blueman2

OK, I can confirm that something odd has happened recently. Indeed, the Echo is not finding some of my Harmony activities for ON command, but does work fine with OFF. Give me some time to track down what is going on, and I will work with Barry to give him feedback. EDIT: OK, I found the issue!! AWS-config is inserting the Friendly Name (what you tell Alexa to call it) into the JSON data field, rather than the DeviceID (What the harmony calls it). I have let Barry know. The reason I did not find this is that I mostly had the same DeviceID and Friendly name, so it never was an issue! Also, be default, the friendly name is the DeviceID, but I (like you probably) changed the Friendly name to something more, uh, Friendly. That is where the bug rears its ugly head.

I too have had a lot of issues with Alexa not clearly understanding my ON command when referring to Harmony events. She hears my command, says "OK", but when I look at History in the Echo web page, she thinks I said OFF. That is why nothing appears to happen. And why OFF seems to always work. Apparently, the Echo is 'OFF' happy. I have found that when I stand closer to the Echo, it works 100%. But it sounds like your issue is different in that she does not find the device at all? Let me do some more testing on my system today. I was using my own custom created commands for harmony devices but have now completely migrated them to commands created by Barry's tool. I will see if I can duplicate your issue.

Sure. First, are you able to get just the HA-bridge software from BWS working with Barry's config and your echo? EDIT: Barry and I posted at same time. Barry's questions above are same as mine. We will help you get it going. Just need more info on where you are now.

Actually, this is smart thinking on Amazon's part. They tend to do a good job of looking at commands such as Thermostat, Light, Door, etc. They allow Open Garage Door as a command because that is pretty safe. But CLOSE garage door? Pretty dangerous if there is a person or car in the way.

+1 Well put. In my mixed world, I plan to use my own RPi setup to do the 'home control' portion that has commands going directly to Alexa. While I have not seen the UDI offerings yet, I am one who likes to tinker and tweak to my own needs and feel better having my own mini-server running in my home and being able to tweak all the settings for integration with new devices (like with the harmony remote and with my pool controller). But, I think I am in the minority in terms of wanting to 'roll my own' for this. For the Skill portion, where we need to have Alexa 'ask Izzy to...', I will probably use the UDI portal skill. Depends on how hard it is to create my own skill. I have started the process of creating my own skill, but it may be more complex than I desire. For example, I had to sign up as a developer and Amazon could theoretically take away my ability to run my own skill at some point since I am not creating a mass market product with it (I would be the only user!).

BTW, one of the things that allows me to use the Hue Emulator with such success and high WAF is that Amazon does a very good job interpreting 'friendly names'. For example, I have a Hue emulator entries with friendly name "House Fan Low", "House Fan Medium", and "House Fan High". While you can say "Alexa, turn on House Fan Medium", you can also switch the words around as you wish. So the following also work: Alexa, turn house fan on medium Alexa, turn on house fan to medium I am surprised at how well the Echo parses phrases to get to the right result. Of course, it can also be maddening at times when you have too many devices with the same words in it. In that case, it comes back with "I do not know which device you mean" or something like that.

I do not view the two as mutually exclusive. The configuration I am using above is based on "Primary" Echo invocations. They are all directed to Alexa using the Hue emulator. This creates some limitations, but also some simplicity. Especially from a WAF perspective. Being able to say "Alexa, turn on TV" is easier than "Alexa, tell Izzy to Turn on TV". Especially since my wife and I are using Alexa constantly for lights, TV, Den Music, whole house FAN, ceiling fan, thermostat temperature, etc. All of these are done with fewer words because they are all directed to Alexa. My most common uses are: Alexa, turn on TV Alexa, set thermostat to 69 Alexa, turn house fan on medium Alexa, turn on Kitchen Area Alexa, turn on door chime (this tells the ELK to set door chime to active) Alexa, turn on night mode (a special program on my ISY that sets everything I need to go to bed, such as checking all door locks, turning off all lights, etc) Alexa, turn on Den Music (turns on Roku to Pandora station I like, and turns on receiver for sound) Alexa, turn on Den Loudness (turns up the receiver by 4 volume up button presses) Alexa, turn on Den Mute (mutes the TV and Receiver in the Den) I doubt I will ever want to change these basic functions over to the ISY skill/portal because I do not want to have to add the "tell Izzy to..." wording to each command. BUT, there will be things that are too complicated or impossible to do with the direct commands based on the Hue emulator. That is where the ISY Skill/portal will come in. So I think both will stay around for some time. I plan to purchase the ISY skill/portal service as it matures, but also plan to keep my RPi setup as well.

Barry has done an amazing job with his AWS Config tool. I am running the latest versions of the BWSSystems apps (ha-bridge-0.4.10.jar and restful-harmony-0.1.4.jar) on my Raspberry Pi 2, and running Barry's AWS_Config v4.0.0 tool on my laptop to configure the setup. The wonderful thing about Barry's tool is that it auto populates everything you will need from your ISY (Devices, Scenes, Programs, Variables) and from your Harmony (Activities, Device Buttons) and has very well thought out logic for how to use those devices and options. One of the neater things Barry did was to include the option for button pairs. For example, volume up and volume down. If you select Volume Up button on a device, it will automatically populate Volume Up for the "ON" command and Volume Down for the "OFF" command. And since it is configurable, you can put in any pair you want. For me. I use Aspect ratio of 4:3 and 16:9 as a pair. When I say "Alexa, turn on aspect ratio", my TV goes into 4:3 mode. When I say "Alexa, turn off aspect ratio" the TV goes back to normal 16:9. As you can see, this opens the door to a lot of on/off options. Of course, this program also will allow you to turn on and off any Harmony Activity by simply saying "Alexa, turn on TV" or "Alexa, turn off TV". Along with the NEST controller program by xKing (also running on my Raspberry Pi 2), I have pretty much all the automation I originally wanted with the Echo. I am a very happy camper!

I definitely vote for Izzy. I love it.

Here are the 'friendly names' I am now using very successfully with the Echo today. Items in () are alternatives that also work well. House Fan House Fan Low House Fan Medium House Fan High Air Conditioner (AC) Heater (Heat) Thermostat Door Chime Night Mode Kitchen Area Kitchen Desk Kitchen Island Kitchen Sink Kitchen Table Den Area Den Right Lamp Den Left Lamp Den Light Front Entry Front Lights Front Yard Back Yard Swimming Pool Dining Room Living Room Jims Room Marys Room Hallway Garage Guest Hallway Laundry Room As for Invocation name, my understanding is that they require a hard syllable in the middle. X or Z are ideal. Which is why Alexa and Amazon work fine. I continue to think Izzy would be great, even if it is close to easy. Since it is not the INITIAL invocation name (to wake the Echo up), there is less of an issue for word confusion I would think.

This is really great, Barry (and BWS Systems)! You are both going above and beyond here. Barry, you should really consider going with the Harmony hub. I have been using a far more complex (and higher end) remote set up for my own viewing room (as opposed to my wife's), but plan to move to the harmony hub after seeing how much better the integration can be with other devices. Only downside is that Harmony is more consumer grade and has dumbed-down some of the features compared to pro-grade remotes. But I can live with that.

Barry, Let me know if you need/want my account info and I will email to you. I am of course happy to do whatever testing, etc you need. I wish I had an extra hub as I would send that to you. I just hate to take this one from my wife! It works so well!

Thanks BWSSystems!!!!

Tungsten, I recommend you not directly set temps from the HA-Bridge. I prefer instead to have the bridge send the value directly to an ISY State variable, and then have a program use that change to set the thermostat. Several advantages: 1) no math or calculation. You directly send the actual number to the variable, which sends that to the thermostat. No translations to go wrong. 2) you can only allow 'valid' temps to be set. Just in case Alexa misunderstands or someone says "Alexa, set Thermostat to 99 degrees". Result would be pretty bad. So I have a program that only allows 'good values'. This works just as fast and introduces no noticeable lag when I use it through ISY program. Much better solution I think. You just have to use ${intensity.percent} in your command on the AWS-config tool, and point it to the right State Variable. Line in AWS-config would look like: http://user:pwd@<ISY IP address>/rest/vars/set/2/9/${intensity.percent} for State Variable #9.

My vote for Izzy!! Just asked my wife, she says Izzy to.

Tungsten, Are you using the friendly name "Thermostat"? If you use any other name, then Amazon will truncate/round the number you provide before sending it on. It only leaves items named "Thermostat" along, unchanged (for 0-99).

I agree the biggest value of your tool is the ability to integrate so well, read and write, with the ISY. And doing what you describe above would be AMAZING, providing similar integration with harmony. But I guess I was thinking smaller, at least as a first step. Perhaps just expand the capabilities of the custom endpoint settings to allow different verbs (PUT, GET, POST) and different body types (e.g. JSON). Maybe mimic the options already there in the BWS HA-Bridge web interface within your custom device options. Users would still have to gather info themselves, like I do now, but allows us to use your tool which I like much more as a single interface. A later step could be to allow people to put Activity IDs/names, Device button IDs/names manually into the config file to do some of what you describe above, scaping the IDs/names themselves from the 'list' command of the restful-harmony interface. The names and device IDs are mostly static. Only changes are when you add new device / activities (need to add new stuff) or when you change names of a device/activity (IDs stay same, but names change - so better to use IDs if you plan to change names over time).

Thanks once again, Barry. The variable addition is huge to me, since I use the ISY a lot to do intermediate work before handing off to the end device. For example, filtering a temperature value for my thermostat to make sure it is reasonable and sane. I am now using BWS System's restful-harmony bridge to control my home theater via my harmony hub/remote. It really is slick. One issue I am running into, however, is that BWS uses PUT commands with a json body. I have had to create those directly in the HA-bridge's web page. Works OK, but it would be nicer to have it all handled in your slick app. Any thoughts of including this capability for the custom endpoints? You would need to be able to select "PUT", and handle a json body such as {"deviceid":"Watch TV"}. Not a huge deal to go back and forth between your app and the BWS web page, but I do miss how hice yours is for moving across emulators and the general ease of use. Thanks again for sharing your great app! Blueman2

The developer sent me an email saying he found a bug that was causing this issue, at least for Windows environments. This fix should be rolled into the next drop. Not sure when.

But just make sure you can really save changes in 0.4.8. For windows, 0.4.8 would access the file, appear to edit and delete, but never saved any changes.

OK, something broke with the BWS emulator after 0.4.4 if running under Windows environment. I am running 0.4.8 just fine on my RPi, but trying to run it on my PC fails to write to the db file. But it does not sound like you are running under Windows, since you talk of chmod 777. But in any case, try to use 0.4.4. If you cannot find the legacy file on their site, I can email it to you. EDIT: Here is the link to 0.4.4 version if you need it.

jruben4, I just noticed this issue as well today. Not sure what is going on, whether it is the ha-bridge software or Barry's mapping tool. I just copied a db file from another location, used Barry's tool to delete the devices in it, and went from there. Very odd.

Eric, When I try to get my session key, I keep getting this response (removed my client info of course) {"url":"/oauth2/access_token?code=xxxxxx&client_id=xxxxxx&client_secret=xxxx&grant_type=authorization_code","message":"404 Not Found"} Any thoughts? Maybe a CORS issue?? Also, any new family additions yet????

Looks like the 0.4.8 version with that support is already up. Running it now. Thanks for communicating to BWS! BTW, how does BWS support it's development costs? I was thinking of doing a small donation to them for the emulator they are working on.

Great idea!! I am on 5.02 now, but cannot find a way to include a variable as part of a PUT/POST command. I will ask in the 5.0 area if this is possible. But you are right, this would be a very nice way to do it.