pastro50

The cable box that I use is a Cisco 8742hd. Afaik, there is no way to talk to it except with their web site or and IR remote. No idea what commands would be required to get it to emulate connecting to their website. - Seems too daunting to tackle for me. Really, about all I do is turn on the TV and pause/play the DVR. Lots of other things are programmed but it's pretty easy to pick up a remote for most. I did set a FF switch to go for about 3 minutes of program time which is convenient, at least for a lot of the shows I watch. Using the Harmony hub would offer me very little benefit since it would all be IR at the end of the day and I think my PI application kinda emulates that.

Easier to setup for sure - Reliability wise, I'm quite happy - I had to build an IR receiver to get the correct codes for my remote, but that was easy and Lirc on the PI works fine.

Yes- no network connectivity. My first cut at this was to use a raspberry PI running lirc to send out the IR commands. I use habridge (Hue emulator) with Amazon Alexa to trigger local scripts on the PI to run the correct TX command. Works very reliably. Have my cable box (no ethernet), TV and stereo controlled this way. #1 There are two cons that I think could be fixed using the networking method. Alexa doesn't allow numbers over 100 for my channel selection - I have to break this up into channel groups and then the % is a delta from the base. Using variables I should be able to use a number directly. #2 To do a volume say +5 or -3 or whatever I had to use a base value of 10 and then the volume is the offset. For example 15% goes up 5, 7% goes down 3. (I capped it at 20 % in case it misunderstood - it happened it was loud- forty and four aren't that different..) I think I read there is a delta volume hopefully I'll be able to use that.

The devices I have don't have network connectivity. The Pi bridges the gap. The AV device on the portal would seem to do what I want but I don't see how you can include a value in the payload.

I'd like to be able to setup a network resource that I can control with Alexa that allows a programmable value to be sent out to an IP address which I have a raspberry pi connected to. For example I 'd like to be able to set the channel to a value and then send out a network post that would include the channel number fo the raspberry PI to interpret and change the channel (I have an IR tx on the PI) ideally something like alexa set channel to 175 and have the 175 go along with a network resource that communicates with the PI. So what I'm hoping so one can say is how to set up a network resource to do this and how it would be called from the A/V section of the portal. I thought I might have to set a variable and then use that to send out to a network resource but I don't see how that can be done from the ISY. I am on v 4.5.4 if that matters.

Thanks Michel, Thats exactly the situation - The bridge emulates the Phillips Hue and works locally. I guess you are saying that the control for the ISY occurs in the cloud servers and not from the local echo - similar to how a skill operates.

I use the Amazon Echo with the ISY 994 - all works well but I don't really get why the portal is needed. Can't the Echo talk to the ISY directly when controlling it locally? Also, since my purchase of the portal included the network module, is that a perpetual license for the network module? I don't really need the Portal but I could control the ISY via the network module and a raspberry pi which I've already tested out with the Einstein's garage door script coupled to HA bridge.

Having some trouble with the 2nd Place. The first place is a normal chamberlain door with a door type of 2, The second place is a a Myq garage (adds myq to a non-chamberlain) and the door type is a 7 - which is not supported. WIth no modifications of the code, I get the door status for the normal door and nothing for the 2nd place. I then added a SUPPORT_DEVICE of 7 to the ones you had (2 and 5) and now I get the status of the door on the 2nd place, but I also get a line: is Closed. Last changed at Sat 16 Jan 2016 02:49:26 With no name. And from the log I see that the type 7 is getting door status for two doors - There are two devId that are one number off from each other. I'm pretty sure that the myq garage supports two devices although I only have one connected - Maybe the door that isn't installed is still returning some info? Editing - Worked on removing the blank door name. I saw that the name was "" on the 2nd device on the 2nd place so I put a check in the python if the if len(name) > 0: DOOR(id, name,state,time) And that seemed to fix the door with the no name being reported The number of devices was being returned as 2 but the 2nd device was not being used or setup. Probably is a better way to do this - but this worked.