cmacnichol Posted June 5, 2015 Posted June 5, 2015 Hello all, Wanted to chime in here. Had my ISY for about 6 months now and am loving it. One step closer to chucking the Hub off my network and out the window. I have had the Echo for since February, got lucky signing up relatively early, and have really enjoyed using it. Especially the effortless Voice Recognition. Once of the biggest pain points on my control has always been voice. Years ago, I had HAL 2000 but I stopped upgrading it due to issue and now it would cost way to much to get the newest version. Tried Powerhome and MRHouse, but always had reliability issues. I finally ended up about 8 months ago getting CastleOS which uses the Kinect. Had a spare lying around so I could try it out. Until I got the Echo I was impressed with how well it worked to control devices. Just a few serious drawbacks, a Requirement to work with the Insteon Hub and no integration with the ISY. The ISY and the Hub do not play well together by the way... I had hoped for the Echo to take over with their connected home, but that fell short. I had no desire to replace everything with Wemo and Hue devices. Too limited. Then I stumbled across this topic a few weeks ago, again no hope as all we had were hacks to work around the echo and just make it harder to use. Now However, I saw the Java App Hue Emulator. Besides some serious issues getting it setup initially, the ISY is responding as soon as I finish speaking. A serious improvement and a very welcome one. Now if only it supported Dimming. It looks like the developer of the bridge is working on it, but that is for Hue devices. Makes me wish I knew Java.... Making a separate fork of that app for ISY specifically work be wonderful. Just thinking about being able to pull a Node map from the ISY and parsing it out, then auto creating the needed emulations for the Echo. I know some other languages, but nowhere near enough to do that and interact with the echo. Anyway, overall, I am glad I had friends order me another two Echo's at the special price. Was going to sell them, but I think I will keep them at this rate of improvement. To touch on the connection issues others have had, and me as well. I had to try this on 4 separate machines as 3 of them would not even recognize the UPNP Discovery messages from the Echo. Still troubleshooting that. However the one I got it working on, will not let me connect to the config page, just give me an error page for the Spring Boot app, which is used within the Java Hue Emulator.. I ended up using an application called "*I'm Only Resting" to directly post the devices to the Emulator Device tree. Seems to work, even if it is awkward. Anyway, after that long winded post, I hope others are having similar success as it is very much worth the effort to do. Hopefully someone who knows more about programming than me can take this up in the future and make it more tightly integrated with the ISY. Then I can finally chuck the Hub... Quote
Eric2XU Posted June 5, 2015 Posted June 5, 2015 Anyone else using the Hue Emulator and noticing the Echo will stop working with it over time (like a day or two). When this happens I run TCPDump -i eth0 | grep 192.168.1.55 (it runs on a Hyper-V Linux VM and the echo is 192.168.1.55) and sure enough I never see anything from Echo. Its only after I power cycle it do I see traffic from it again. Not sure if there is a bug in Echo or if it ends up not liking the bridge emulator due to not interacting correctly. Just wondering if anyone else is noticing that or is it just me? Quote
cmacnichol Posted June 5, 2015 Posted June 5, 2015 (edited) Anyone else using the Hue Emulator and noticing the Echo will stop working with it over time (like a day or two). When this happens I run TCPDump -i eth0 | grep 192.168.1.55 (it runs on a Hyper-V Linux VM and the echo is 192.168.1.55) and sure enough I never see anything from Echo. Its only after I power cycle it do I see traffic from it again. Not sure if there is a bug in Echo or if it ends up not liking the bridge emulator due to not interacting correctly. Just wondering if anyone else is noticing that or is it just me? Mine had been running for about 24 hours now with no issue. I will have to keep an eye on it. Should be Pretty obvious if it stops as the console has some heavy UPNP traffic back and forth constantly. Worse case, I just have the app restart nightly. Not a big deal for what it brings. Edited June 5, 2015 by cmacnichol Quote
themlruts Posted June 5, 2015 Posted June 5, 2015 Jay I finally got the emulator running. Just need to work on my web server. Thanks Mike Quote
btreinders Posted June 7, 2015 Posted June 7, 2015 Please help with getting the emulator up and running. I have the .jar file running in windows but the Echo does not find it as a home automation device. Am I doing this correctly? Thanks! Also, assuming the Echo should see it, how do I set it up to control the ISY? I do many things with the ISY through the REST interface but I do not understand how to get the emulator to post HTTP commands. Quote
cmacnichol Posted June 7, 2015 Posted June 7, 2015 Please help with getting the emulator up and running. I have the .jar file running in windows but the Echo does not find it as a home automation device. Am I doing this correctly? Thanks! Also, assuming the Echo should see it, how do I set it up to control the ISY? I do many things with the ISY through the REST interface but I do not understand how to get the emulator to post HTTP commands. Do you see any UPNP Discovery messages on the console? I went through 4 differed OS Installs, VM and Physical, before I got one to receive the UPNP Messages. Quote
btreinders Posted June 7, 2015 Posted June 7, 2015 Do you see any UPNP Discovery messages on the console? I went through 4 differed OS Installs, VM and Physical, before I got one to receive the UPNP Messages. Thanks! I figured it out. I had to add a device. Once I did that, Echo discovers them and everything works! Thanks! The reason I bought the Echo in the first place! Quote
cmacnichol Posted June 7, 2015 Posted June 7, 2015 Thanks! I figured it out. I had to add a device. Once I did that, Echo discovers them and everything works! Thanks! The reason I bought the Echo in the first place! Glad you got it working. Been enjoying it myself, just wish the interface was easier to use with the Emulator. But beggars cannot be choosers and all that. Just glad it is finally living up to what I initially saw the Echo doing. So much more user friendly than pretty must all of the other solutions. Looking forward to seeing where it is going to go from here. Quote
btreinders Posted June 7, 2015 Posted June 7, 2015 Has anyone had trouble adding a device that has the same ISY on or off command in the HUE emulator? Once I add my irrigation sprinklers since each one has the same off command Echo stops seeing all my devices. Also happens if I try to make two voice commands do the same thing. For instance, "Alexa, turn off the outside music" or "Alexa, turn off the music outside" are both tied to the same program in the ISY so it fails when both devices are added. They all say offline until I delete the offending device. I can work around it by creating another program just not very convenient. Another quirk I have found is using Echo to open and close the garage door. I create a device called garage door and use one program for opening it on the on line and one program for closing it on the off line. If I ask Alexa to open the garage door she has no issue with it. If I say close the garage door she just adds close the garage door to my to do list. I have to say turn the garage door off to close it. Strange because she will open and close lights with no issues vice on and off. Quote
G W Posted June 9, 2015 Posted June 9, 2015 My order now says June 16. I can only guess that demand is high and supply is low. Three months to deliver a product is a problem.Mine has shipped and will be delivered on June 10th. Quote
Michel Kohanim Posted June 9, 2015 Posted June 9, 2015 Hello everyone, We still haven't heard back from Amazon. This is buzz kill! With kind regards, Michel Quote
Xathros Posted June 9, 2015 Posted June 9, 2015 Mine has shipped and will be delivered on June 10th. Mine delivered today. Won't get to play till tomorrow however. -Xathros Quote
Scottmichaelj Posted June 10, 2015 Posted June 10, 2015 Who needs Apple HomeKit for Siri or Mobilinc voice control if this works? This will fill the voice control the gap I really am interested in. Sometimes I have my hands full and need a light turned on so this would be great. Quote
Xathros Posted June 10, 2015 Posted June 10, 2015 Who needs Apple HomeKit for Siri or Mobilinc voice control if this works? This will fill the voice control the gap I really am interested in. Sometimes I have my hands full and need a light turned on so this would be great. Well, this is great is you are near the Echo. Not so great when out of range of the mic. Siri lives on my wrist now and is available wherever I am so I still want Siri to be able to talk to my ISY. -Xathros Quote
btreinders Posted June 10, 2015 Posted June 10, 2015 Who needs Apple HomeKit for Siri or Mobilinc voice control if this works? This will fill the voice control the gap I really am interested in. Sometimes I have my hands full and need a light turned on so this would be great. It is great for lights. Very fast, was surprised how fast even after reading all the comments. Still need full ISY integration so we can say things like "arm the house", "water the garden", "play music outside", "close the garage door", etc. (Open Garage door does work which is strange) Would be nice to be able to change the response back from just "OK" as well. Also, don't forget Tasker on Android. Integrated with Google voice via Autovoice it can do anything you need it to via voice commands to the ISY. Tasker is something everyone with an ISY should have. Siri will get there I guess, but Android has had this for a few years now. Quote
G W Posted June 10, 2015 Posted June 10, 2015 Well, this is great is you are near the Echo. Not so great when out of range of the mic. Siri lives on my wrist now and is available wherever I am so I still want Siri to be able to talk to my ISY. -Xathros I received my Echo this morning. It's super simple to set up. As for voice control, it is great. The main floor of my house is 2200 sq ft and I get great coverage. Now I need to get the ISY connected, then the Pebble Time. Neither should be to difficult. I'm extremely happy with the Echo. Gary Quote
Xathros Posted June 11, 2015 Posted June 11, 2015 Got the hub/memo emulator up and running on an old Pi rev 1 and have it operating one x10 device on my test ISY now. Pretty cool! Setup is a pain and I don't see this as a viable solution for end users but I suspect it won't be long till we have a much more user friendly solution for bridging the Echo to the ISY. -Xathros Quote
ngeren Posted June 12, 2015 Posted June 12, 2015 Got my echo developer access. I'll have/know more on this soon! Quote
dfetzer Posted June 12, 2015 Posted June 12, 2015 Ok - pretty big noob here and just got my echo. Can someone correct the following that have been able to get the hue emulator working? 1) running the emulator via this command: java -jar amazon-echo-bridge-0.1.1.jar --upnp.config.address=192.X.X.X (is this supposed to be the address of my ISY?) It appears to be running yet i am seeing nothing in the console logs and cannot ping the devices api URL here: http://192.X.X.X:8080/api/devices- assume again this is my ISY address? or am i completely offbase and this is for VERA? as I saw in another forum. That then means that I cant use the restful services to set the following: POST http://192.X.X.X:8080/api/devices { "name" : "bedroom light", "deviceType" : "switch", "onUrl" : "http://192.X.X.X/rest/nodes/insteonaddress/cmd/DON", "offUrl" : "http://192.X.X.X/rest/nodes/insteonaddress/cmd/DOF" } Help?? Thanks Quote
cmacnichol Posted June 12, 2015 Posted June 12, 2015 (edited) Ok - pretty big noob here and just got my echo. Can someone correct the following that have been able to get the hue emulator working? 1) running the emulator via this command: java -jar amazon-echo-bridge-0.1.1.jar --upnp.config.address=192.X.X.X (is this supposed to be the address of my ISY?) It appears to be running yet i am seeing nothing in the console logs and cannot ping the devices api URL here: http://192.X.X.X:8080/api/devices- assume again this is my ISY address? or am i completely offbase and this is for VERA? as I saw in another forum. That then means that I cant use the restful services to set the following: POST http://192.X.X.X:8080/api/devices { "name" : "bedroom light", "deviceType" : "switch", "onUrl" : "http://192.X.X.X/rest/nodes/insteonaddress/cmd/DON", "offUrl" : "http://192.X.X.X/rest/nodes/insteonaddress/cmd/DOF" } Help?? Thanks The IP it is asking for is the UPNP Listening address. In Other words, the static address of the machine that you are running the Emulator on. Edited June 12, 2015 by cmacnichol Quote
dfetzer Posted June 12, 2015 Posted June 12, 2015 The IP it is asking for is the UPNP Listening address. In Other words, the static address of the machine that you are running the Emulator on. Thanks man - Im an idiot....assume if you are running tomcat through that emulator that is what it should have been...its been too long in management and not in code Quote
dfetzer Posted June 12, 2015 Posted June 12, 2015 OK - so i can see my requests coming through the emulator - set up three devices by their local URLS and the fast on off DFON and DFOF as it appears normal off commands dont work as well via post and i can see them in the echo app. I can see in the logs it asks for a state change but then the echo states that it could not reach the connected device... Any ideas? Also - if we have to alter URLs for these - how can we do that without forgetting all and readding one by one? Quote
cmacnichol Posted June 12, 2015 Posted June 12, 2015 Post the Full URL's you are using to control the devices. As for your second question, supposedly by the configuration page, which I have yet to get to work.. Quote
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