blueman2

Yes, this is one of the reasons I want to move to 2.0.7 version of the HA-bridge. It has amazing flexibility in terms of interfacing to just about anything! And BWSSystems, as you say, is incredibly great to work with and very responsive.

Yes, they (or he, I think he is a sole developer) are amazingly great to work with. He replied back within a day on the issue regarding the Harmony Hub no longer being able to discover the HA-bridge emulator. He is working on it, but no ETA.

Barry, I was just looking into that. If they have any sort of REST interface, that would make things much easier. I will let you know, and also what I hear back from BWS. Thanks again!

Barry, you are truly an IR guru! Sounds like an amazing home setup you have. BTW, I communicated with BWSSystems and they said others have reported issues with the Harmony Hub linking to the HA-Bridge emulator and they are looking into it. Harmony made some change recently that broke the linking ability. But it still works the other way (you can control the Harmony with the Echo/ISY, but cannot control the ISY with the Harmony).

As jratliff points out, the combination of BWSSystems ha-bridge 1.1.0 and Barry's AWS_ Bridge 5.0.63 still works great. Has been completely bullet proof in my home for many many months. Echo never misses a command and responds promptly. So I would encourage people who are control freaks and/or just want to get more hands on with your own Pi based emulator to use the software listed in my sig below. But certainly the ISY portal and skill offering has progressed alot and offers a great solution to those who just want it to work and can live with less customized integration.

Thanks, Barry. I missed your latest post somehow and just read it. I agree I need to move over to the cloud based platform. But there is something in me that just likes to also have my own emulator running. I guess partly I am a control freak, and partly I just like to tinker. Yes, if you are able to get your AWS_config working with the v2 BWS software, I would definitely appreciate it and would use it! But don't waste too much of your time on it. Thanks!

AWS_Alexa.zipBarry, I am using 5.0.63, which is the latest I could find. Here is the log file. I see that it actually does talk to the BWS emulator and get some Harmony data, but crashes with error '424', Object Required. Not worth worry about though. I will just remain with the older 1.1.0 version of BWS. The only big change that I would have liked is that now the BWS software supports multiple button presses in one command. So I can have my TV tune to Channel 202 with on command rather than 3 commands.

Thanks for the reply, Barry. Great to hear from you! I have not been on this forum as much over the past few months due to 1) lots of travel and work, and 2) my Pi based system using BWSSystems software and your great configuration software have been working 100%. Yes, I probably should migrate to the ISY supported method, but I just like the idea of having more control over my system. Also, I will still need to run the Harmony emulator and a few other programs for various reasons so the Pi is still needed. The issue still would be having my Harmony control ISY devices. As far as I know, Harmony will not control ISY directly in any case, so I will still need something to bridge my ISY to a Hue which the Harmony can then control. At least, that is my understanding. BTW, I think your AWS program is failing because BWS changed their version to 2.0. Your program stops at "looking for version" and goes no further. I was trying to view the log but realized for some reason the log is not being created. I need to look into why that is happening. Glad you have your system working well, and I truly appreciate the great work in did on AWS Config. It has been serving me well!

For those still using the HA-Bridge emulator from BSWSystems, I noticed my Harmony no longer is able to discover devices on the emulator. The Harmony just sits at "Your Hue has been found. Please press the center button on the Hue to link to Harmony" or something like that. Anyone have any ideas? I am using V1 of the HA-Bridge because I cannot get the AWS tool that Barry created to work with V2.

Maybe I am an outlier, but I MUCH FAVOR the new ding response. Why? Because Alexa has trouble understanding OFF vs ON when I speak. Sometimes I will say "Alexa, turn off outside lights", only to find in the morning She thought I said "turn ON outside lights". Sure enough, I go back into history and listen to what I actually said (you can play back many weeks of prior commands using the Echo web interface), and I said OFF but she says "I heard 'turn on outside lights". Now, with the new sound, it is clear what she is doing. Better for me. I would say Alexa gets OFF and ON confused about 10% of the time for me.

No, I just ordered a complete set of low ESR capacitors because I do so much capacitor repair on different electronics. But any 10uf 35V or more capacitor will do. Low ESR caps will probably last longer.

I just replaced 2 more today. I found I had to replace both 10uf capacitors this last time. The Green one like before, but also the smaller black one right next to it. Top left 2 capacitors in Post #5 picture. That made it work again. So far, all the KPLs I have re-cap'd are still running fine. I am getting so good I can recap a KPL within about 5 minutes start to finish!

Wow. A Rube Goldberg process to get there, but I really think this is great! This opens up a lot of opportunities for doing very neat things with Alexa without developing a skill. Well done!!

Wow, I guess Amazon is still working out their strategy and operations for the Echo. Things seem to change almost weekly with them. But I cut them some slack for at least moving fast and from my experience, responding to customers' needs. So what does this mean for us? More time, or perhaps in increase in annual costs, or both? I am assuming this is around being able to list ISY in the Connected Home section of the Echo app just like Hue, Insteon Hub, and others are currently listed.

As for lock/unlock, open/close, these do work with some friendly names but I am not certain exactly how to use them. For example, "set temperature to 70 degrees" will only work with friendly name Thermostat and when using intensity.percent. I know at one time I was able to say lock/unlock to alexa for a z-wave door lock I had, but it no longer works consistently for some reason. As for the fan high/medium/low, I am taking advantage of the fact that Alexa is very loose with how you address a device. So if you create a friendly name "Fan Medium", you can address it by "Alexa, turn on Fan Medium" (as you would expect), but also by "Alexa, turn fan on to Medium" and "Alexa, turn on Fan to Medium", or "Alexa, turn fan on medium". So long as you only have one device with the terms 'fan' and 'medium', then alexa gets it. I use this trick for a lot of my friendly names. Note that about 50% of my home 'devices' are actually programs on the ISY which Alexa calls. I find programs to be much more flexible. Also, I can change a program at will, and do not have to do a re-discover with Alexa. I find that very helpful in testing phases.

themlruts, this is also exactly what I do. Create a program for Low, and you can just say "Alexa, turn fan on low" and it works. BTW, did you remember to set the rc.local to execute? (chmod 777). Just use my rc.local above as an example.

Big517 asked a question about my setup that I thought I would copy here for those interested. For Harmony "Activities", I am using Barry's config tool to allow me to say things like "Alexa, turn on Den Television" or "Alexa, turn on Den Music". This talks to the Harmony which then gets my audio/video equipment all set up correctly. So Echo=>BWS Hue/Harmony Bridge=>Harmony=>IR devices for all harmony activities. But I have also decided it is good to have my ISY directly talking to the Harmony hub as well, using the networking module that I have purchased for the ISY. For example, I have created networking resources for all of the number buttons plus 'enter' on my DirecTV receiver. I have created ISY programs for all my most watched channels, such as ABC, NBC, CBS, HBO, CNN, etc. Each program just contains a blank IF and ELSE, with only the THEN populated with the commands to press the numbers for that channel then the enter button. I then use Barry's tool to create an Alexa link to that program. I can then say "Alexa, turn on CNN", and the TV will turn to channel 202 (for DirecTV CNN). So Echo=>BWS Hue Bridge/Harmony Bridge=>ISY Program=>Harmony=>IR devices. Amazingly, even with all these link in the chain, the result is instantaneous when I given Alexa the command. The only issue with ISY talking directly to the Harmony Bridge requires the use of the OLDER Harmony program in addition to the new one integrated into the HA-bridge software. That is because the newer integrated one (1.1.0) does not allow access to the core Harmony functions. Gets kind of complex to get it all set up, but it works great! For channel change via Alexa, here are the screen shots of my ISY so you can get the idea how it works: First, I set up network resources for all the buttons I need (number 0-9 and enter): Here is the detail for one of the buttons. Note, this networking command is talking to the older, stand alone BWS harmony software: And here is the program for CNN: I then use Barry's tool to make alexa trigger the CNN program. Finally, here is my rc.local file from my Pi: #!/bin/sh -e # # rc.local # # Print the IP address _IP=$(hostname -I) || true if [ "$_IP" ]; then printf "My IP address is %s\n" "$_IP" fi #The following is for multiple emulators on the same machine #echo "Starting the Echo Bridge Emulators" nohup java -jar -Dvera.address=192.168.1.145 -Dupnp.config.address=$_IP -Dharmony.address=192.168.1.127 -Dserver.port=8080 -Dupnp.response.port=50000 -Dupnp.device.db=/home/pi/echobridge/data/device80.db -Dharmony.user=XXXXX -Dharmony.pwd=XXXX /home/pi/echobridge/ha-bridge-1.1.0.jar > /home/pi/echobridge/logs/log80.txt 2>&1 & nohup java -jar -Dvera.address=192.168.1.145 -Dupnp.config.address=$_IP -Dharmony.address=192.168.1.127 -Dserver.port=8081 -Dupnp.response.port=50001 -Dupnp.device.db=/home/pi/echobridge/data/device81.db -Dharmony.user=XXXXXX -Dharmony.pwd=XXXX /home/pi/echobridge/ha-bridge-1.1.0.jar > /home/pi/echobridge/logs/log81.txt 2>&1 & #Harmony for ISY to talk to java -jar -Dserver.port=8086 /home/pi/Harmony/harmony-0.1.4.jar 192.168.1.127 USERNAME PWD > /home/pi/echobridge/logs/log86.txt 2>&1 & exit 0

Intensity.byte is correct for dimmable devices. You use Intensity.percent for things like Thermostats. Also, the command I use is "Alexa, set Den to 50 percent". That seems to work reliably. Finally, dimming only works on DEVICES, not on SCENES, at least for me.

Barry, this is EXACTLY what is happening to me. I tried going back to prior versions of software on my Pi, but to no avail. Was there a software update to the Echo recently? I have not posted a lot on this because I thought it was an issue with my router or something that suddenly came up. Also, while it does take several tries to discover all the devices, once they are discovered, the control works just fine. This first came up for me 1 week ago. See my original post #782

Themlruts, Well, now I am starting to have your issue. First time ever. I have 2 emulators running, and the Echo will only discover one of them. If I re-do discovery enough, it will eventually find the other, but never both of them at same time. Good news is that once it discovers, the commands from Echo will work, even if it does not discover that emulator next time. Not sure why this is suddenly happening. Can't be related to Barry's code since that is not even running during discovery. Must be something that showed up in HA-bridge 1.0.7 but I just never noticed because I had not been doing a lot of discoveries.

I am curious, for the $_IP, did you use the lines to define that variable first? Maybe just use the actual IP of your Pi rather than the $_IP variable just for testing. Also, are you using Wired or Wireless for the Pi? There have been issues where one or the other just will not work. I think due to some uPnP issues that crop up. Try both (one at a time) to see if one works. Here is the rc.local that is in the /etc directory on my Pi, set to chmod 777. Note that I am using Harmony integration, so remove those fields if not needed. Also, I am running 2 copies because I have so many devices being controlled. Finally, I create log files so that I can go back in and see what is going on. #!/bin/sh -e # # rc.local # # This script is executed at the end of each multiuser runlevel. # Make sure that the script will "exit 0" on success or any other # value on error. # # In order to enable or disable this script just change the execution # bits. # # By default this script does nothing. # Print the IP address _IP=$(hostname -I) || true if [ "$_IP" ]; then printf "My IP address is %s\n" "$_IP" fi #The following is for multiple emulators on the same machine #echo "Starting the Echo Bridge Emulators" nohup java -jar -Dvera.address=192.168.1.145 -Dupnp.config.address=$_IP -Dharmony.address=192.168.1.127 -Dserver.port=8081 -Dupnp.response.port=50001 -Dupnp.device.db=/home/pi/echobridge/data/device81.db -Dharmony.user=XXXXXX -Dharmony.pwd=XXXX /home/pi/echobridge/ha-bridge.jar > /home/pi/echobridge/logs/log81.txt 2>&1 & nohup java -jar -Dvera.address=192.168.1.145 -Dupnp.config.address=$_IP -Dharmony.address=192.168.1.127 -Dserver.port=8080 -Dupnp.response.port=50000 -Dupnp.device.db=/home/pi/echobridge/data/device80.db -Dharmony.user=XXXXX -Dharmony.pwd=XXXXX /home/pi/echobridge/ha-bridge.jar > /home/pi/echobridge/logs/log80.txt 2>&1 & exit 0 Finally, try playing with the uPnP variables in the command line for the program. My feeling is that this could be a uPnP issue. -Dupnp.strict=<true|false> Upnp has been very closed on this platform to try and respond as a hue and there is now a setting to control if it is more open or strict, Add -Dupnp.strict=<true|false> to your command line to have the emulator respond to what it thinks is an echo to a hue or any other device. The default is upnp.strict=true. -Dtrace.upnp=<true|false> Turn on tracing for upnp discovery messages. The default is false. See my signature below for my current software config, but at this time it is: ISY994IR Pro Z-wave 5.02 ELK M1 Gold 5.3.8 Echo integration - HA-Bridge v1.0.7 (Hue emulator w/ Harmony support by BWS Systems) on RPi2 - ISYnnode.js (NEST bridge by xKing) on RPi2 - AWS-Config 5.0.21 (Configuration tool by Barry Gordon) on Win7 laptop for setup

thermiruts, Let me spend some time tonight documenting what I have set up so that others can follow it. It is rather hard to read through 38 pages of posts to figure this stuff out!!!

Barry has been working pretty much all day on updating his app! Given that he does not even own a Harmony, the amount of effort he has put into making his app fully integrate with Harmony is just epic. He is a huge contributor to this community! I did test a version for him and it appears to resolve all the issues. I am guessing he will make it public tomorrow sometime.

yes, the reason the off always works is that there is only 1 off command for Harmony. It never changes, so cannot go wrong. I think Barry is working on an update. There is also a new version of HA-Bridge software that combines Harmony and Hue Bridge into one .jar file. Hold off on using that for now, though. We need to confirm it all works with Barry's tool.

Yes, this confused me too. Harmony has 2 ways to identify the device: a deviceID number, and a harmony 'friendly name'. Either can be used. But then we also have a totally different Echo 'friendly name' that Echo uses for recognition. If you use the Harmony friendly name and keep it separate from the Echo friendly name, we are fine. The problem in the code was not an issue of Harmony DeviceID vs Harmony Friendly name, it was an issue of Harmony Friendly Name vs Echo Friendly Name. However, there is an advantage to using the DeviceID number. That number does not change if you decide to later change the name of an activity in the Harmony App. Whereas if you use the Harmony friendly name in the JSON field, the user will have to 'update' that device in your program after making the change in the Harmony App. Downside of using DeviceID is that it is less 'readable' for users. If that matters.