing account with you?
    • In the Your Web Authorization URI field, enter https://[YOUR HA URL]/auth/authorize.
    • In the Access Token URI field, enter https://[YOUR HA URL]/auth/token.
    • Fill in the Your Client ID field as follows:
      • https://pitangui.amazon.com/ if you used the US East (N.Virginia) region.
      • https://layla.amazon.com/ if you used the EU (Ireland) region.
      • https://alexa.amazon.jp/ if you used the US West (Oregon) region.
    • The Your Secret field can remain arbitrary, Home Assistant does not use this value.
    • For the Your Authentication Scheme field, select Credentials in request body.
    • Add one scope named smart_home to the Scope field.

    Alexa HA cloud

Configuring the Alexa Smart Home Integration in HA​

We will need to add a new section to the Home Assistant configuration file:

configuration.yaml - minimal configuration
alexa:
    smart_home:

However, I recommend at least adding filtering for the entities we want to send to Alexa or, conversely, those we do not want to send. We can also rename entities for Alexa or set them to behave as a different type.

configuration.yaml - extended configuration
alexa:
    smart_home:
        filter:
        include_entities:
            - light.kitchen
            - light.kitchen_left
        include_entity_globs:
            - binary_sensor.*_motion
        include_domains:
            - switch
        exclude_entities:
            - switch.outside
        entity_config:
        light.kitchen:
            name: "Custom Name for Alexa"
            description: "The light in the kitchen"
        switch.stairs:
            display_categories: LIGHT

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