MikeB

Interested in this topic as well. I only have 1 INSTEON thermostat currently (2-piece version), but I think it's time I finished this project and replaced my others. Although I want to integrate thermostat control and notifications with the ISY, integration with the Amazon Echo is priority #1.

Very cool! Thanks for sharing.

I had been limping along with my Hue Emulator setup until last night. Some phrases that had worked long ago stopped working over time. Yesterday I finally took the time to migrate over to the ISY Portal and love it so far, but it did not fix the spoken word recognition issue. Long ago "turn on pink floyd radio" worked to initiate a SONOS playlist, but stopped working a while back. Just recently "turn on goodbye" and "turn on goodnight" worked but stopped probably with this last update. Using the keywords "music" or "radio" seems to be a problem. For example, "office music" worked but "kitchen music" did not, so for consistency I had to change to something else. I am using these: "office sonos" "kitchen sonos" "living room sonos" "floyd sonos" "classic sonos" ...etc. Hopefully it stays working. Spoken word changes are tough to digest, especially for other family members that get used to saying certain commands and now have to change. Really hurts the WAF. For "goodnight" and "goodbye", oddly enough changing the spoken words to "good night" and "good bye" seems to work! I hope it stays working.

Back up now over here!

I finally got rid of my Hue emulator setup and got the Echo/ISY integration through the ISY Portal working yesterday. There was a short period of time yesterday afternoon where I believe the ISY Portal was down (Echo's response to commands was "That command doesn't work on device..." Other than that I had everything working well yesterday evening. This AM Echo started responding again with the above error and lost the ability to discover devices. I came here and found this thread. It's good to know there is an outage and not an issue specific to me! As of right now I am once again able to discover devices and the Echo seems to be responding normally.

I do know that Smarthome was looking to replace the RS-232 transceiver chip in the PLM last year because of frequent failures. Perhaps newer ones are more reliable.

Although I'm sure bad power can result in frequent PLM failures for some, you would also be experiencing frequent failures on other INSTEON devices.

I agree that it would be useful to specify different ON/OFF commands like you can with the emulator.

Level?

Changing the command to "Goodnight Sonos" seems to work much better. Thanks for the suggestion.

Right. I have a server that is running 24/7 anyway (basic file sharing, media server, photo storage, wholehouse audio control, workstation backups, etc.) so I don't mind adding the Hue emulator to it. Others wit no dedicated server might prefer to use a Pi.

Thanks, will try changing that. I will say it is working for my other commands and distinguishes fine between, for example: Kitchen Music Kitchen Lights Will report back.

Anyone having issues with the Echo detecting certain commands? For example, I have the Hue Emulator configured for a command called "Goodnight Music". If I say "Alexa, Turn On Goodnight Music" it says it can't find the answer to my question. If I check the history it is hearing my speech properly but is obviously confused. If I swap the command around and say"Alexa, Turn Goodnight Music On" it works fine. However, I find other commands will not work that way. For example "Alexa, Turn Goodnight Music Off" may not work while "Alexa, Turn Off Goodnight Music" might. Anyone?

Just got in a 2nd Echo for my Master Bedroom which is working great. Also have Echo controlling my Russound wholehouse audio + Sonos setup. Love it!

Makes sense. I guess you could try some other fairly complex word as a password. The chance of someone guessing it is pretty slim. The reality is if someone breaking into your house knows enough to say "Alexa Turn On **** " to disable your alarm that's pretty amazing. I don't think I'll do it, but in reality it's probably no more insecure than a 4 digit code.

Right. But you'd at least have a choice - if you don't feel comfortable speaking the password at that particular time, just disable via keypad.

I guess you would need to create another entry entirely, use just the OFF URL, and have the voice command include the entry code. So, perhaps something like: Voice Command: "Home Security" ON URL: whatever the URL is for your "goodbye" scene/program/etc. OFF URL: (null) Voice Command: "Home Security, Password One Two Three Four" ON URL: (null) OFF URL: whataver the URL is for your "welcome home" scene/program/etc. I think that would work. Make sense? Or if you're into Star Trek you could say "Home Security, Command Authorization Riker Omega Three" or whatever...

That's the Force Armable option I mentioned. Problem is I have other zones that are Force Armable (three season room door, window, etc.). I like knowing if those zones are violated when I arm at the keypad. If I set all my motions Force Armable as well it won't be as obvious.

I found that as well. I decided to use a "Goodbye" program to turn off lights, set the alarm, etc. anyway so I just say "Alexa, Turn on Goodbye". Only problem I have is that the ELK will not arm during motion. I think that's more of an issue (at least for me) when using something like the Echo when you're trying to arm the system while walking out the door, especially with kids. The other issue is that if you are triggering a program that's doing multiple things, especially if there's a few WAITS in there, if you run that program again (by voicing the command again to Alexa) before the first attempt finishes the program does not seem to run although Alexa tells you OK. Hope this makes sense. I posted a message in the ELK forum about arming during motion but thought I'd post here as well. For right now I just have the ELK arm 30 seconds after I voice the command via a WAIT in my program but wondering if there's a better solution.

Check for another application using a port per the previous posted steps. I'm running on Windows Server 2012 R2 64-Bit without issue. I had another application using port 8080 (JRiver Media Center).

Going to jump in and try this out. Thanks for the walkthrough madmartian! Would like to give g10f4's configuration utility a try. Sent him a PM.

I'm very tempted to give it a try. Any issues with 2 Echoes in the home and the Hue emulator?

Ditto!

That's normal, how INSTEON works.

Done. First tweet ever.