I finally replaced my old and dying HVAC system with a new one, and the extremely high-efficiency air conditioner is a "communicating" system that requires a specific thermostat, so I have to get rid of my trusty old Venstar with Insteon adapter.
The question then is how I can control this new thermostat using Indigo. It offers control via Amazon Alexa, so at least there's some kind of standard protocol that can talk to it.
Everything that I've found so far on using Indigo with Alexa understandably focuses on using Alexa to control Indigo-controlled devices by voice, which is not what I need to do...I don't have an Alexa Echo device and don't really want or need one. I seek to control an Alexa-capable device, i.e. this thermostat, using Indigo. I guess what I'm looking for is some kind of Alexa Echo emulation that Indigo could control, so that when Indigo needs to set the cooling target temp to 68 degrees, Indigo would have a way of issuing an Alexa command to the thermostat.
If this isn't possible with pure protocol translation, I'm thinking that a hacky workaround could be to sit an Echo Dot next to my Mac Indigo server and have Indigo trigger the Mac's text-to-speech to say commands like, "Alexa, set the temperature to 68 degrees" over the Mac's speakers for the Echo to hear, but that's a last resort.
Any ideas on how to get Indigo to be able to send Alexa commands, rather than responding to them? I can see this having applicability to many other devices that offer Alexa compatibility, but no other automation, as well.