Amazon Echo and ISY

[barrygordon]

If you are using my AWS_Config program to set up the bridge, then Harmony activities and devices can be setup.  You need to turn on the Harmony capability by setting specific entries in the AWS_Config ini file.

 

The ini entries look like

 

[Harmony Hub]

Emulators          = 192.168.1.81:8081  

Antonyms           = Up/Down, Left/Right, On/Off, Forward/Backward, ToStart/ToEnd, BackToTick/ForwardToTick, FastForward/Rewind, Play/Pause, 16:9/4:3

 

The antonyms are so that if you pick the first of a pair, e.g.Up,  for the on command, the second, e.g. Down,  will be automatically selected as the command for the off sequence.

 

With regard to your earlier post (I know very little about the Harmony system); If the Harmony system in an activity lets you set up a macro, and one of the things in the macro can be a TCP/IP command then you can directly send a REST command to the ISY to do any lighting action you require.

Edited January 9, 2016 by barrygordon

[ahwman]

If you are using my AWS_Config program to set up the bridge, then Harmony activities and devices can be setup.  You need to turn on the Harmony capability by setting specific entries in the AWS_Config ini file.

 

The ini entries look like

 

[Harmony Hub]

Emulators          = 192.168.1.81:8081  

Antonyms           = Up/Down, Left/Right, On/Off, Forward/Backward, ToStart/ToEnd, BackToTick/ForwardToTick, FastForward/Rewind, Play/Pause, 16:9/4:3

 

The antonyms are so that if you pick the first of a pair, e.g.Up,  for the on command, the second, e.g. Down,  will be automatically selected as the command for the off sequence.

 

With regard to your earlier post (I know very little about the Harmony system); If the Harmony system in an activity lets you set up a macro, and one of the things in the macro can be a TCP/IP command then you can directly send a REST command to the ISY to do any lighting action you require.

Is it possible to use antonyms with standard connected home devices? I don't use a Harmony Hub but rather a different WIFI to IR blaster and have set up many custom commands disguised as scenes on my ISY all of which work great. The only caveat is that I can't use reserved words such as play, pause, volume, etc. since the Echo uses these words for direct control. So instead of saying "Alexa, turn on volume up", I'm having to say "Alexa, turn on speaker up"...

 

Chuck

[barrygordon]

I do not believe that is possible without a full skill.  The skill adapter developed by Amazon is quite limited on what it can understand which is why it works as well as it does when the cloud is not stormy.

[Scottmichaelj]

FWIW as of the time of this post I am getting the "That command doesn't work on that device" from both my Amazon Echos using the Hue Emulator. In case other people are having the same issue today its not just you. Mine seemed to start having issues last night.

[Jimbo.Automates]

FWIW as of the time of this post I am getting the "That command doesn't work on that device" from both my Amazon Echos using the Hue Emulator. In case other people are having the same issue today its not just you. Mine seemed to start having issues last night.

This is being reported all over...

 

http://betanews.com/2016/01/10/using-amazon-echo-to-control-your-home-theres-a-minor-change-you-need-to-know-about/

 

http://www.echotalk.org/index.php?topic=308.0

 

 

 

Sent from my Nexus 6P using Tapatalk

[barrygordon]

At the current time (last 3-4 days) I am not hearing any of the "That command doesn't work on that device" from either of my Echo's.  After reading the links to the other forums where issues are being reported, I do not have any groups defined in the Alexa app. I do have "lighting groups" but I set them up as scenes in the ISY.  For example in my home there are six lights that make up the kitchen area lights: Kitchen Lights, Peninsula lights, Laundry lights, Pantry Lights, Counter Lights, and Room Divider Lights. There is an ISY scene that has all of the switches for these lights as respondents. Alexa runs the scene when I say Turn on (or Turn off)  the Kitchen Area. With the capabilities of the ISY I have found no reason to use Alexa Groups. Also if you define an Alexa group, that group is deleted when you "Forget all devices", which I was doing quite a bit when developing/testing the configuration application for the HUE Emulator.

 

My intuition/experience indicates to me that it is an Amazon cloud problem exasperated by cloud/Internet loading.  The least Amazon could do was state which command and which device  are involved in the spoken message. If I understand how Amazon operates there might be multiple data centers that make up the cloud, perhaps chosen by geographic area where the Alexa is installed. If this is so it will greatly affect who gets the error message and when. 

[Scottmichaelj]

I seem to think this update was rolled out gradually so while some didnt see it when others did. Its quite possible my echo just recently got updated and now I an seeing this an a "new issue".

 

In my issue last night I was trying to call a scene. My scene is simply called "Relaxing" - so I said "Alexa turn on relaxing" which was heard correctly shown in the Amazon Echo app, but gave me the "That command doesn't work on that device".

 

I will make these adjustments to my speech patterns. I guess Alexia is teaching us how to talk now.

[Michel Kohanim]

Hello everyone,

 

You can now test the Connected Home feature with ISY:

http://forum.universal-devices.com/topic/17861-amazon-echo-connected-home-feature-beta/

 

With kind regards,

Michel

[kck]

For anyone who bought a RPi to bridge to their Echo I just posted a little console project I did with the RPi I have doing the bridging as a new topic in the How are you using the ISY area that you might have some interest in. 

[rebirth24]

Apologies for going back on this, but I didn't find the answer/solution.  WAs there ever a fix for the halved value being passed to ISY from "/cmd/CLISPC/${intensity.percent}"? Or was the only solution to use a variable? 

[barrygordon]

If I understand what you are asking search this thread for "math"  the emulator allows you to do simple math on the value like doubling or halving it.

[Michel Kohanim]

Hi rebirth24,

 

It was fixed a long while back.

 

With kind regards,

Michel

[isyrocks!]

Recently my phrase "Turn on show for XXXX" and Turn on kids show" stopped working.  My guess is Amazon came out with an update and I can no longer use "show" in a command.  Is there a good list of reserved words/phrases out there?

 

Thanks in advance.

[Michel Kohanim]

Hi isyrocks!

 

Unfortunately you are not alone. It seems that they have removed a few words and no one really knows what those are.

 

With kind regards,

Michel

[stusviews]

Add sheer to the list of removed words. I can still control the blackout/opaque window covering. Pellucid doesn't cut it

Edited April 8, 2016 by stusviews

[blueman2]

For those still using the HA-Bridge emulator from BSWSystems, I noticed my Harmony no longer is able to discover devices on the emulator.  The Harmony just sits at "Your Hue has been found.  Please press the center button on the Hue to link to Harmony" or something like that.  

 

Anyone have any ideas?  I am using V1 of the HA-Bridge because I cannot get the AWS tool that Barry created to work with V2.   

[barrygordon]

I assume that the reason you are still using the bridge is due to the Harmony capability. I have completely switched to the ISY connected home skill and am totally satisfied. Could you possibly use both? The bridge to deal with the harmony, and the ISY connected home skill to deal with the ISY? I don;'t see where amazon would care. The bridge looks like a Hue system, but the ISY connected home looks like itself. so I am not sure there would even be an issue.  Amazon should handle multiple smart things.

 

I have not been keeping up with what BWSystems has done with the bridge so I have no idea why the configuration system no longer works with it.

[blueman2]

Thanks for the reply, Barry.  Great to hear from you!  I have not been on this forum as much over the past few months due to 1) lots of travel and work, and 2) my Pi based system using BWSSystems software and your great configuration software have been working 100%.  Yes, I probably should migrate to the ISY supported method, but I just like the idea of having more control over my system.  Also, I will still need to run the Harmony emulator and a few other programs for various reasons so the Pi is still needed.

 

The issue still would be having my Harmony control ISY devices. As far as I know, Harmony will not control ISY directly in any case, so I will still need something to bridge my ISY to a Hue which the Harmony can then control.  At least, that is my understanding.  

 

BTW, I think your AWS program is failing because BWS changed their version to 2.0.  Your program stops at "looking for version" and goes no further.  I was trying to view the log but realized for some reason the log is not being created.   I need to look into why that is happening.  

 

Glad you have your system working well, and I truly appreciate the great work in did on AWS Config.  It has been serving me well! 

[barrygordon]

What is the version of my program that you are running.  I tried it with 5.0.66 but I no longer have any BWS emulators running on my RPi's. When it tries to get the BWS version it hangs for me since I have BWS emulators and I didn't bother to put in any timeout code.  It should not be dependent on the version number, it should get a response.  the version number checkwas for a change having to do with the complexity of the JSON returned from the emulator.

 

What are you trying to do to have the harmony control the ISY? I know how to control an ISY over TCP/IP but I have no idea what the Harmnoy puts out. Does a Harmony put out TCP using WiFi?  Is the a reference protocol document?

 

I just re-vamped my iPad systems to use an RPi based proxy to do all IR work and some other things.  The Proxy will take commands from the iPads or from the ISY networking resources and either control any number of Global Cache devices or other TCP based systems.  I use the Proxy to control my pool with voice.  I have put a lot of things into network resources so I can use voice control.  I just installed an electric fireplace that can be controlled by IR . I built the correct network resource to tell the proxy to turn it on or off under control of a simple program.  Works like a charm. 

[blueman2]

AWS_Alexa.zipBarry,

 

I am using 5.0.63, which is the latest I could find.  

 

Here is the log file.  I see that it actually does talk to the BWS emulator and get some Harmony data, but crashes with error '424', Object Required. 

 

Not worth worry about though.  I will just remain with the older 1.1.0 version of BWS.  The only big change that I would have liked is that now the BWS software supports multiple button presses in one command.  So I can have my TV tune to Channel 202 with on command rather than 3 commands. 

[barrygordon]

leaving town for a few days.  I will look at this when I get back next week. 

[barrygordon]

Couldn't sleep so . . . 

 

First off, the code is unable to retrieve the version of the Bridge. That indicates that something has changed in the bridge.  I will need to take a look at the BSW site. That is not fatal however.

 

The code then tries to get the list of harmony devices from the emulator. From what I can tell it looks like the format that is returned by the emulator to a getDevices request has changed. The emulator returns a JSON string as it did before. After parsing the JSON object my code expects to see a set of un-named javascript objects making up an array. The objects now (according to the log) seem to be named with the name "device".  I should be able to kludge up something based upon the log file you sent me and I will try and do that when I get back.  It will be interesting and I like puzzles. 

 

Still think you should try and get away from the emulator but I understand your issue.  The performance with the ISY connected home skill is very good, at least it is in my home.

Edited May 22, 2016 by barrygordon

[blueman2]

Thanks, Barry.  I missed your latest post somehow and just read it.  I agree I need to move over to the cloud based platform.  But there is something in me that just likes to also have my own emulator running.  I guess partly I am a control freak, and partly I just like to tinker.  Yes, if you are able to get your AWS_config working with the v2 BWS software, I would definitely appreciate it and would use it!  But don't waste too much of your time on it.

 

Thanks! 

[rossarmstrong]

I too would continue to use the emulator. I've just aquired the Echo Dot and plan to add it to the theater room to add voice control to my Harmony controller system.

 

I'm a Pi noob and had everything setup (minus Harmony control) and working great with the Echo for the past 9 months or so. But now it looks like I need to start fresh and upgrade my Pi to Jessie and then reinstall everything again from there in order to add control of my Harmony. 

 

I'll patiently wait and see what happens in this thread.

[jratliff]

I still use the emulator too. I don't have the harmony hub though and haven't updated it in a while. Still works well.