apostolakisl

So my son ordered a dvd which we did not catch, and then he ordered the pig, which we did catch. I had turned off the voice ordering feature on our first echo, but didn't realize you have to turn it off for each one and we had purchased a second one. It is now off as well. But here is the funny thing. A news story was done on tv about a girl who ordered a very expensive doll house on alexa. So when they did the tv report and spoke the words, people who had echo's in ear shot of their tv started ordering doll houses. My wife just filled me in on the details. Apparently, he asked her for the pig first, she said no of course. Then, 15 minutes later he returned to tell my wife "it's ok mommy, I asked amazon in your office, and she said yes".

We had some stuff show up from Amazon that we didn't order. ??? Then today, my wife witnessed my 3 year old order a piggy bank from Amazon using Alexa. I would not have thought that would be active by default. Of course my 3 year old thought he was ordering a live pig. Good thing Amazon doesn't sell those.

25 year old washers didn't spin like the new ones. The new ones haul ***, originally it was just the front loaders, but now the top loaders do also. Part of the "eco friendly" thing where it extracts more water out of the clothes so they don't need to spend so long in the dryer. And it does work pretty well.

It's not all that surprising though. The high speed spin cycle is freakin fast. Throw an unbalanced load in there and all you need is a failure of the "unbalanced load detector" and that bugger has no prayer of staying in one piece.

I've got two Samsung washers. Front load though. Best washing machines I have ever owned. Hopefully it won't explode on me.

You use one of your open relays and connect 3 wires. NO, common, NC. The NC and NO can connect either way, you just write your Elk program (or ISY program) to accommodate what you wrote. In other words, you either turn the Elk output on to open the valve, or you turn it on to close the valve. As a fail safe measure, you might go with turning the output on to open the valve. In this way, if the relay dies, it probably will fail such that the valve closes. The elk has a 4th wire that is a signal wire that is optional. This powers on when the valve is, I think, open. You can connect that to a zone (but you don't have any). Some of the keypads have a zone on them, so you could theoretically open up a zone on your panel by switching something over to a keypad.

A hardwired connection to your Elk is pretty fail safe. Insteon communications are not nearly as reliable. Of course if you are using Insteon water detectors you still have comm issue potential there. There is no special compatibility regarding and Elk valve used with an Elk relay vs some other brand. ElkWSV needs a single pole double throw relay (normally open and normally closed connections). Other brands probably have the same requirement. I have my elk wsv wired to my elk panel and have the water turn off 30 minutes after the system is armed to away mode, plus I have hard wired water detectors throughout the house. I also have one at my office that works the same, except it shuts the water off immediately since my office alarm system isn't smart enough to have options like wait 30 minutes.

MWareman meant to say "event driven" not "even driven". A typo that would be challenging to figure out. Basically it means you have to think in sense of triggers. In the below example at least one of the 2 conditions must be a triggering item and the programs would only run when the trigger event happens. Either that or the programs below would need to be externally triggered (ie a 3rd program that says "run if" of these programs as part of its then/else clauses. For example, if a condition where the "status" of a switch, the trigger would be a change in the status of the light. If the condition were a "control" of a switch, it would require that someone physically acted upon the switch (pushed it in some way). As mentioned, 2 programs If condition 1 and condition 2 Then do x Else blank If not condition 1 and condition 2 Then y Else blank

This is a little off topic from what you are saying but in the same line. I was looking at some example code that has been written for Amazon to control DirecTV receivers. It appears that you can avoid the IFTTT thing alogether and go direct from a custom Alexa skill to your ISY. Based on my first run through, it looks like you can parse everything directly and substitute variables. For example, you might say, Alexa change channel to <name of channel here or number> and it will either plug in the number you say or look up the name you say and substitute the number. In my mind this is the best way to work all of this as it has the least number of moving parts.

That is a good idea. You can pretty much get an older android device for free. I still have one of my first ever android phones (like maybe 10 years old) still running on my bedside table. I have my Sprint phone number linked to google voice which then rings my hangouts dialer on the phone. In short, it is a bedside phone that ensures I don't miss a phone call during the night if my normal phone is left elsewhere in the house. Interestingly, the hangouts rings at least once if not twice before my actual cell phone rings the first time. Good to hear your autoalarm works. Maybe I'll try adding it to my Tasker profile.

That's a good one.

Yes, it is. I guess I should have realized that when he said he had mobilinc hd. So, aside from tasker, I don't think anything exists that will take your phones built-in alarm clock and not only trigger a url event at the alarm but also be able to do something at a time x minutes prior to the set alarm. Tasker is by itself reason enough to go android.

I believe this will do what you need. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.joaomgcd.autoalarm&hl=en You also need to buy tasker (only $3 I think?) If you only plan on using this when your phone is on you local wifi, no need to mess with port forwarding. If you plan on using outside of your LAN, you will either need the ISY portal or setup https and port forwarding. EDIT: And you'll have to of course learn how to use tasker. Tasker is pretty awesome if you have the desire to figure it all out.

You got yourself one of those big floor model compressors. I use a pancake compressor at about 150 psi.

I put blue tape around the area to keep the solder spray off of other stuff. But even if you don't, the solder doesn't bond when it hits since it doesn't have enough heat in it to melt any solder it might splatter on to. Since it doesn't bond, it will rub off with your finger and occasionally it takes a finger nail. But it is super fast and typically completely cleans the hole/pad of solder for easy removal and replacement. I have used canned air also, but I suppose there is like a micro chance the canned air could catch fire. Canned air does burn i you blow it into an open flame, but a soldering tip is a hell of a lot cooler than an open flame. Of course air from a compressor has no flammability issue.

Question: If decided to go with the Portal, as it seems to be smoother for echo than using IFTTT. I still can keep my port forwarding as is and use it also, right? It doesn't shut down the network module functionality as it already exists? I do understand that if I stop paying for the portal, my network module doesn't get re-instated?

My little one is 3.5. He can run my android phone far better than my parents. He has mastered voice requesting songs and videos he likes using ok google and cortana. He likes low riders (which sadly often have a lot of foul language) and sings the song by War quite well, he loves monster trucks, and lots of other kid videos including paw patrol. Thank God he got tired of Blippy, oh was he annoying. You can't let that kid watch you do anything even once unless you are OK with him doing it, cause he remembers. He figured out how to log into my phone, open my video camera app, browse to the one in his bedroom, and point the camera away from his bed (he figured out we use it to spy on him). Or just for fun he figured out how to turn the speaker on and he talks to himself (there is a roughly 1/2 second delay which he thinks is hilarious). It is amazing how he remembers where all the icons are on the phones for the apps he likes, he just flips through at warp speed to get to the ones he wants.

Actually already did that since I have a daughter named Alexis. I did it this morning before he woke up. I'm sure by the time I get home tonight he will have figured out the new name.

Oh great, there is a button to turn the mic off. He'll find it and "test it" soon I'm sure. At least now I know about it too to turn it back on when he turns it off. I had to turn off the panic buttons on the alarm system after several events there as well.

The fact that you had a child at the time. I was probably biologically capable of having a child in the trash 80 days, but only in my w** dreams did I actually execute the task.

How does portal stop my 3 year old from changing the music every 5 seconds and setting like a dozen timers and asking for the weather for every day of the week, one day at a time? Ohhhhhh how I hope he loses interest soon.

Oh wow, you are oooooolllllllldddddddld.

My echo came. I came home and the house was empty. I quickly had Alexa turning lights on/off with IFTTT. Then trouble came. My wife and 3 year old came home. My 3 year old is fixated. He will not leave her alone. He is turning the lights on/off, he is checking the weather every 10 seconds, he is setting timers, he is playing music, he is asking Alexa questions that I don't understand, but somehow alexa does. On the bright side, I don't know that I have ever seen him so happy. He just asked Alexa to play songs by 21 pilots. Who is 21 pilots and how does my 3 year old know them!?

You can update me to 2 failed and 2 fixed. I am running off of one of my fixed units for a while now, maybe 6 months. I repaired it in 4/2014, tested it for a month, and then put it away as a backup. The new one I purchased to replace it died after 2 years and 2 months, in June of this year. So I swapped it out with my repaired backup unit and have been going fine since. I then fixed the newer one and tested it for about a month before putting it in storage as a backup.

So it sounds the same, only that the portal spoon feeds you the REST string rather than going to the wiki and looking it up. I wasn't sure if the IFTTT had dedicated ISY portal applets ready to go.