madcodger

Appreciared - Thank You. But still want Amazon to address these issues.

Thank you. This seems to be the best we ISY users can do for now, but it's still FAR from ideal from a home automation / usability perspective. I have four Echos, so having four Amazon accounts is just not practical. I want to USE my Echos to do things like create shopping lists (much of which might be fulfilled by Amazon), reminders, to-do lists, etc. Three of my Echo devices will be useless for this, as they will be connected to the "wrong" account. That is not UDI's fault - it is Amazon's - for failing to consider the fact that some households might actually want to use Echo for something more than a party trick. Amazon needs to think about "power users" (for lack of a better term) who want to embrace their Echo devices - and thus their use of Amazon services - as an integral rather than occasional element of how their home functions. Requiring the use of multiple Amazon accounts does nothing to facilitate this, and in fact hinders it. I appreciate UDI and ISY users for the ingenuity shown here; however, this is a kludgy, cobbled together workaround that we are forced to attempt because Amazon is focusing on novelty dabblers rather than ALSO making relatively simple changes that would make the Echo a truly useful household tool instead of a goofy little device in a bad TV commercial. Echo has breakthrough potential in the way voice is used within the home, and from an engineering perspective it is truly a marvel. But that potential is not being adequately developed because Amazon is thinking in terms of how their customers might use their Echo (one) device rather than multiple Echos placed strategically around a home. This is a major misstep on the part of an ill-prepared product marketing/launch team at Amazon that failed to consider that the Echo would be anything more than a novelty at launch. I'll admit that their primary need was to promote product trial, to gain users. But one of the key things such a team must also consider is, "What if it works"? The Amazon team has thus far failed in that regard, and they need to correct it NOW. Otherwise, there will soon be a fair number of second-third-etc Echos on Ebay, and a bad taste in the mouths of what would otherwise have been especially loyal Amazon customers with reasonable levels of disposable income. The ball is in your court, Amazon, but early adopting power users are not known for their patience.

UDI folks - Would it be possible to please publish / republish these steps as a single "how to"? Having location - specific Echo control is a very big advance for ISY - Echo integration, but if it takes the company founder performing a remote session to get it working, it isn't very scalable. May we please have a single, simple, step by step set of instructions (as opposed to having things strung together in a thread)? I am not complaining - I just think this could be helpful to UDI and its customers. Thank you!

Ditto - maybe 15-20 questions. Told them no interest in reward / drawing though.

Hi all. These are very nice workarounds, and appreciate you sharing them. However, they are still workarounds rather than ultimate solutions, which I hope Amazon implements. The ultimate setup is to have full access to Alexa - for each household member - from anywhere in the home, for any purpose (Connected Home devices, to do list, etc). This is very close, I suspect, if they want to sell multiple Echoes per home.

A very big thumbs up for this idea. Four echoes in our home, and I could see adding up to one or two more. I'm having a devil of a time working on things like Sonos control because I can't pair an Echo with a room or section of the house. Also, I realize this MAY be a problem for Amazon to best address, but let's not make that assumption too soon, or automatically, please.

Hi all, Benoit - It is with Connected Home, and an Insteon device (Switchliinc Dimmer) that is part of a scene. The default On level for the device is set to 70%. I k ow less than nothing about REST commands (or any type of programming or scripting) but will try this later in the week when some travel concludes. Stusviews - Thank you for testing, and glad someone else replicated the problem. Now we have to figure out why it happens... Barry - Thank you for testing. Is the dimmer you tested set to have a default On level of less than 100%? My hypothesis was that Alexa / ISY could not respond properly at a preset On level, but Stu's testing nixed that. On to explore more...

As reported earlier, we are having very high levels of success with Echo, including dimming and brightening of both individual devices and Alexa groups. Scenes, of course, do NOT dim or brighten. I will today work on testing a hypothesis that involves using variables and programs to keep KPL button statuses updated when I use Alexa, and will report back. My question is whether others are also experiencing a problem asking Alexa to dim / brighten to 70%, specifically. I cannot. 69% is fine, and 71% is fine, as is any other level tested. But not 70%, which is ignored. Now the default On level for the lights I am testing IS 70% for the scenes to which they belong. But I cannot set them to 70% specifically (by speaking that value) even if they are at another level (say, 40% or 100%). My hypothesis is that Alexa / ISY may have some little bug that prevents us from setting the device to its default On level for a scene, even when the scene is not being called. May I ask others to help test this, by attempting to specify the % dim/brighten level of a device that belongs to a scene (i.e., specifying that specific scene On level as a %)? May I ask you to also test the value 70% as well? Thank you.

Was scrolling down to post note about Text Expander when I saw your note. Agree 100%. Use this often for many things. Great timesaver.

I honestly haven't had a sufficient number of problems to recall what didn't work, Teken. I know that I have never used "shut" as it does not sound natural to my ear. "Turn" seems to have been fine. I also did a whole series of just saying "Alexa, kitchen lights x%" on Monday night, to test it. Worked great EXCEPT for 70%, which was never recognized with four separate attempts (weird, and I don't think there's anything odd about the way I pronounce the word). What has worked for me is to generally avoid speaking the name of a scene, and instead creating groups within Alexa. Those groups may duplicate the devices in a scene, but the Echo seems to prefer its own view of things over mine. Being a married man, I am accustomed to this situation and thus easily trained by yet another feminine voice.

I don't understand the comment about need to turn on a light with Echo and then dim with ISY. We just tell the Echo the level of dim / bright we want, and it tells the ISY where to set it. No "going back" needed. The thing just works!

Goodness knows I have grumped about various things over the years, mostly in an effort to have UDI be more consumer and cloud friendly. But I must agree that the value I have received from my ISY and from UDI has been about the best overall of anything I can think of in my home automation lineup. It has been going strong for years now, with ongoing support and a steady stream of enhancements. I just received a notice that my financial software - only 3 years old - will no longer be supported (necessitating an upgrade). UDI does better than this, and with hardware! All in all, this little box is one heck of a deal.

1) Voice recognition is about 95% or better here after voice training. I have completed voice training, my wife has not. She is probably 90%. 2) For my friend Teken, I am of course at the other end of the spectrum re: cloud, and fully embrace it. I would of course like to have everything local, but it is not practical to expect this going forward. Ranting against it is like complaining about the weather. You may as well embrace it, and learn to enjoy both sun and snow.

I created groups of devices in the Alexa app, which are similar in concept to using scenes on the ISY. Works GREAT to dim or brighten.

FWIW, I set DNS to 8.8.4.4 and have had no issues using a static IP.

So, I followed this from memory and a little bit of the instruction that comes with the portal receipt. Up and running perfectly - including adding spoken phrases to maybe 25 devices - in under an hour. Had a contractor here doing some remodeling, who went home and ordered an Echo. Very cool, very easy, fairly reliable for speech recognition. Instructions seem great. Thanks, Keith!

Hi all, As others have noted, KeithL's excellent instructions (now thankfully in their own thread) would make an excellent sticky / wiki entry (Thanks again, Keith). This thread has been great, but even for someone that tries to check the forum every day or two, setting up Echo with ISY was starting to look like a chore. It might still be (I'm waiting for the weekend) but at least we now have a clear set of instructions NOT embedded inside a novel.

Soooo, back to the subject at hand... Can anyone with a static (assigned) address for their ISY confirm use of portal and Echo? Or are all DHCP?

Very helpful to know, and something I think should be addressed (fixed). I'll need to play around with that a bit, as several scenes do get brightened / dimmed often.

Thanks, Bruce. Got it. Now to get through the blizzard and piles of work, and start playing with the Echo.

Hi all. Echo on order, arriving in about a week or so. One question, please, that I have yet to understand completely. I control almost everything using scenes rather than controlling the devices directly, as I have several keypads and want the status to appear (light up) on those. Some scenes have the same name as a device (e.g., undercounter lights, or kitchen lights). Can I set up ONLY the scene names in the Echo? OR can I just give a spoken name to the scenes I want to control, and ignore all else?

Thank you, Paul! Will explore these. May help OP at some point as well. I think people overlook noise as the big culprit in Insteon systems. I've had a lighting circuit in the basement (fluorescents) that we can turn on from a KPL, but not off. Gotta be the load.

Just a quick question that may prove helpful to the OP at some point (and I am curious and can't remember): Does SH make an in-line filter that functions similar to a single-point FilterLinc? Could be helpful if noise is found to be something like fluorescent lighting.

i think this could be a popular feature. You are on to a good idea!

I don't regret my system. I just no longer have time to play with it. It's fairly stable, but it will not be expanded. Just WAAAAAY too much time to manage it. When a switch goes down, I'll replace it. But I've gone as far as I am going to go. I'll wait for this industry to become consumer friendly, and buy that in the future.