Amazon Echo - Connected Home Feature!

[dywicked]

I guess I'm the only one have trouble. Upon trying to discover devices Alexa says the dreaded "I couldn't find any connected home devices." I tried discovery about 8 times at this point. I also disconnected the echo and reconnected. The skill still works well. Should I disable the skill?

Did you link your Alexa account in your profile in the ISY Portal? Do you see your devices in the Amazon Echo section of the ISY Portal?

 

Best,

 

-David

[Michel Kohanim]

Hello everyone,

 

Thanks so very much for the feedback. Indeed quite exciting and it's working fabulously for me as well.

 

Some answers:

1. You do need the ISY Portal and you have to link it to your Amazon Account (ISY Portal | My Profile | Link Amazon Account)

2. The mappings are those that are defined in the Portal (not ISY). So, please make sure you have those mappings

3. Programs have not yet been thoroughly tested with Connected Home but we'll be working on them soon

4. The elapsed time in ISY portal is less than a second from getting the command and initiating a call to ISY. So, once we have quantifiable metrics, we can provide the feedback to Amazon

 

Hi nadler,

a. Please make sure you follow the instructions in the first post so that your Echo is linked to ISY. In short, in your Echo app, under Connected Home, you SHOULD see ISY listed

b. Please make sure you have the mappings (spoken to device) in the Portal (Select Tool | Amazon Echo)

c. Please make sure your Amazon Echo account is linked to ISY (see #1)

 

And, in my rush (out of excitement), I forgot to thank the brain behind all of this: Benoit, your hard work, diligence, and professionalism in getting all of this working is unparalleled. THANK YOU.

 

With kind regards,

Michel

[dywicked]

Overall this is working great - two observations so far:

 

I assume this is just cosmetic, but incase there's more to it: In the Alexa app on my iPhone if I look at the list of all my devices, most of them have the spoken name on top, and what I assume is meant to be a description underneath. Some devices have the device or scene name listed in the description field while most say "undefined".

 

From a functionality perspective - on devices I have exposed through the Hue Emulator I can say "Alexa set living room to fifty percent" and it does. For ISY devices I get a response of "That command doesn't work on device living room".

 

Nice work so far, congrats!

 

-David

[kohai]

The only remaining question: do I really need to buy several Echos to have all around the house? Or should I just hold off?

 

The Wall Street Journal has a rumor going that Amazon is going to release a smaller, battery based/portable unit.

[nadler]

Thank you Michel and David,

 

I had followed 1,2,3 and 4 in the instructions and the Isy appeared in the alexa app as linked.

 

However, even though Amazon said it was linked and the Alexa app said it was linked when I went to the ISY portal at https://my.isy.io/index.htm the echo was not linked.  I followed Michel's instructions in post #27 (and similar instructions in post #7) and all is well,  96 devices found.

 

Very Exciting!

[kohai]

Congrats!  I know a lot of people are hot about the echo.  My wife said she doesn't want a device in her house that is always listening.  I'll get her a tinfoil hat for her birthday.  

[bfish]

AWESOME!

 

Some feedback:

1.  Discovery was flawless first time (usually took a few times with HUE emulator)

2.  7 commands issued and received successfully

3.  I tried dimming:  Alexa, "dim foyer 50% - she asked "which device"  I repeated Foyer and it went on to 50%

4.  I tried dimming - "Alexa, dim foyer to 50%" - she again asked which device.  I repeated foyer and it worked again.

 

So far, so great!

 

A couple questions

1.  Is there any limit to number of devices/scenes that can be defined in ISY portal?

2.  What is the expected / proper syntax for dimming?

 

Side note:  I ordered a Chip computer  (http://www.getchip.com/) to try to run Hue emulator.  Guess I won't need that now!  Oh, darn another toy to play with!!! 

 

Great work guys! 

 

Editing with one more eccentricity I just discovered:  I have 3 lights in my kitchen, each in a separate scene.  I also have a scene called "all kitchen" for all 3 at once.  When I say Alexa, turn on all kitchen, she replies with "I found several devices with that name which do you want?"  I repeat "all kitchen" and it works.  This same behavior happened twice, even when I tried to articulate more clearly the second time.  small potatoes, but still feedback nonetheless.

Edited January 12, 2016 by bfish

[dbuss]

This is impressive!! I live in WI and presently on a business trip on Long Island. The setup was completed with my phone here on Long Island. I called my wife and had her try it out and it worked flawlessly. Congratulations on a job well done.

 

Sent from my XT1254 using Tapatalk

[bfish]

Oh, one more suggestion:

 

It would be nice to have some quick way to print the Amazon Echo definitions from the ISY portal... so old guys and gals can remember how we defined 20 or 30 ior 40 devices/scenes until we learn them cold!

[imagamejunky]

Im on v5.0.2 FW and cant get the portal to connect to my ISY so I cant test but have you tried running the emulator with programs and the connected home with scenes? How does that work then as a workaround?

I can't comment because I don't have a hue emulator running. I was holding off on running a PC 24/7 or buying a rasp pi in hopes that the connected home would work great. So far it is.

[ScottAvery]

You need to purchase the ISY portal if you haven't already and once you do click "My Profile" in the upper right corner of the Portal. From there you can log in to link your Amazon account to portal.

 

Michael K: you may want to add that to your steps above.

 

Regards,

 

-David

 

This missing step confused me, as well.  The steps in the first post told me I was complete but I had never been asked for my ISY portal account.  I didn't set that link up before since it was not required for the skill.

[GBC]

I'm new to modules. When I go to the ISY portals and click on the upper right side where it says "my profile", "Select Tools", "Amazon Echo":
I get an "Access Denied" message that says "pending approval by owner". What am I doing wrong? What have I missed?

[ScottAvery]

Follow the steps for installation of the portal module.  you have to approve the portal connection in the ISY console.

[JCrank]

Working great so far thanks for all the hard work!!

[btreinders]

Alexa with Connected home is having difficulty running isy programs for me. For example she can't run my simple "good bye" program. Are programs supposed to be fully supported?

 

After further testing I know she doesn't like the spoken names "nook" and "chandelier" either.

 

Junky

 

Both chandelier and nook are working for me.  I have two devices with those names in them.  Entry Chandelier and Breakfast Nook Light.  

 

This is exactly what I have been waiting for!  I can finally say "Alexa, close the garage door!"  

 

I will have to continue to run the emulator as well since connected home will not allow one program/device/scene to be called using multiple spoken names like the emulator can.  I could make multiple programs for one function I guess but this would not work with devices or scenes.  

 

Barry Gordon,

 

Can you make a GUI interface for all of this?    Just kidding but not really, really appreciate all your help with the emulator front end.  I am having issues with Chrome and listing over 10 devices in the portal under Amazon Echo tool.  It gets stuck at the top and I cannot scroll up.  

 

Michael,

 

Can this issue be looked into?  Will multiple spoken names for one device/program eventually be supported?

 

Thanks

[JCrank]

Anyone have a fanlinc working?  I have one linked in the portal and discovered on the echo but I can't seem to get it to respond.  Alexa says ok when I saw "Living room fan on" or "living room fan high" but the fan doesn't come on.

[MWareman]

Woot! Thank you Michel and Benoit. Awesome job!

 

Got my account all linked up, and ISY is showing up in my Alexa connected home settings. I just need to get home now to do a device discovery.

 

Only one thing, I love the ! In the description....

[nathanep]

I seem to be overlooking something.

I've signed into the echo/alexa page

I've clicked the link to link alexa to isy, which shows as successful, and ISY shows up on the connected home page

I've authorized the portal in the ISY

When I try to select the echo "tool" from the isy portal page I get an error:

"Your portal user profile is not linked to an Amazon account. This will prevent you from using the Alexa Connected Home. To link your account, please go to My profile.

Furthermore, the ISY skill is not linked to your portal user profile. Please go to your echo app, enable the ISY skill, and link the skill with this user profile."

 

Is it possible this is coming up because there is a different name (my business name) showing up in the ISY admin portal authentication vs what is showing on the echo?

Everything including my amazon account are under the same email address and all are on the same LAN.

[MWareman]

Just found out you can discover from the app. Who knew!

 

My devices discovered - even a program I have a spoken name attached to. I'll give them a try tonight.

 

For the poster that asked for an easy list, once the ISY is connected you get a list of all devices (with their spoken name attribute) right in the Alexa app after they are discovered. Nice!

[dywicked]

Michael,

 

Can this issue be looked into? Will multiple spoken names for one device/program eventually be supported?

 

Thanks

+1 Having the ability to define "spoken aliases" would be great. It would also be nice to be able to automatically create common aliases with a check box or something. For example, automatically create prefix aliases for "Lights in xxx" and suffix such as "xxx lights".

 

I'm sure there is a lot of work before you guys get to enhancements, but I might as well get it out there.

 

Regards,

 

-David

[bgrubb1]

This is working great for me, BUT  I am trying to enable a friend

Not working apparently since his amazon account is on a different email than his portal login

I tried to add the amazon email address as another user on the portal, but his password is 7 characters and portal requires 8

Anything else I can try ??

[stusviews]

Anyone have a fanlinc working?  I have one linked in the portal and discovered on the echo but I can't seem to get it to respond.  Alexa says ok when I saw "Living room fan on" or "living room fan high" but the fan doesn't come on.

 

I can get the fan to turn off, but, so far, no luck turning the fan on--at any speed.

[KMan]

Got it set up and working, and had a few bumps along the way ....
 
1)  UI issue in the portal
Using Chrome Version 47.0.2526.106 m, on Windows 10 ...

If I close and then re-open the "Amazon Echo" tool, the second time (and all subsequent times) the window is opened, it is positioned to start above my chrome window, so the top of the dialog box is cut off.  There are no scroll bars or any apparent way to move the window.  This is most apparent if I've changed the number of entries to 100 (41 are shown total), in which case several devices aren't visible due to being off the top of the window.

[502ss]

Awesome Awesome Awesome!!

 

Nice job guys! It was worth the wait.

 

I currently have 5 devices and 6 programs all working perfectly. If you tell a program to turn "on" it runs what is in the "Then" section and if you tell it to turn "off" it runs what it is the "else" section. Not one issue with Alexa understanding the spoken words!

 

I do have one question, Do you know if it will be possible to have programs execute by saying "Alexa run (program spoken name)"? and have it execute the "If" portion of the program? I know this has not been fully tested yet but was wondering if any thought had been given to the trigger words for programs?

 

Thanks

Jim

[MWareman]

Very impressed so far. Very fast. Alexa simply responds 'OK' - usually after the desired action has taken place.

 

I've created some device groups in Alexa - looks like that can be used to create aliases that Alexa will understand - since a group can contain one object.  

 

Michael.