Goose66

Would it be possible to upload the new ISY Skill with the 2.0 SmartHome API as a new, separate product? I could just delete the old Skill and add the new one? Since they are free and easy to configure, this would avoid any support calls.

If they would just switch the endpoints I would be glad to tell them what the impact is.

Any updates?

Do you lose the shared shopping list and to-do list across your Echoes/Dots? Do you have to duplicate all of your IFTTT recipes across Echoes? Do you lose Prime Music streaming on the non-Prime Amazon accounts?

Well, and the utility of their time. I love to tinker, and I was early in writing Alexa skills. But it takes more time than I have to create and maintain an actual working solution. I am doing the same thing now with chat bots, but I don't think I will have a marketable solution from it. Just want to make sure I understand the latest "thing" (which is necessary for my career so that I can relate to my clients).

I think we should be making as many suggestions in this regard to Amazon as possible. They have been responsive to other suggestions that I and others have made, especially early on. In regard to the multiple Echo/Dot issue, not only providing a device ID in the request would be useful, but having multiple devices communicate to avoid two different devices processing the same command would also be helpful. They could do a quick broadcast when the wakeup word was recognized indicating the relative strength of the received voice signal, and only the one with the best signal strength would send the remainder of the voice utterance to the Alexa service for processing, while the others would go back to sleep. If Alexa is going to be the heart of a Home-based AI controller through these devices, it will need this functionality.

At first I implemented my own Alexa Skill ("Ask Victor") that utilized the REST API of the ISY 994i. This had the advantage that I could define my own lexicon for scenes, programs, and thermostats devices and it was fairy accurate in the speech recognition, but the "Alexa, ask Victor to ..." was low WAF and Amazon made several changes to the skill API that kept breaking my service. I spent some time playing with the HUE emulator on a RPi, but that was a lot of work and I never got it working correctly. I know some folks on here have created fairly decent codebase and instructions for it since then, however. So after about a year I bought an Insteon Hub (even at 15% off it was $69). That worked directly with the Echo (no "Ask Izzy to..." or "Ask Victor to...") for lights, but not at all for my thermostats. Also, as others mentioned, the Insteon ecosystem did not like having two controllers at all. Too much status information lost. With the announcement of the Smart Home API 2.0 and support for thermostats (for which Michel has promised support in "early May"), I sold the Insteon hub on eBay for $45 and got the two years of ISY Portal service. I like the ISY Portal for a number of reasons: 1. You have both the "Ask Izzy" interface (ISY Skill) to do some more robust things, and the Echo Connected Home support for simple commands to turn on and off scenes and programs that can be setup for a core set of voice command functions. This has high WAF and goes beyond simply turning on and off individual devices by voice. For example, after asking Alexa to order us a Dominos pizza (just kidding - can't stand Dominos pizza), we can say 'Alexa, turn on arrival lights" and it activates a program that turns on front porch lights, driveway lights, path lights, and sets a variable. When motion is detected in the driveway, the front foyer lights come on to indicate that someone is at the door (preventing them from having to ring the doorbell and sending our dog into a conniption). You can't do anything like that with the Insteon Hub. 2. The Portal connection greatly simplifies the configuration of your network firewall, because the connection is outbound from your ISY (and not inbound ports opened up). 3. Using the Portal to expose specific Scenes, Programs, and Devices to Echo makes voice recognition more accurate than if the Echo is allowed to query every device the Insteon Hub is connected to. 4. I can imagine that Michel will continue to develop support for expanded Smart Home API capabilities in the future (***nudge and wink*** where's the thermostat support) Given all that, I think $50 is a small price to pay for two years of the Portal, but that's just one man's opinion. WRK

Any word on thermostat support for the latest version of the Smart Home Skill API? Does an app have to be submitted for approval or is this just a matter of responding to the thermostat commands in the skill adapter?

Don't really know yet. A database, web service, and web app will cost money to host, not to mention the processing cost for the lambda service implementing the actual Alexa Skill. So it's either charge an app fee to cover costs (after some testing) or just open source it and not worry about it. Frankly it only makes sense to make it database driven if it is going to be a multi-user service. If each individual is doing it for themselves, you can keep the database out of it and save 150ms or so per call. Better yet, you can put your individual device/scene names in the sample utterances to make the speech recognition better. As it is now, I have chosen generic sample utterances and want to eventually add smarter matching of spoken name with names in the node list, something like a confidence match with a threshold.

Back on the Alexa Skill (app) for the Echo front (if anybody still cares), I have my Alexa skill running and controlling the devices in my house. A list of device IDs and spoken names (node list) and the controller settings is in a database, so it would be configurable to be used with anyone. Next step is to create a service that supports a simple website creating a user profile, setting your controller settings, and building a node list from the ISY via REST. What I was planning on doing was have the service build the list from any nodes that had a spoken name attribute set. However, it appears that spoken name is only available on devices, but I am finding that I am much more interested in controlling scenes than individual devices. For example, if I am standing in the bay window at night and want to see what's outside, I don't want to have to say "Alexa, tell Victor to turn on the left backyard floods," "Alexa, tell Victor to turn on the right backyard floods," "Alexa, tell Victor to turn on the basement porch lights," and "Alexa, tell Victor to turn on the deck lights." I would muck rather say, "Alexa, tell Victor to turn on the backyard lights," which is a scene that I have setup. Michel, I don't mean to sound ungrateful (I know you added spoken name to devices already), but can we get this attribute added to scenes (groups) as well? Even more difficult, can we get spoken name worked into the UI for scenes? Maybe in 5.0 beta? That would be great. Otherwise, my service will be limited to devices only (or scenes for me since I can just manually alter my database).

So the setup for Wink is different from Hue or Wemo. It is setup as a "Hub Service." You install the device on the same LAN and then user the Device Links under Connected Home in the Echo App to link it with the third-party hub service. I know Michael said they looked at all of the APIs, but I wonder if this form of connection to "third-part hub service" will be opened up to other manufacturers? This is precisely what is needed for the ISY.

Huh, ... er ..., what? I can't concentrate on your post post because your avatar has me hypnotized!

The other thing that needs to be added (and I have suggested this) is that there needs to be a way to "gang" these so that multiple units in the house can work together. For example, if I shout from the bathroom to the Echo on my bedside table, the unit in the downstairs great room can also hear me, and they may both answer. What needs to happen is that they quickly decide between the two of them (or the N of them) which one received the wake-up word with the strongest confidence level and all of the others then ignore it.

Great news on the spoken name attribute and notes. Thanks much! As far as getting Amazon to "have our own app," what they need to do, IMO, is continue to support core voice functionality (list management, web searching, device control, music searching/playback, etc.) in the device but allow users to select plugins to interface to those core functionality. So user 1 may utilize Evernote for list management, Hue for home automation, and Amazon Prime Music for music source, and could assign those plugins to the corresponding voice functionality. User 2 may utilize AnyList, ISY UDI, and iTunes and therefore would select those plugins. Of course, shopping and product ordering would remain Amazon. This is the way it should be done, and I have suggested it to Amazon. If it were Apple, I wouldn't have bothered, but Amazon engineers are really motivated to make great products, IMO, even if it means only a subset will use those products with Amazon Prime Music service.

Thanks for posting your interface. I will complete mine (that's how you learn, right?) and then I will take a look and see what best practices could be developed. This is the project I chose for my first Echo app, so it's not wasted time even if the Hue bridge is the better solution. One thing I don't know yet - will the Hue bridge allow thermostat control?

@Michel, Accessing Notes via REST would be great. I could use Notes to store the spoken name, or maybe store a JSON object that can include whatever custom attributes I want, e.g.: { "spokenNames": ["Basement Hall Lights", "Basement Hall"], "includeInEchoList":true } However, long term I would think a "spoken name" attribute added to scenes, devices, programs, etc. would be useful to any third-party developer integrating a voice-activated controller.

I don't know that a third-party Echo app is going to be better than the HUE emulator, in that third-party apps have to be addressed by spoken name before speaking any related commands, e.g.: Alexa, launch Home Controller and turn on kitchen lights, Alexa, ask Home Controller to set basement thermostat to 55 degrees, or Alexa, tell Home Controller to turn off all lights That said, the programming looks pretty easy. I should have something in a week or two. As far as configuration for the masses, until Amazon adds configuration of app parameters to the Alexa SDK, I think you will need a third-party website to configure. I am using Amazon's DynamoDB to persist user settings (address and user ID/password for my ISY, scene names to URI mappings, etc.). It would be fairly straight forward to create a website to allow users to add a user ID, put in the configuration parameters, run a script to download scene and/or device names from the UDI, etc. and store all of that in DynamoDB. Also, what this effort (and others, I suppose) could use is a place in the ISY data model to add a "spoken name" attribute for scenes and devices. I guess I could be put these in the notes field (are the notes accessible through REST?) for now until there is a better place to put them. Custom attributes, Michel?

A program with: IF from 12am to 11:59:59pm, same day will run precisely two time a day - at 12:00:00 am where it will execute the "Then" branch and at 11:59:59 pm where it will execute the "Else" branch. I think what you want is to add a Wait and a Repeat at the end of your Then branch to have it repeat every five minutes or so or change the condition so that it runs when the value of the $stat den indoor temp or $stat den cool setpoint variables change.

I have a domain name/port routed through my router to my ISY 994i Pro port 443. When I access the ISY 994i remotely using https://<domain name>:port#, the Chrome Web Browser scratches out the https:. If I start the Admin Console, I get a warning saying the ISY is setup with the default SSL certificate and that is a security risk. I select the button to configure SSL Certificates and get the guide mentioned above. I have downloaded the Dashboard mentioned in the guide for version 4.2.16 and tried to create a self-signed Server certificate according to the instructions. The fields of the server certificate dialog are not described in the guide: 1) Issuer is blank and I can't set it to anything 2) Fingerprint is blank and I leave it blank 3) Email Address is blank and I have tried with and without When I fill out the fields and click "Self Signed" I get a pop-up box that asks whether I have filled out the fields properly, I click yes, and I get 5 errors saying "Subject class type invalid." Any help here would be appreciated. Thanks.

Not to mention that, unlike MOST OF the other consumer electronic devices that I own, this one is constantly being improved and enhanced. I saw the upgrade fee as just my contribution to that effort. From my experience, I bet they may work with you on extending the upgrade offer.

I looked at them, and the info said they have local on/off just like the ApplianceLincs. I just assumed they would have the same current leakage problems. Plus $50 a shot to replace my $40 ApplianceLinc modules -- again may be throwing good money after bad. Maybe if I could get $25 a piece back for the ApplianceLincs.

I have an ISY994i/IR Pro connected to a 2412S PLM v.92 (I think). I created a program that sends an X10 signal to an X10 module. I can't get this program to work no matter where I plug in the X10 module. Am I missing something from this setup that I need to get X10 to work? I ask because I am thinking about replacing ApplianceLincs with X10 Appliance Modules in my holiday lighting scenes to avoid leakage of current which causes the LED lights to glow even when the devices are off.

One of the best things that happened to X10 was the patents expiring, allowing lots of vendors to get into the fray. Of course, by that point the technology was suffering from age. Will this happen to Insteon? Well, frankly no. First, the earliest patents will not expire until the mid 2020s. Plus, there are plenty of alternatives such as Zigbee (IEEE802.15) and UPB (PLC). So we won't see a drop in prices and a flood of new devices in the market with Insteon like we did with X10. For example, there are no Insteon debugging/troubleshooting devices which are sorely needed,and would be cost effective to build if not for the Insteon licensing fees, I imagine.

Thus my original post -- without tools there is no way to troubleshoot.

I have a number of line filters in the house. They are on the UPS that attached to computers, and one for the surge suppressor for my stereo rack. But I have a house full of electronics. Am I supposed to buy and install a line filter on every power supply and electronic device in my home? At $35+ a shot, that would cost a lot of dough. Also, I have several fluorescent lights, like in my closets, garage, shop, under-counter lights, etc. that are hardwired in the house. No filter for those. I have often suggested that a filter built into a SwitchLinc would be awesome, but have only ever heard excuses for why such can't be done.