barrygordon

You shouldn't have to re-purpose, just add the emulator and make sure you have Java installed. Then add the necessary startup lines to whatever you use for start up (rc.local). I do run mine dedicated and headless.

I will try and sum it up for you; Amazon: Amazon allows for two things to link an Echo to external systems. One is called a "Skill Adapter", the other a "Skill". A skill adapter allows you to say: "Alexa turn on . . .; "Alexa Turn off. . . , "Alexa Dim . . . with very little in the way of providing for other commands such as Lock, Set temperature, etc. It is what is used currently for The Philips HUE, The Belkin Wemo, SmartThings, and the Insteon Hub. Note the restricted command set. (Turn On, Turn Off, Dim) as it was designed predominately for lighting systems A Skill Allows you to have a much more flexible speech interaction but requires you to say: "Alexa, Tell <skill name> to <command sequence>, or variants on that; but always requires the skill name. The command sequences are defined by UDI as part of the Skill. Official support: UDI has developed an Amazon Skill which costs $50 for two years. It is a non trivial development process so the current state is: working, some issues, improving all the time UDI is working on an official Skill Adapter similar to what Insteon provides. I do not know its status/cost other than it is a WIP. unOfficial Support (the majority of this thread): This involves an emulation of the Philips Hue system (the API is available from Philips) so it is a "Skill Adapter". In fact the Amazon system believes it is actually dealing with a Phillips Hue system. There are several version of the Emulator, and the tools to interface the emulator to the ISY. A significant number of ISY owners use the HA Bridge from BWS Systems (bwssystems.com). This is a Java based program that will run on any machine that has a Java environment installed (Windows PC, MAC, Raspberry Pi). This emulator was written with a great deal of flexibility for defining the external device, but originally for the Vera Mi Casa, and then the Logitech Harmony system. It really knows nothing about the ISY. It is required to be running 24/7. I wrote a configuration program that allows a user to easily tie the ISY to the HA Bridge by referencing the ISY and then using a drag and drop (minimal typing) paradigm to configure the data base of the emulator. Others have or are in the process of doing this also. My configuration program only runs on a Windows system and is available from my web site (www.the-gordons.net). Amazon actually encourages D-I-Y users to develop things like "Skills" and "Skill Adapters" so I do not believe Amazon would attempt to make changes that precluded the development of ones own "Skill" or "Skill Adapter". Several of us have written "Skiils", but none have been released publicly, i.e. made available to others. My usage: I have four (4) instances of the emulator running on a single Raspberry Pi model 2. I have 93 "things" configured for the emulator to handle commands for. It is a mixture of ISY controlled Insteon devices (switches, dim-able and non-dim-able, micro controllers etc.); ISY Scenes (turn on, turn off), and ISY Programs (Turn On=runThen, Turn Off=runElse). My ISY "things" are spread among three of the emulation instances, with the last instances allowing the Echo to control non-ISY things (my Pool system; my Home Theater). I have been running this configuration for over a month with only one glitch as recorded in recent posts to this thread. At this time I am getting 100% reliability as long as I am speaking relatively clearly. I have two Echos, one with the wake word being Alexa, and one with it being Amazon. This Thread: This thread contains among its 50+ pages all you need to set up an Echo system with the emulator running on a Raspberry pi (the cost of a Pi for this being about $60-$70 ) with no Amazon or other costs. Hope that helps explain it

I had that same intermittent issue, but have not had it for the past few days. All is working perfectly. I am of the opinion it is an Amazon issue in the cloud. I suspect they get momentarily overloaded.

That message indicates that the emulator did not get a response of "http 200 OK" from the ISY. Are the ISY and the Emulator on the same sub-net? Are there any firewalls running On Windows or your router. I always run my home with all firewalls off except for the protection my Router provides between the Internet and my LAN, i.e. I allow totally open communications between devices on my LAN

Brad, Exactly what software are you attempting to run? There have been many changes since post #1 of this thread. I, and a lot of others, are using the Hue Emulator (HA Bridge) from BWS systems (bwssystems.com) along with my configuration system (AWS_Config.exe) available at my web site www.the-gordons.net. Many, if not most, running the HA Bridge run it on a Raspberry Pi model 2. It will also run on A Windows or MAC system that has JAVA Installed. The emulator must be running 24/7 My configuration program only runs on a Windows machine (Win 7 or later). The emulator has the ability to configure ISY entries but it is non-trivial. Hope that helps.

AFAIK, Many if not most ISY users, use mostly Turn On, Turn Off, and Dim to control things. A native Alexa skill in a connected home (what Amazon calls a skill adapter) handles those commands very nicely for devices such as lights and switches. I have friendly names of 1, 2, and 3 words which Alexa seems to handle quite will to send rest commands for devices, scenes and programs. Using the skill adapter I do not have to say Ask Izzy or Tell Izzy. Perhaps a reasonable solution is to use the Connected home skill adapter concept for those things it seems to handle quite well, and a formal skill (Izzy) for those things where different commands (other than Turn on, Turn off, dim) are desired. The skill (Izzy) could then be used to handle climate devices (thermostats); programs with commands of Run, Run If, and Run else; and other commands such as Open, Close. That should reduce the Utterance set for the skill. Just a thought

Greg, I agree, as it is working fine for me now. I suspect the Amazon cloud. They really need to ensure that their Echo service is 100% reliable or as close to that as possible.

Wishing all a Happy new Year. 2015 has been an interesting year in many ways. Hopefully 2016 will be just as much fun in the world of Technology.

All The friendly names of the lights in my house end with the word "Lights" as in "Kitchen Lights". Everything is once again working fine. I find I get the best speech recognition when I say "Alexa" and then wait for the sound that signifies that Alexa is awake, and then finish the speech.

Had some interesting issues tonight. All of a sudden the Echo started telling "that command is not correct for that device" or something similar. After a while it started behaving correctly. I rediscovered all my devices and the Echo would not recognize any device that had a type of p"Program". I will check again tomorrow after Amazon stops screwing around with the cloud. It is easy enough to fix if they no longer want to handle a type of "Program". Did anyone else have a similar issue?

AFAIK the Echo will not send its local audio out over Bluetooth. Several have requested that feature but as of this time I do not believe it has been implemented

huddadudda, I think you misunderstood what I am looking for. I agree that the ISY/Echo can control an AV receiver through the networking module. But it can not send its audio out to the AV receiver. If you ask the Echo to play some songs from your Amazon Prime library it will always use the audio system built into the Echo to do so. The Echo's audio system is not of a very high quality. If the AV receiver has Bluetooth connectivity and obeys Bluetooth AVRCP (Audio Video Remote Control Protocol) you should be able to control the AV receiver for simple things. This is how the Echo controls an iPad streaming some audio (also of low quality IMHO), if the iPad is paired to it. This actually has nothing to do with the ISY. I am also researching (on the Web) the use of Siri on an iPhone to act as the Echo does. The iPhone will need to be Jail-broken and running the tweak known as "Assistant+" (Apple is way to restrictive in what they will and will not allow. After all I do own the iPhone!!). The Assistant+ should be able to send Restful sequences to the ISY just the way the Hue Emulator does. The Assistant+ tweak is in development and a "plugin" would be needed to perform the appropriate action with the ISY. Those interested can google Assistant+ and SiriProxy. I know that the Echo is much better from a Speech recognition standpoint than Siri, But the iPhone approach would be completely local and could work across the internet from a location outside your home if you wanted it to. This also would include pulling status from the ISY back to the iPhone/Siri for audio response.

Interesting, you responded to my post, and I just deleted it.

Thanks guys, It feels good that the old man is appreciated.

Right now with the ISY, Echo and the HA Bridge (soon to be replaced by the ISY "Connected Home"), I am doing what I want when I want. I still use a switch if it is convenient, i.e. I don't go out of my way to use the Echo for lighting control, but rather driven by convenience. I don't like having to use the cloud, but natural language speech recognition takes a significant amount of processing power. If someone develops a RPi form factor device that only did Natural Language Speech processing at a reasonable price point I would jump at it. The only thing that might come close from what I have read is the Jibo robot which AFAIK does its speech recognition internally, is expensive and not yet available. My experience with the Echo cloud is fairly positive with well over 90% of my voice requests get processed immediately (<2 secs). The "OK" comes a little too late for my liking. Infrequently there is a delay and the LED ring just spins and then the request is fulfilled (>4 secs, < 7 secs) which I attribute to cloud congestion. I do have a very fast LAN, Excellent Wi-Fi and a wide pipe from my ISP. With regard to the statement "...certificates, DDNS server and all that goes along with it...." My use of the echo may require that stuff but I don't see it. I already use a dynamic DNS service so my WEB site as available. If a certificate is needed for the Echo it is "under the covers" unless you are writing your own skill.

I suspect that after all the Xmas presents are received there will be a lot more Echo's in use and there could possibly be a spike in ISY sales (UDI Hint: You need to advertise!). With a good tutorial on using the ISY with Insteon it good be moved out of the DIY HA enthusiast world. It is not that difficult to set up, and IMHO, it is easier to link up Insteon devices using the ISY. Also Scenes are easier to set up in the ISY than with "raw" Insteon devices. Simple programs are not that tough either. Maybe a browser based interface to supplant the Admin Console. I have not yet enabled the ISY skill (IZZY) as all the things I want out of the Echo/ISY seems to be adequately handled by the HA Bridge (HUE Emulation). Once UDI issues their ISY "Connected Home" offering, I may switch to that just to see how it differs from the HA Bridge and if it reduces complexity in my home. I have the same complaint re Insteon software. UDI is much more responsive with a much more flexible product. In my home, all physical device control (lights, appliances) are controlled by Insteon devices which in turn are controlled by the ISY which is controlled by iPads, my iPhone and now the Echo. The ISY also handles my two Z-wave thermostats. I have learned the hard way that once the HVAC system is properly setup - leave the thermostats alone. If you have to fiddle with the thermostats something is amiss. Ergo voice control of a thermostat should not be needed. I do have boxes full of X10 stuff and some Insteon Tstats, so if any one needs some . . .

Hopefully the competition will reduce the price point! The only feature I really want from the ECHO/others is to be able to pair a Bluetooth transceiver so I can send the audio output to another audio system. I really do not like the audio quality of the Echo. It hopefully would only be a software change since all the logic to pair with a Bluetooth device is already there.

When referring to audio using the native commands recognized by the Echo audio capability (play, pause, louder,softer and their variants) always refer to the Echo itself. The only exception to this is if you have paired a Bluetooth device to the echo e.g. an iPad and that device obeys the Bluetooth AVRCP (Audio Video Remote Control Protocol) then the commands are sent to the paired device. Hopefully it is playing music. I have not tried this but that is what the Echo documentation states. I would really like to pair a Bluetooth speaker or sound system to the Echo so the echo could play its music through a decent set of speakers.

Sorry, My configuration system is not web based and only runs on a Windows system. I had not intended it to be around long as I knew UDI was working on an Echo solution for the ISY. I just wanted to make life easier for those using the Hue Emulator. If I am in a hurry and do not plan to make a long lasting product, I generally code in Visual Basic, in fact in VB6. I have a large library of VB6 code at my disposal, and it has excellent debugging facilities in the IDE. If I felt it needed to withstand the ravages of time I would have coded it in Javascript (Node.js) but it is what it is. You could run the configuration system in a VM running windows on the MAC. In that case I would specify the IP addresses for the Emulator and the ISY as I am not sure how well the uPnP searches would be through the VM down to the native OS. All the configurator needs is the ability to do TCP/IP. If you provide the necessary IP:port information in its ini file it will not even bother with uPnP.

The only thing the emulator needs to run is Java.it was written in Java to allow it to run on most OS's I know it runs over Java 8, and I think it might also run over Java 7

I just get this back from BWS systems. the whole short conversion is here. echo <-> HA Brdige communications Brad, Quite a few people are having a problem with the echo trying to discover devices on the HA Bridge. In my case (with two Echo's in the house, 4 instances of the HA Bridge operating on a RPi), it generally takes about 4 repetitions of start discovery in the Alexa app before all are discovered. I know that at one time you were working on this. The best it seems to do is discover one or two of the bridges I have running in a discovery pass. I have never been able to get the discovery process to work with a single bridge with all of my 93 devices on it. It is more a PIA than a real issue, but it would be nice if the device discovery process was more reliable. I am not even sure if it is a bridge problem. My suspicion is a sensitivity to the specific network configuration and the devices that respond to uPnP searches, but it may also be an Echo code problem. Is there anything I can do to help if you choose to chase this down. Barry Barry, It's the new software on the echo. People need to forget devices, turn off the echo (unplug), turn on the echo (plug in) and then rediscover and it may take a few tries. Brad **************************************************** end of conversation ********************************************************************* I have not done this as my Echo<->ISY communications are working fine. All that I have noticed and confirm is that if I stop requesting Alexa to do something with a particular device, that device eventually gets marked as off-line in the Alexa app. When I finally get around to telling Alexa to do something with that device, it happens and the device is marked on-line again in the Alexa app.

I am with you. Port mapping is for outside devices coming in AFAIK. There are options for a uPnP device to set up a port map on the router so external things (Web-based) can get to it. I disable that on my router, and if I want a port map I build it myself on the router. I DO NOT want any program playing around and letting in things from the web I did not explicitly allow.

Try posting the issue of the apple time capsule router and allowing uPnP on an apple forum Here is one link I found https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3041061?start=0

I really prefer tightvnc to putty as a like the graphic interface of the Raspbian system. I have the server edition of Regular VNC running on my main development PC and the client version on all other PC's. VNC server will talk to VNC Client and to tinyVNC on the Pi. All my Pi's run headless with just a power connection and an Ethernet connection. To do the initial setup of the RPi you do need a monitor and IIRC a keyboard. Once I get TinyVNC up and running (just a few steps which are well documented on the web) I disconnect the Monitor and keyboard.

First, I make no money when someone buys an RPi. An RPi (model 2 with an enclosure Power supply and a wifi USB adapter costs about $40-$50. Just search for a RaspberryPi in yahoo or Google. To start multiple instances of HA Bridge on a single RPi just start them with different port numbers, Database locations, and log file locations. This is from my rc.local file: Note my ISY is at 192.168.1.229, the RPi is at 192.168.1.81 # Start first instance of HA Bridge nohup java -jar -Dvera.address=192.168.1.229 -Dupnp.config.address=192.168.1.81 -Dserver.port=8081 -Dupnp.response.port=50001 -Dupnp.device.db=/home/pi/echobridge/data/device81.db /home/pi/echobridge/current.jar > /home/pi/echobridge/logs/log81.txt 2>&1 & # Start second instance of HA Bridge nohup java -jar -Dvera.address=192.168.1.229 -Dupnp.config.address=192.168.1.81 -Dserver.port=8082 -Dupnp.response.port=50002 -Dupnp.device.db=/home/pi/echobridge/data/device82.db /home/pi/echobridge/current.jar > /home/pi/echobridge/logs/log82.txt 2>&1 & # Start third instance of HA Bridge nohup java -jar -Dvera.address=192.168.1.229 -Dupnp.config.address=192.168.1.81 -Dserver.port=8083 -Dupnp.response.port=50003 -Dupnp.device.db=/home/pi/echobridge/data/device83.db /home/pi/echobridge/current.jar > /home/pi/echobridge/logs/log83.txt 2>&1 & # Start fourth instance of HA Bridge nohup java -jar -Dvera.address=192.168.1.229 -Dupnp.config.address=192.168.1.81 -Dserver.port=8084 -Dupnp.response.port=50004 -Dupnp.device.db=/home/pi/echobridge/data/device84.db /home/pi/echobridge/current.jar > /home/pi/echobridge/logs/log84.txt 2>&1 & Study the above just don't do it blindly and you will quickly see the differences There are several variants of the rc.local file posted in the long 50 page thread but they end up all eventually doing the same thing. No searching for software is needed. All the software you need comes with the SD card that comes with your RPi if buy it with a NOOB SD card included. If you want to install tightVNC There are instructions on the web to do so.