bmercier

Thanks everyone for your suggestions. A new version of the skill is about to be submitted for certification. Most of the suggestions in this thread were added to the sample devices. Benoit.

Program support is now available! Benoit.

We can now enter spoken for programs on portal. Other than the ability to specify a spoken for a program, this change also allows to : - Turn on programs (runThen) - Turn off programs (runElse) The existing "run <program>" still exists, and it should be easier to use. It now uses the same sample names as a regular device. Therefore, if you have a device name that works well with devices, it should work as reliably with programs. FYI, a "run <program>" will do a runIf (not runThen). Please note that the connected home will also support programs with those same spoken names. It's implemented, but unfortunately not live yet. Benoit.

Stusview, Thanks for the screen capture, that helps understanding. From what I see, it's a conversation which is all within the skill. Connected home is not involved at all here. There are a few verbs that gets you into a skill, like: open <skill> tell <skill> to ask <skill> to In the case of tell and ask, it's the combination of the "verb + skill name + to" that routes the request to the skill. So, if Alexa does not understand the to, and clearly understands the turn on, she thinks it's for connected home. Even if you have no connected home adapter enabled. When you are within a skill, and the skill asks you a question and leaves the stream open, then you can say something else (like a device name), and this gets routed to the skill currently opened. That happends when you ask for a command, and the device is not found, then the skill will ask a question and leave the stream open. Same thing goes when you are within the help. Benoit.

Stusview, You request was indeed sent to the skill. If you hear a reply which says "Turn on which device?", or "I could not find device <xyz>. Turn on which device?", then yes, the request was directed to the skill and it could not find the device. However, if you hear "Sorry, I could not find a device or group name <device> in <user>'s profile", that's not coming from the skill. This means Alexa tried to find the device in the connected home profile. I believe this is the message that Z3phy got. One reason for this can be for Alexa not to understand "to" properly. Benoit.

Z3phyr. Whenever you hear that it can't find a device in your "profile", this is a symptom that Alexa sent your request to the connected home. It was not routed to the skill. Make sure to pronounce the "to" correctly. Alexa, tell izzy to turn on dining room. You can look at the echo to see what she understands. Benoit.

Absolutely, it still uses the lighting API. It's just that they want us to use a new method to publish the connected home adapter. So far, it's been a manual process for them. Each time I wanted to publish in test mode, I had to send an email with a few information. I assume the process will be similar to a skill, in the sense that you need to enter your informations somewhere and then submit for certification. Benoit.

Right. The reason is that Alexa often skips words which are not on the device samples. So in that cases, it only passes "kitchen", and the skill can then make a match with your spoken "kitchen". However, be aware that this is currently being enhanced, and in the next version, light will be recognized. So when this goes live, "kitchen light" will start to work, and the skill will not be able to find that spoken in your list of devices. Benoit.

Ronbo, GPG, The fix is now in production. Thanks, Benoit

Hi Barry, I'm currently using standard jQueryUI buttonset(). Would you have a screen-shot of what you suggest? That would help for inspiration to customize the buttonset. You can PM me. Thanks, Benoit.

No, not alone! Hi Junky, We had news today from the Amazon Echo Sr product manager. Amazon is about to have a new self-publishing method for connected home adapters and want us to go through it. That was supposed to be ready in late december, but the dev team is late. We are told to wait a "couple more days". Benoit.

Hi Ron, When you start typing, it should bring you a dropdown with scenes that match what you type. Or alternatively, if you the field is empty and you click on the arrow, you should see all your scenes in the dropdown. If that's now what is happening, I'm starting to think that it may be a browser specific issue. What browser are you using? Benoit

Hi Michael, Connecte home will use this same table. Now, the spoken field on ISY has no purpose related to portal. It can perhaps be used for other home automation needs, if integrated with something that speaks or can accept spoken requests, or just be ignored. About the "Spoken" not having Add... well, the idea is that there will be Programs as well. It may not be too obvious, but those two buttons form a buttonset. For esthetic & real estate reason, I opted for a button set where you have 3 places to click on to Add devices/scenes/programs. When you see "program" appear there, having "Add" in front of all 3 will look redundant. Benoit.

Hi Rombo, Please click on Add scene. There, you will be able to add scenes to your list. The refresh button does not synchronize with the ISY. It just refreshes the UI with the content on the portal server. Benoit.

Ronbo, They should all be listed, unless you type something in the field, which has the effect of filtering on the list shown. Are you sure you are missing scenes? Any one else seeing this behavior? Benoit

Hi Michael, I was suggesting to delete the devices on portal. That's how you opt out a device from the Echo. You are right, they are not synched with the ISY. It's now totally separate. We could have started with an empty table instead, but we figured it would be best to start with those from the ISY so that the move to production is not disruptive. Benoit.

Hi Michael, The mapping of spoken to devices is now managed on portal. There is an "Amazon Echo" tool that has been added on the ISY page. The skill can only use devices defined there. You can delete those that you don't need. Benoit.

Hello Ronbo, The refresh button only refreshes the table with content hosted on portal. This does not do the same as "refresh device" did. It is now a somewhat a manual process where you decide which devices you want to expose to the skill (and eventually connected home), and of course the corresponding spoken. Currently, programs work the same as before. They work with the name that you have on your ISY. However, you can expect this to change. You will soon see a button added there to allow to define a spoken for programs. Benoit.

Actually, testing shows that custom slots work well when the skill is not too large. It behaves just like a literal, with the added benefit that it helps recognition if what is spoken is close to one of the samples. The problem we are facing are these: 1 - As we add more utterances, alexa starts having difficulty passing values to the custom slot. With only the turnOn turnOff utterances, it works very well. Just about any word spoken and correctly understood as seen on the echo app are passed in the custom slot to the skill. However, if we gradually add more unrelated utterances to the skill, alexa start dropping the last word like; light, lights, lamp, etc.. As we add even more, it stops passing simple words to the skill like "bard", "master, etc... Except for the words in the samples. I made sure that this is not due to words like "light" in the added utterances. I thoroughly tested with different blocks of utterances. 2 - As we add more utterances, we can save the skill (at least it appears as such), but we reach a point where underneath, something looks corrupted. Let's say I add many utterances, I save, everything looks good. It is there. But then, if we delete some of those utterances and save... they still work. I took such a skill, trimmed it to the point where I had only 1 utterance with 1 intent, and the skill still worked as if was never modified. So something is not updated underneath, but that only happens if the skill reach a certain size. Both problems, which may very well be related, have been reported to Amazon. The only possible short-term fix would be to add samples to the device list. That I know works. Benoit.

Hello Xathros, If you are referring to the the Amazon account link in "My profile" - it's is not required to use the Alexa skill. Alexa skill account linking is done when you enable the skill. It prompts you for a portal account, then links the accouts. The reason for the Amazon account link in "My Profile" is for the Connected Home only. The will be useful only when the connected home ISY adapter will become available. I know it can be confusing. Connected home (lighting API) and Alexa skill uses 2 totally different ways to link accounts. Benoit.

You need to go to the admin console, in configuration/portals. There, you need to click a button to give approval. The reason for this is that anyone who knows your uuid could enter it in it's portal account. But authorization has to be given at the admin console before it can actually be used. Benoit.

HAD is now bundled with Portal. When you select "ISY web access", you will get to UDAjax. From there, go to settings change the default UI to HAD. When in HAD, you can also switch back to UDAjax, just like on the firmware version. Benoit.

Absolutely. Good idea for the leds. Benoit.

I was thinking of up to sunday inclusively. However, I'm currently testing, and I'm running into another problem which might change these plans. Testing shows that if I fill in 2 slots, predevice+device or device+postdevice, it works well. But if I only fill one like "kitchen", it is not recognized I need to get back to Amazon with this... Benoit.

We are progressing well. I'm currently working on enhancing the device list before we resubmit to Amazon. Please see this thread to review the device list and provide feedback: http://forum.universal-devices.com/topic/17632-device-list/?p=158852 I figured it would be best to have a separate thread focused on enhancing this list. Benoit.