larryllix

I have done the same thing as the OP wants to do. I use a KPL keypad for a combination system to turn the alarm system on and off, as well as notifying me about motion, water leaks, and a few other unwanted home disasters. If somebody did a smash and grab I have insurance. If I get confronted by a home invasion, the police are not going to help me for at a least 15-20 minutes. I am on my own. If you want protection against theft by the neighbourhood teenager get some authentic looking stickers by doors and window and some phoney cameras with blinking lights. If you want protection against a seasoned thief, don't waste your money on a false sense of security. You aren't going to keep a determined and seasoned thief out. Get better insurance. It's about feeling safe and that is what they sell. There are no guarantees. Some here are very passionate about their beliefs, and insist "everybody must be just like me", and yet when the tables were turned, ignored the screaming from others who exhibited the same behaviour, anyway. Insteon sensors and systems are fine for security, not a very good choice but can still work much better than the nothing you will have without it. Special routines must be designed to circumvent MSes false signalling and causing a ruckus in your neighbourhood or the police. Here they will fine you and eventually not even respond after X false alarms. The best advice I have heard from many "Security specialists" was ….You will not keep them out, but you can attempt to limit the length time they spend in your home. Nice to come home to a spray painted walls full of obscenities, and a water falls coming down your staircase. We came home to a disrupted home and signs of a teenager relaxing on our bed, eating candy from the freezer while he shopped for the best jewelry to take. We couldn't live in that house and sold it after a year of never relaxing away again. Any alarm system would have prevented that but not stopped them from entering. It's about the length of time. ...and here is the scenario to consider. While you are on your cruise for 21 days in the Caribbean, and your cell phone goes off with a text message that motion was detected in your home...what are you going to do? Maybe a cheap Insteon MS saw a car headlights flashing across it and false triggered? Make a long distance call for many roaming dollars to the police? Things to consider.

Save has flashed that message "Deleting 1 programs" since ISY V3. Apparently it is a side effect to do with the way the messages are displayed from java and does no harm. Nothing is being deleted.

I just got two Echo 3s and a 8" Show. The sound is terrible (for voice clarity) compared to the Echo 1&2s, and they are much larger too. I do find the Echo 3s hear better though. The Echo 1&2s are smaller and clearer for voice but not so good for music. My 3-4 GH minis are the best for playing music.

The Echoes have terrible sound compared to the GH speakers. One more point for asbril!! I didn't ignore them at first but II have only so many years left and can't spend most of it fixing google things. Look south but I can still see you over the wall!

I have been getting and complaining about this for a few years since ISY Portal entangled GH. It doesn't seem to affect my operation but I ignore my GH devices now, anyway. Google would never allow other calendars to be integrated.

The google security update trap! I had to start a new google account after about a year of refusing. AFAICT somewhere down the line google warned you "XY^ZQWET#4r" was attempting to link to your account and you replied you didn't recognise that activity. I could never find a way to re-approve the connection and google support always responded I had to contact my provider. They never heard of ISY or UDI.

One variable could be fine if you use multiple values for it, multiple pseudoMSes, converted from different values of the same variable, and multiple Alexa routines with the same vocal announcement. AFAIK it is the Alexa routine trigger that takes up to 30 seconds, not the ISY Portal, nor ISY..

You would have to design a resistive voltage divider, with a possible Zener across the I/OLinc ipout to protect against spiking but probably the best and safest method would be an appropriate rating coil of a real and use the isolated contact into the I/OLinc input with it's 5Vdc aux output supply.

Read the thread! Click on the title "larryllix replied to a topic"

From what I can tell over the years, Google likes to concoct new security techniques and fears/policies. Then they try to make the user feel like it was their fault their password does not work suddenly. When you ask to reinstate a new password they nail the user with all kinds of new personal information each time. Now they need your home phone number, cell phone number, your home address and postal/zip code, as well as your "disposable email address" just for better customer service, of course. LOL One of the techniques is get you to confirm via email that it was actually you that reconnected to their service. When and if you don't within a certain length of time, google now deems you a hacker that needs to be cut-off and you account will never work again with that particular service/device/account. After having google refuse my connection to ISY Portal for almost a year, I finally gave up and started a completely new shared (wife and I) google account, registered it with the ISY Portal and things resumed again. Originally GH was miles ahead of Alexa in personality. Alexa was more accurate with HA but both have passed each other back and forth in every field many times over. Thank Gawd for competition though, or we might be still stumbling with old vocal technology. Market competition!... It's the Canadian democratic way.

If that is the case it opens a whole new world of possibilities. Just get an Insteon I/OLinc and protect the 5Vdc input with a few clamping diodes and a resistor, from the raw DC voltage you want to detect. Be careful of grounding combinations. IIRC the I/OLinc's input is isolated from the power supply line.

Some people have hacked the Insteon thermostats to indicate external temperature and other analogue parameters. The CAO Tags may be a good and hackable source but I have not heard anybody digging through any of those yet. Some have external sensors that may be an easy input for use. The CAI WC8 board has 8? analogue inputs with better resolution and has a Rest interface to support ISY with direct deposits into variables and easy PLC type language. You would need a power supply and a small box to house it, Ethernet cable. I use one for wind speed and interior/exterior temperatures. Humidity sensors are available and the temp sensors are accurate and cheap ($0.99) on eBay etc..

ROFLMAO!! That is the best (and most hilarious) kludge I have ever heard of!! It needs to go down in a history book somewhere!

I don't think the tonal controls affect the sound of speech, but only music.

Wife gave me two Amazon Echo 3s and a Amazon 8" Show for my birthday this week. The Echo 3s are very muted bassy and very hard to understand, compared to the Echo 1 and 2s. They seem to hear better over TV noise though. The speakers sound like they are down a long tube, trying to make them bassy, but it ruined the sound which a hollow effect. There are tone controls but I think they only work for music, which I do not use. The Amazon 8" Show is even worse for sound. I need to take the packing tape off the speakers maybe?

Nahhh! I would think GH has about the same thing and the process would be the same. Look at my flow diagram above and one step at a time. Perhaps somebody that has done this on GH speakers could help out here. I have a few but haven't opened their app for a year. Anytime I try to use a GH it says it needs mre information to be entered in the app. The app indicates nothing. Probably just GH playing their latest security game again. .

No input from human required. There is three ways to make this happen...Can't remember the syntax but IIRC you can announce to all speakers, announce to selected speakers or to only one speaker. If you have a lot of speakers you don't want to select them all because they have slight delays and the echo effect can make it hard to understand. Please note in my screen shot....."dryer stopped" is not the vocal that comes out of the speakers. This is only the same field used for other applications so Benoit used it. Inside the Alexa routines you select "dryer stopped" as a device and assign actions to do whatever you want when it comes in. I have multiple announcements for some event as it gives another ding or long pause between the sentences then. Delay can be done or HA controls between vocals also.

Here!

I get the temperature from my CAO tags but that is a skill I loaded and not ISY involvement. This seems to have changed. I don't get a wanted status report now, either.

What are you doing in the Doctor's office today, Mr Smith? Your appointment was last week.

There is no hardware upgrade involved in the upgrade. What you get is increased capability enabled on many fronts. Years back my brother watched as IBM came in to upgrade the memory on a mainframe computer. The tech walked in, removed the back panel, flipped a dip switch and rebooted the machine. All for less than $80,000. The possibility the mainboard may have needed replacing was included in the price but...…? WTF? Anybody familiar with Apple products is very familiar with these processes as well as MS and Google now. Perhaps all those app you have been downloading were all included inside your smart phone in the first place? How many app are really already inside your smart phone's 256GB rom memory? How much have you paid for version upgrades from UDI so far?

I don't use that much so I am very familiar with it but try a different syntax like. Alexa...what is the status of XXXXXX. I think 'On' my be reserved for controls.

Now I want another Tab/bank of variable types. I use $cML.GREEN for program constants and now $sayDoorIsOpen style for vocal triggers! I need more categorisation for programming when I page through 500 variables to find the one I want.

Nothing here in southern Canada. I have been hearing "The dryer has stopped" and "Garage door one has opened" all day, from select speakers.

ISY can be the "smarts" as I suspected you are asking about. With the ISY Portal any state variable can be made to simulate a motion sensor of contact sensor device to Alexa. The Alexa app (not the weboste version) has routines than can basically trigger anything on your Alexa app, using anything on your Alexa app, these both include custom vocal phrases. Vocal-------->Alexa------->ISY Portal------>ISY------->ISY makes decision-------->ISY Portal converts stateVar to MS------->Alexa Routine vocalises,"Do it yourself"