barrygordon

This thread now appears in two forums. How are you using the ISY and Amazon Echo. Perhaps a moderator could take the one in How are you using the ISY and change to a "This thread has been moved to . . . "

Can someone point me to instructions on how to use the ISY portal to access the ISY from outside my home? Is IZZY capable of replying with the current temperature value of a zwave Thermostat, and if so . . . "Alexa ask Izzy the temperature of the Master Bedroom thermostat". Similarly for current mode, fan mode, and set points? Can I set these values yet or perhaps in the future? Not crrtical as I have learned that my home is most comfortable when I leave the HVAC system alone

Michel, I am LOL, I just spent the last 5 minutes wondering what happened as the service name changed from medicare to BGordon. Thank You, That is what I call "Excellent Service" My ISY has well over 200 devices when scenes and programs are counted. When I tell IZZY to refresh devices, I get a reply "this is taking longer than expected" I keep saying yes and eventually after 4 or 5 iterations it tells me it has found 251 devices! Is there somewhere I can find out what it found? When I tell Izzy it to turn off the Desk lights the reply is "I could not find device Desk", Same for office lights or hall lights. As you probably know I have been doing a lot of work with The HUE emulator. That system has no such issues, and I suspect it is because the HUE Device is part of the connected home. My biggest problem (remember I am old) is remembering what I call things. I have established the convention "<Name> lights" for all my lighting devices. e.g. Office Lights, Hall Lights, Master Bedroom Lights etc. For fans I use programs. I use a program names such Office Fan Medium, Office fan Low, Office Fan High, Office Man Off. Generally of the form <room> Fan <speed>. All work flawlessly. I can also say such things as <device Name> Off or <device name> On as in Desk Light Off or Desk Lights On. This also appears to work well. For Appliance like devices (Hot Water Circulator, Shop Dust Collector, Kitchen Power Strip, etc) . just use Turn On or Turn Off. Most of these are controlled by Insteon micro modules. This works quite well. I am sure your Connected Home product will work as well.

Ross, For Sonos, the Echo can control a device that it can pair with (bluetooth) and the device has the AVRCP spec implemented. If Sonos has that protocol operating then the Echo should be able to issue control commands e.g play, pause, etc. This is documented in the Alexa app under things to try, control media playback by voice. Control will be one way as if the Echo was controlling the Sonos as an IR remote

I am confused based on the email I got (I subscribe to this thread). You obviously changed what you posted. Is everything okay at this time or do you want me to look at something?

Ross, The restful harmony app is no longer needed if you are running HA Bridge version 1.1.0 or better. The restful harmony code was incorporated into the HA Bridge at that version. Go to bwssystems.com and the apps tab. Look for the link to the Github page, it is buried in the text. Go there and read how to set up the HA bridge to talk directly to the harmony in addition to the ISY and the Vera hub. Suggest you run HA Bridge version 2.2.1 Make sure you pull the latest version of the Config system. Send me a copy of the Alexa log file and I will look at it. In the Harmony Hub section I will only need the address of one of the HA Bridges. I use that bridge to read your Harmony activities and devices. You may put the data for a harmony device on any of your bridges as long as they are all set up to have the harmony data, However I suggest that you just use one Bridge in that mode.

Pull the Devicexx.db file off of the pi. It is a text file in JSON format. Put it on a windows machine and using a text editor (I use textpad) edit the file. Do find/replace of the userid and the password. Replace the file on the pi and reboot it. In theory that will do it. If you are linux savy you can do it all on the pi, or just use winscp. Remember "In theory, theory and practice are very close, in practice, theory and practice may not be" so save a copy of the data base file first..

Hi Michel, I obviously was not clear in what I asked. I understand the two certifications as I am a registered Amazon developer. My question is related to when all the certifications are complete, including NAC for the Connected Home, Will we be able to deal with the ISY directly through Alexa without invoking the IZZY skill, at least for those kinds of things available with the Phillips HUE system ((lights on/off/dim). Thanks, Barry

I have posted a new version of the HA Bridge configuration system (AWS_Config) on my web site. This version should work with all versions of the HA Bridge with regard to control of a Harmony hub/device. It has had limited testing as I do not own any Harmony devices/systems. Any feedback appreciated. Barry

Michel, Are you implying that once the skill is done and NAC certification is complete, that for simple ISY requests (e.g. turn lights on/off/dim) the command will be direct Alexa as in Alexa Turn off . . . while for more complex things like programs, scenes Climate control, Fan control, etc we will just have to use the Izzy skill? That would be the best of all worlds. Barry

Re what BlueMan2 commented "... 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. The ones listed in the connected home section do not seem to need the name of a skill when speaking to the Echo. That would be nice but I don't think that will happen. What I would like to see Amazon do is allow a string of Skills to be stated in some order and and try them without using a skill name until one of them satisfies the utterance/intent. That could be in addition to having a named skill with the extra ".. tell <named skill> to . . . Just my $0.02

Michel, I am sure all of us "user/developers" understand what you are going through. In the long run I am sure it will be worth the wait Barry

BenBennett, Thanks. This works for me also (for my lights). I am sure this did not work a while ago. Amazon must have cleaned up the cloud processing for Alexa as that is where the speech recognition work is done.

Thanks for the note. I will look at that tomorrow. You can use HA Bridge version 1.1.0 until I see what is going on. That version was the last one known to work properly

Good catch on the scene device type. I inadvertently pulled a line of code. I will be posting a new version tomorrow. That version will restore the scene device type and clean up the logging of Harmony communications. to "install" a new version of the exe you do not need to run a full install. Open the zip archive and grab the .cab file. A .cab file is really a zip archive with the extension changed. Change the extension from .cab to .zip and open that archive. In the archive is the AWS_config.exe file. Just place that file in the AWS_Config folder replacing the old version. Adjust your ini file if the new version requires it.

This is for UDI ISY users that are using HA Bridge version 1.2.1 from BWS Systems and have the Harmony features turned on. There seems to be a problem where communications between my configuration program and that version of the HA Bridge emulator regarding retrieving the harmony version, devices and activity is not working. HA Bridge versions 1.0.8 and 1.1.0 are both working So I suspect an error has cropped up in the Bridge or I have missed a protocol change. I am in contact with BWS Systems to get this resolved. This has nothing, to my knowledge, to do with the issue of the Echo not finding the HA Bridge(s); although I suspect that problem to be related to a network issue in the LANs that are not allowing discovery. On My LAN the Echo discovers all devices defined in the bridge(s) but may need several passes to do so. Also on my LAN The AWS configuration system is able to find all instances of the HA Bridge and the location of the ISY with a uPnP search; so I suspect that may also be related to a LAN issue. A google of the web with regard to uPnP search problems might shed some light.

Echo is getting confused, hearing Lexa as Alexa. Serendipity!

The Amazon system (Alexa/Echo) has a specific vocabulary. Watch is not a legal verb. Generally since we are emulating a HUE Hub which only controls lights you are limited in the Alexa vocabulary to 'Turn on', 'Turn off'. A synonym for 'Turn off' is 'Shut the'. To dim a light the correct utterance is 'Alexa dim the <friendlyname> to <XX> percent' e.g. 'Alexa dim the office lights to 50 percent'. Set does not work as a command. where XX is a number between 1 and 99. Hope that helps

Big517, I can not reproduce your problem. Could you email me your ini file which does not work. I want to look at it with a hex editor.

As an aid to non-linux experts (90% of us including me) I will try and explain what the ending text in the rc.local startup line means: . . . /home/pi/echobridge/ha-bridge-1.2.1.jar > /home/pi/echobridge/logs/log81.txt 2>&1 & The sequence (space)>(space) after the command to start the HA Bridge calls for a redirection of the output of the invoked process (/home/pi/echobridge/ha-bridge-1.2.1) into the file named '/home/pi/echobridge/logs/log81.txt'. If the file does not exist it is created. The directory '/home/pi/echobridge/logs' must exist. Normally the output would go to the standard output device (generally the terminal screen). The sequence (space)2>&1(space) causes the standard error output to be redirected to the the standard output in the Bourne shell. The rc.local file is a Bourne shell script so it is running in the Bourne shell. We have already directed the standard output to a file so the net effect is that both the standard output and the standard error output locations are now the named file. The final sequence (space)& causes the command (the invocation of an instance of an HA Bridge) to be run in the background so the rc.local is not held up and continues while the command is executed. The command to start the bridge is run in the background, not the bridge itself. How do I know that? "Every man has the will to know and the wit to learn, but the key to knowledge is the open book". When it comes to Linux my "book" is " The complete reference LINUX 4th edition" by Richard Petersen, Osborne publisher. I just looked up the section on redirection, pages 234-239. I have a whole shelf of reference books on the wall above my desk. I am much older than the Internet, and many of my books are just as old.

Big517, As kck said a single quote in an ini file makes everything to the right of it on that line a comment. Different systems use different characters to mark the start of a comment. Windows ini files use the single quote. Just remove the single quote (') to un-comment the three lines if you want them to be active. apnar, No real reason for using VNC vs SSH, I have both available on my development machine (a PC), I am used to the graphic interface on the Pi. Yes 'Sarah' is from Eureka. For those scratching their heads Eureka was an interesting (to some) show about a non-techie Sherriff in a town of Nerd/Geniuses. He lived in a fully automated house named S.A.R.A.H and when he wanted something he would ask or tell Sarah. the acronym stood for Self Actuated Residential Automated Habitat. Regarding uPnP discovery, I am convinced that the people who have uPnP discovery issues have some network issue that will be extremely difficult to diagnose remotely. In my home the configuration system always successfully finds all instances of the HA Bridge and The ISY if I set it to do uPnP discovery in the ini control file. I set the ini paramater for 4 units to be discovered and 10 seconds of time to wait maximum. I do have to tell the Echo to discover devices more than once to cause it to find my current count of 93 devices spread over 4 HA Bridge instances. When I first started, the Echo would always discover all my devices (93 of them) in one pass. Now it takes 3 or 4 passes to do so. I think that is an Amazon timing problem. If anyone discovers what the uPnP problem is please post it in this thread..

apnar, Nice! By the way the echo comment #echo "Starting the tightvncserver, to handle SSL protocol for my skill 'Sarah'" Should just be #echo "Starting the tightVNCserver to handle my PC as keyboard/mouse" In my actual rc.local file I also start a program called stunnel which handles all ssl encryption for the endpoint to my Echo skill 'Sarah' which amazon requires.

I just checked my system and I can find the emulators and/or the ISY fine using the uPnP search. I suspect some sort of network issue. Did you recently install windows 10? I will add the same capability for scenes tomorrow, just didn't realize you could do it there too. I don't see it available for programs though.

The data folder should have nothing until you run the configuration program and choose the ISY devices you want the bridge to have. It seems that for some reason your rc.local is not working. I will look at it shortly. There were errors in your rc. local. I cleaned it up and emailed it back with an explanation. I set it up to run only one emulator, as you had two instances set to the same ports. Once that is working It will be trivial to make it run multiples.

Ross, If the rc.local file is okay, then I suspect a permissions problem. When looking at the echobridge directory (using WINSCP e.g.) what are the permissions (rights) and owners of the data and logs sub directories? On my Pi the rights are rwxr-xr-x and the owner is root. Also the owner of the jar file is root. If you can send a screen snap of WINSCP when it is sitting at the /home/pi/echobridge directory that might also help. I have attached a sceenshot of mine PI_2.bmp