Amazon Echo and ISY

[bgrubb1]

Same here   hopefully a short term issue   I have seem cloud issues all day. suspect its based on them addind a bunch of skills today

[502ss]

Same here! The WAF factor just took a big hit!!

[ahwman]

Wish we could approach Amazon for some confirmation on this. My uncle owns a physical Hue Bridge and mentioned that he was also having these issues. I'm assuming that this has nothing to do with the fact that we're using a software emulator...

[jratliff]

I just got a physical hue bridge Sunday and it worked fine. Right now none of my hue lights or emulator commands are working.

[bgrubb1]

Think they have a bigger issue than the bridge

there is a Skill called "ask for a ****" that isnt working reliably    If that dont what will

[ahwman]

When you ask a lighting command do you get back "That command doesn't work on that device"? Or something else?

[ahwman]

Think they have a bigger issue than the bridge

there is a Skill called "ask for a ****" that isnt working reliably    If that dont what will

That's one of my favorite skills .

[jratliff]

"That command doesn't work on that device." For all 3 of my hue lights and everything else.

 

Edit 8:26pm: now most stuff is working again.

[ahwman]

Yep, same thing I get. This is the response I got back from Amazon, should make you smile...

 

 

Thanks for writing to us with your concern. I'm Jairam from Amazon.com Echo support team.

 

Firstly I'm glad that my colleague "Rachel" was able to provide you the required resolution for resolving your problem.

 

I understand from your concern that you have written to us regarding the same issue that is been happening with one of your family members. This is not what we want our valued customers to experience.

 

In this case, I'd like to inform you that this is not been happening with every user it looks like we need undergo advanced troubleshooting for the device and make sure the issue can be resolved right away.

 

I'd like to inform you that there is been no defect from our end, Please be assured of this.

 

I'd request you to please contact from the account where you are having trouble with or I'd request you to ask your family members to contact us so that we can gather required information and resolve it as soon as possible as per your satisfaction.

 

Please note that advance troubleshooting steps can be tried only via live assistance as it includes some sensitive steps that need to be followed which is not possible via e-mail. I hope you understand us in this regard.

 

You can reach Amazon Echo Customer Support by phone directly and toll-free at 1-877-375-9365 or by e-mail at echo-support@amazon.com.

 

Else you can place a call back request and we'll call you back within 5 minutes :

 

To contact us via phone:

http://www.amazon.com/clicktocall

 

I hope this troubleshooting helps! We look forward to see you soon until then have a great time ahead!

 

Best regards,

Jairam

[barrygordon]

I started with a smile, but then got really annoyed. It sounds like some person in a call center reading from a script.  i especially like the sentence:

 

. . ." I'd like to inform you that there is been no defect from our end, Please be assured of this." . . .

 

That is not even a syntactically correct English sentence, i.e. bad grammar. I did not know that Amazon development wrote absolutely bug free code that has been fully tested and certified and works under all load conditions and all Network idiosyncrasies.

 

My suspicion is an intermittent problem under certain high load situations. Any time I tried my system today it has worked correctly. Amazon has stated in many of its documents that they welcome D-I-Yers to experiment with the Echo and have provided special situations for them to do so. The Hue Emulator is an instance of a D-I-Y development shared to a significant community. Do not hesitate to contact Amazon and discuss this with them in detail. It can not be the emulator doing this as the emulator does not provide any verbal responses via the Echo, Only Amazon does that or a full skill is able to do that. The Echo/Emulator is driven by a skill adapter, as are the Insteaon. SmartThings, and Wink, and not a full skill such as IZZY. The Echo uses the standard skill adapter for the Philips HUE bridge.

 

That spoken error message is coming from the Amazon Cloud.  I would like to know from Amazon the exact situation that causes that message to be returned, since when the Echo is spoken to several times with the same speech fragment some times it will work and sometimes return the "That command doesn't work with that device" response. The Amazon cloud is fully capable of diagnosing a misunderstood speech fragment in a sensible way, and does so many times. Stating a "meaningless" response with no information as to what was bad with the speech fragment (e.g. what Command, what Device) is just bad design. I have never seen a card in my Alexa App account for this instance of a response.  

 

I have never received a call back from development and I have asked for it. The people I speak to in customer support really do try to help but clearly indicate that they need to get the "Development team" involved.

Edited January 7, 2016 by barrygordon

[Teken]

Amazon Support: We shall do the needful . . .

 

 

LMAO . . .

[Tungsten]

I got the 'that command does not work with that device' response 4 times in a row. 3x for 'Alexa set thermostat to 75 degrees' & 1x for 'Alexa turn on master vanity light'. Tried thermostat command again a minute later & it worked. This is frustrating, as much as I love the echo & the bleeding edge of HA I get really concerned w/ cloud services & reliability issues, especially the idea that we have no control over it & what happens when Amazon breaks something or decides to go a different direction or no longer support? At least w/ non-cloud based hardware you can usually expect it to work as required for the life of the device. Sorry for the semi-rant, it's just that this behavior & ridiculous response from Amazon support is not leaving me w/ a warm & fuzzy feeling...

Edited January 7, 2016 by Tungsten

[btreinders]

I could not get Alexa to do anything last night with regards to the emulator.  Tried over ten times, always got the does not work response.

[barrygordon]

I assume the response you got was  "That command doesn't work on that device."

 

I just tried my system and it is working perfectly., and it has not failed in that manner (nor any other) for the past week or so

 

I suggest that ayone with this problem immediately report it to Amazon Help by phone call and request to have Amazon Alexa development call you back to discuss this problem.

 

Remember the old adage "The squeaky wheel gets the oil"  Lets start being squeaky.

[502ss]

I just called amazon and spent an hour with them and I am no further along. Obviously they are changing stuff in the background! This is the problem with cloud based services is there is no patch to download and install so the end user never knows what's coming!

 

so here is what I have seen that has changed over the last few days Things in " " is the friendly name as defined in the emulator

 

What used to work was Alexa run "bar" lights. Now only Alexa turn on "bar" or Alexa turn off "bar"

 

The reason I used run was because I have programs that are checking the current state of the light and performing the opposite. Kinda silly to have to say turn off if the light is on, of course you want to turn it off. appending lights to the end of the phrase even though its not part of the friendly name also worked but not anymore.

 

I also have a lot of problems getting it to discover devices after a change. I can try 4 or 5 times and nothing, then wait 5 minutes and try again and it works!

 

Very frustrating!!!!

[barrygordon]

"Run" was never a supported command for the original Alexa native skill.  I suspect they are playing with changing the native skill as they begin to expand the original native skill to handle more "hubs" beyond a hub for just lights. You are right; there is no trail of what gets changed in the cloud.  In my opinion Amazon is taking after Apple with an arrogance beyond belief. Amazon is a great on-line retail service provider, they are not so great in the software development/deployment arena.

 

If I could figure out how to do it without the cloud, I would go there.  I know others are working on a "sunny sky" (cloudless) solution but I do not believe the technology is there yet to support it. 

 

IMHO, the Echo is the best game in town but not yet ready for those expecting an appliance solution.

 

In the native skill the most reliable commands (and the only ones documented AFAIK) are Turn On, Turn Off, and Dim.  I generally have good recognition of Shut as in "Shut the office lights", but I almost always say Turn Off.

 

I assume the hour you spent was with "Customer Service" and not developers.  I suspect that Amazon knows exactly what is wrong, but just doesn't know how to fix it.  Probably hard to reproduce from a test bed adjacent to the cloud.

Edited January 8, 2016 by barrygordon

[jruben4]

Is anyone using "Netflix" as a Name in the hue bridge?  Echo is fine with "Turn on Netflix" but won't take "Turn off Netflix" - at least for me.

[barrygordon]

Not using Netflix, but you might want to try changing the friendly name to "Netflix System".  Also try "Shut" or "Shut the" as the voice command

[ahwman]

I just called amazon and spent an hour with them and I am no further along. Obviously they are changing stuff in the background! This is the problem with cloud based services is there is no patch to download and install so the end user never knows what's coming!

 

so here is what I have seen that has changed over the last few days Things in " " is the friendly name as defined in the emulator

 

What used to work was Alexa run "bar" lights. Now only Alexa turn on "bar" or Alexa turn off "bar"

 

The reason I used run was because I have programs that are checking the current state of the light and performing the opposite. Kinda silly to have to say turn off if the light is on, of course you want to turn it off. appending lights to the end of the phrase even though its not part of the friendly name also worked but not anymore.

 

I also have a lot of problems getting it to discover devices after a change. I can try 4 or 5 times and nothing, then wait 5 minutes and try again and it works!

 

Very frustrating!!!!

Did they at least acknowledge that there are currently issues with connected home devices not working correctly? Also, were you able to get any clarification as to why we're getting "That command doesn't work on that device"?

[502ss]

Did they at least acknowledge that there are currently issues with connected home devices not working correctly? Also, were you able to get any clarification as to why we're getting "That command doesn't work on that device"?

Level one support was frustrating, had me unplug all the lights and my hue bridge, wait 2 minutes and plug them all back in. Since I don't really have any bulbs or hue bridge I just sat there waiting patiently! Had to scramble when he asked which hue bulbs I had. I told him a hue lux and at the same time was googling to get a model number in case they asked! He proceeded to tell me that Phillips just pushed an update to their bridge and that he didn't think the lux bulbs were supported anymore.

 

I proceeded to explain to him that sometimes they work and other times they don't so they are still supported! At this point I was starting to raise my voice at which point he patched me through to level 2

 

By the time I finally got to level 2 support (who was going to contact development) the lights were working better (I think they did something on their end and didn't tell me)

 

Every since the phone call they have been working flawlessly (except for the discovery, that sometimes takes 3-4 times to work)

 

I asked them several times if there were issues on the cloud side but they never gave me a straight answer. I also voiced my disapproval of how they can just make changes to the cloud based services and break stuff and then leave it up to the consumer to have to log a complaint!

[ahwman]

Level one support was frustrating, had me unplug all the lights and my hue bridge, wait 2 minutes and plug them all back in. Since I don't really have any bulbs or hue bridge I just sat there waiting patiently! Had to scramble when he asked which hue bulbs I had. I told him a hue lux and at the same time was googling to get a model number in case they asked! He proceeded to tell me that Phillips just pushed an update to their bridge and that he didn't think the lux bulbs were supported anymore.

I proceeded to explain to him that sometimes they work and other times they don't so they are still supported! At this point I was starting to raise my voice at which point he patched me through to level 2

By the time I finally got to level 2 support (who was going to contact development) the lights were working better (I think they did something on their end and didn't tell me)

Every since the phone call they have been working flawlessly (except for the discovery, that sometimes takes 3-4 times to work)

I asked them several times if there were issues on the cloud side but they never gave me a straight answer. I also voiced my disapproval of how they can just make changes to the cloud based services and break stuff and then leave it up to the consumer to have to log a complaint!

Thanks for the update, that is frusterating... Funny, I was nervous about calling support like yourself since I don't actually have a Hue Bridge. Looks like you did a good job thinking quick on your feet...

[jruben4]

Is there a REST command to have the HA-bridge trigger a harmony activity?

 

Something like PUT LOCALHOST:8080/api/devices/harmony/activities/TV??

[Jimbo.Automates]

The Harmony does not have a rest server, but there are a few out there you can run that interface to the harmony. Search this forum and you’ll see it mentioned in a few threads.

 

Sent from my Nexus 6P using Tapatalk

[jruben4]

I wasn't talking about the Harmony - I was asking if the HA-bridge can do it.  It does have a REST API, but I didn't see any commands in the documentation to trigger harmony actions (only GET list of devices, etc).

[Dracarys]

I wasn't talking about the Harmony - I was asking if the HA-bridge can do it.  It does have a REST API, but I didn't see any commands in the documentation to trigger harmony actions (only GET list of devices, etc).

 

If I understand your question correctly, I believe the answer is yes. 

 

Go to the "Start an Activity" section

PUT http://host:8081/harmony/start

{
"activityid" : "Watch TV"
}