brians

Regarding announcement to multiple echos, I don’t have messaging option in actions. I just setup messaging by letting it access my contacts so maybe I have to wait for it to appear.

Because I don't intend on using them to playback music at all. I can buy around 3 dots for price of one Echo plus which give me more coverage to place more around the house. I only care about home automation. I don't really sit around and listen to music, but if I did then I would get a Sonos One. I am an Apple user and subscribe to Apple Music... at least with a Sonos One I could airplay to it and Sonos also supports Apple Music using Sonos app.

Pretty much the same for basic control - turning on/off a light is no different except the trigger word (I prefer saying Alexa over Hey Google or OK Google) Now as far as more complicated features... Google Home uses Rooms and Alexa uses Groups. There are pros and cons to each implementation and neither is perfect - you have to tweak each one to how you like. I decided for each room to place common lights (ie. main lights) in a group along with an echo dot. When I am in a room talking to that dot and say "Alexa, turn on the lights" it only turns on the ones in the group. This makes it easy to remember and doesn't affect other things in the room like lamps, fans, outlets etc. Google home Rooms work well also but are different... in some ways better but here is a problem I had in Master Bedroom: when I walk into my bedroom and say "Hey Google, turn on the lights", I don't want the ceiling fan, closet, bath fan, bath light, outlets all turning on along with the main light so the solution is to take those out of the room which sorta is contrary to idea of a room. Groups make more sense to me since they are independent of rooms. You really have to experiment with both to understand the differences. A feature which makes Echo more attractive at this moment is its routines and now ISY portal can present pretty much anything as a device, which can trigger these Alexa routines. There is more discussion of this elsewhere. As far as using Alexa to tell me notifications, I honestly think its more of a novelty right now... realistically the odds of me being near one of my Echos when something happens and hearing it is not very high, and even if I am then there is a chance I am not paying attention and would miss understanding what it said. More useful is making custom Alexa commands which can trigger things on ISY. If you don't have one already, I would highly recommend picking up a cheap dot version 2 (they are on sale now) to experiment with this feature so you can experience firsthand. For example, in reference to above bedroom problem: in ISY portal present a program as a switch and use spoken like "bedroom bath". Since program is setup as a switch, turn on runs then, turn off runs else. and program will do exactly what I want by turning on or off bath light and bath fan, and could even put some logic in the ISY program, could have play bath time music etc. Just say "Alexa turn on bedroom bath". Additionally could make an Alexa routine with a custom voice command like "Alexa I am going to have a bath" and get this routine to turn on the program switch which also runs the program then. I use iOS. Alexa app is much nicer... Google needs to learn how to use colors other than white. But since I started using Alexa last month it seems to have evolved significantly so maybe was a good time to get into it now. I have seen the recent update Google Home app and how it shows rooms and light bulbs but it still is plain looking to me.

I am in process of moving from Google Home to Amazon Alexa (Of course I will keep both because never know... Google may come out with something compelling). I always thought the Echo Dot was cheap looking compared to my Google Mini, and especially the larger Google Home I have, but I bought one to test anyways. I have to admit that the blue LED is nicer than Google's tiny LEDs you can't even see but otherwide the thing is pretty ugly. I just picked up a couple of the 3rd gen dots today. Pretty nice and far superior to the old 2nd gen dots, nicer than the Google minis and even would go as far and say is better than the larger Google Home for sound quality. I don't have a full size Amazon Echo to compare but I have even read that the new dots sound better than those.

One thing I found it seems that Google can do and Echo cannot... If I assign two Google homes to different Rooms along with some lights (eg. Family Room, Master Bedroom) and I have a light in respective rooms called Family Room Ceiling and Master Bedroom Ceiling then I can just be in Family Room and say "Ok Google, turn on the Ceiling" and it will turn on the Family Room Ceiling. Echo doesn't do this if there are multiple devices in house using word ceiling. But I think a better way to approach it is to just group lights you actually want to turn on or off in a room... for example, in my Master Bedroom I have a whole bunch of lights and fan etc... but 99% of time I just want to turn on/off the main light... so no need to group anything else. Therefore Echo Groups may be better idea than Google Rooms. BTW, seems strange I cannot add my dot to the group in the web app but I need to use my iPhone app to do it. But then if I go into web app and save that group it removes the dot. However, iPhone is much nicer interface than Google Home app.

I just picked up an Echo Dot on sale... After adding that the iPhone app works when discovering devices. So far Echo seems more responsive than Google when initially waking up.

Hi, just trying out Amazon. I have Google Homes but something is making me want to try. I installed App on my iPhone. Issue is that when I add a device on the isy portal, when I press the Add Device button in the App (Smart Home, Devices) it fails. However if I speak to it, "discover devices" it adds fine. Is there a way to add them without speaking?

I tried Agave but I think MobiLinc is nicer. Only complaint I have is the MobiLinc HD on an iPad ... I do not like the landscape with the actual pictures of the switches and layout. Wish there was an option to make portrait with list view similar to iPhone but taking advantage of iPad's screen real-estate.

I get the error sometimes but it often still processes the command (eg. turns on/off the lights). Subsequent commands seem to work fine. Seems to be when I don't use it for a while.

If you have a google home assigned to a room but don’t actually have any lights assigned to the same room it will still shut off all lights in house. Therefore make sure you have at least one light assigned to a room which contains a google home. Not a big deal but may be cases where this is an issue.

Same problem here. I can say turn off family room lights or turn off kitchen lights if they are all setup in rooms properly. But a turn off lights command turns off all my lights in house no matter which if my four google homes hears it. Would be nice for it to recognize rooms because it really breaks down when I’m trying to rename and remember what I called my 25+ lights in house. I want to be in family room and tell it to turn off the lamp and it should know this is family room lamp.

This does not seem possible yet. My wife figured it out and thinks it’s real funny to tell google “turn the lights off” and the whole house shuts off. Or sometimes she does the opposite and turns everything on. I wish google would fix this because it would be very simple to do. Or at least disable the ability to turn on or off all lights in my house with one simple voice command.

I have this problem... In my Kitchen I have three lights... Kitchen Light Kitchen Counter Kitchen Table If I say "Hey Google, turn on Kitchen Light", then it turns on all three lights in the room. It has nothing to do with the room I assigned to in Google Home app "Kitchen". To work around this I have to come up with a different name for my "Kitchen Light" and instead I renamed spoken to "Kitchen Ceiling" and this differentiates it properly. I also do this with other rooms like master bedroom and family room. Seems like Google uses the word "light" as generic so it is best not to have any spokens use the word "light" in it.

Ok since I’m in Canada to unlink (in order to update friendly names) you must use the assistant, in my case on iPhone. Press blue button in top left Explore Search harmony Scroll down and there is unlink option. To relink: Ok google ask harmony to link my account A card will show up in google home app with a link

I can’t find harmony in google home app. Where are you adding it? Ok I had to ask google to link harmony and then card shows up in app and then I could link. What I haven’t figured out is how to unlink it if I ever want to.

I tried this in my master bedroom google mini by saying to turn on the light and it turned on all lights in every room along with my master bedroom. Doesn’t work for me like explained in this thread. I do have lights assigned to specific rooms in google home app. I tried different way asking to turn on lights in this room and it turned on lights in family room downstairs - and there is no way that google mini could have heard me down there.

I just setup google home on my ISY994i. I noticed that I don’t have to unlink it when adding or removing new devices. This is done in the ISY Portal and there is an icon with a little head and a circle - pressing it gives option to send spoken to google home. After doing this they will show up soon after in th google home app after a refresh. You can also remove a device and it will remove also. I’m not sure when this was feature was added since I am new to this but the current documentation still suggests that the only way is to unlink and relink in google home app.

I was able to add it using Eve and didn't need Insteon+ app Also if you remove the home bridge from you Home in IOS, it doesn't seem to detect again and I found solution is to delete the file in ~/.homebridge/persist/ Then it works I also updated from node 4.0.0 to 5.4.0. I tried doing a npm rebuild but didn't seem to work. I uninstalled, updated node, then reinstalled home bridge and hombridge-isy and my home kit still worked from my iPhone. This is good so we should be able to upgrade easily without reconfiguring much. If I rename a device on ISY then it doesn't update in HomeKit though, even restarting HomeBridge it doesn't. Anyone know of a solution? - EDIT... I notice if I remove or add a device it reflects the change in HomeBridge. Therefore I can just edit the config.json file temporarily to ignore the device, run hombridge, exit, remove the ignore and re-run and it adds in the new name. For a quick solution in the IOS app Home (for testing different names with Siri), just add the service name of the device (this is the one that it uses for Siri) - other apps like iDevices or Eve can't access this in HomeKit or get it backwards.

I could get scenes working in HomeBridge but were not very flexible when say setting the brightness of a light in the scene from a scene off state. The keypadlinc would not update. This bugs the hell out of me but I was determined to come up with a solution. As a workaround I am making programs on the ISY which keep everything in sync. SwitchLincs are easy... example Main Hallway - [ID 0035][Parent 0033] If Status 'Main Hallway' is On Then Set 'Main Hallway Slave' On Else Set 'Main Hallway Slave' Off Keypadlincs are trickier. They CANNOT have their buttons turned on/off via normal Insteon commands. But the good news is you can call the scene again and it will sort out the lights. The only issue is IF there is a dimmer in the scene and you change the brightness of the device manually then the program will detect and running the scene will revert back to the original on level it was set at. Solution for Keypadlincs is to just add the one key into a scene by itself. This example is of a key that controls a switchlinc dimmer for kitchen chandelier. Normally with ISY it works good but now I can use HomeKit and turn on the kitchen chandelier... ISY detects and runs the scene on or off based on the chandelier setting: Kitchen Chandelier - [ID 0034][Parent 0033] If Status 'Kitchen Chandelier' >= 1% Then Set Scene 'KPL Sync Scenes / Kitchen KPL Chandelier Key' On Else Set Scene 'KPL Sync Scenes / Kitchen KPL Chandelier Key' Off The only device in that scene is the Kitchen KPL Key which in my case is KLA Anther button I have on my keypadlinc is Kitchen POTS which is a switchlinc dimmer so I will have to make another scene and program to set those. Note that you can also do similar thing in HomeKit using triggers and scenes and I successfully did this using switchlinc relays in my hallway but could not do the same for keypadlincs because those require scenes in ISY. Therefore it is best to let ISY handle this all. I am now going through and creating programs and tweaking it all. When done I think I can ignore certain devices to import into HomeKit (like the slaves) to avoid confusion.

Brad, you can also order that part separately from SH #8015 if you already have and I/O Linc. Back to the EZIO... I want to read outside temperature and indoor humidity to control my Humidifier automatically. I currently have a small wall control connected to outside sensor that does this and works well... but, being a geek, I must try to get the ISY to do it SH # 1523 is a cheap temp sensor that gives an output of 0-5V. If EZIO 4x2 works with ISY to read analog, then it should send a value between 0-1023 and this can be used for logic in programs. I think one may have to run the setup from SimpleHomeNet to put inputs in analog mode. To get humidity, I notice SH doesn't have anything like the temp sensor, but since I'm ordering a bunch of stuff from there I found this... SH # 30413A for Venstar. This looks like they use a standard Humidity sensor that I have seen when doing some research online... it should have Vcc, Gnd and Signal. Although it is designed/sold to plug into a Venstar thermostat, I believe it would work standalone but one would have to calibrate the readings to actual humidity.

I am on watering restrictions imposed by City. Based on my house address, I can water only on odd days. Setting to water every 48 hours will not work because some months end on an odd day. And what if the ISY is restarted? Then the every 48 hours will not run until started again. Anyone figure out how to do this? I have been working on it and have come up with a set of programs that appears to work, although some setup and tweaking every once and a while may be required. I am just wondering if there is some simple way to do this that I overlooked, since I am new to the ISY, before I document and post what I have done. Brian

The I/OLinc only has a dry input. The 5V has nothing to do with the input. I can trigger the sensor on mine by just shorting the GND and Sense and ISY reports it either On or Off. The 5V purpose appears to be a convenient source for running 5V through the relay circuits for controlling power to devices, if it requires 5V. My application requires 12V so I use an external power supply plugged into the I/OLinc. I am told the EZIO 2x4 should work. I have one on order and will followup when I get.