Amazon Echo - Connected Home Feature!

[Deane Johnson]

I also have 3 sets of lights in the kitchen. "Kitchen Table" "Kitchen Counter" and "Kitchen Island". I also have a scene called "Kitchen". If i tell Alexa to turn on each one with its given name, she abides and only turns on that given light. If I say "Turn on kitchen" she turns on all three lights.

 

It seems as if many of us are have different results in the same situations, weird. I would think the problems would be more uniformed, but that is not at all the case.

 

This scenario works exactly the same with my "family room" setup, Three sets of lights, three separate device names. When "Alexa turn on family room" is stated she turns on all three.

 

When I ask my wife or children to turn on the lights they never seem to come on. Lol

 

 

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When you say just "kitchen" she's assuming there is no more and that you want just the kitchen scene.  Actually, pretty sophisticated performance.

 

You could separate them by eliminating the word kitchen from the individual commands and just call it island, counter and table. 

Edited January 22, 2016 by Deane Johnson

[DannyFresh]

When you say just "kitchen" she's assuming there is no more and that you want just the kitchen scene. Actually, pretty sophisticated performance.

 

You could separate them by eliminating the word kitchen from the individual commands and just call it island, counter and table.

 

 

Yes. It is pretty impressive. I have no problems with the way it is currently working. I would much rather state the word kitchen and have all of the lights come on than have to state them individually when I do want them all on. BTW off works the same way.

 

 

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[barrygordon]

I am not having the issue with the word "lights". I was careful when selecting the spoken words to always use "Lights" and never "Light". How the Echo does a match against the speech (what you say) vs its table of spoken names is interesting. If there is a spoken word ending in Lights and the beginning of that spoken word is never repeated in any other spoken word, then my experience is that Alexa will accept either light or lights as the speech ending, but nothing else.   If however that beginning speech part does appear in some other spoken name the Echo will reply with "I found several devices matching. . . " .   To clarify what I am saying; I have a spoken name that is "Cafe Picture", Which is a picture with an art light. The Echo operates that light just fine if I say "Cafe", Cafe Picture", "Cafe Light", "Cafe Lights", but does not find a device named "Cafe Dingbat". I have several spoken names that begin with "Office" as in "Office lights", "Office Fan" Office Fan Low", "Office Fan Medium", and Office Fan High. In this case the speech must exactly match the Spoken name I wish to operate.  To me that makes sense in a best match sense and ambiguity resolution. 

 

The only issue I have is how long it takes from the time I finish what I am saying until the device actually changes state. I am seeing times ranging from 3-5 seconds followed by another 2-3 seconds before I hear "Okay". IIRC my experience with the Hue Emulator was an almost instantaneous state change after I finished speaking with a 2-3 second additional delay till I heard "Okay". I have 91 entries in the Portal and the emulator had 93 entries spread across 4 instances of the emulator with the largest on any one instance of the emulator being 35.   What type of timing are others seeing?

[fstanek]

I set the up Echo yesterday and everything seemed to work great, last night I noticed some programs were not running, this morning I did some troubleshooting and I seem to have an issue with my PLM... I opened the admin console and it was in safe mode, recommended checking PLM connections and rebooting, I did that and no improvement.  Is this just unfortunate coincidence that there is now a problem with the PLM or is it possible something else is going on?

Interesting. I had the exact same issue. I was able to fix it by unplugging my PLM for ~30 seconds and then rebooting the ISY.

[stusviews]

Interesting. I had the exact same issue. I was able to fix it by unplugging my PLM for ~30 seconds and then rebooting the ISY.

 

Sounds like a new PLM is in your future.

[jerlands]

 

The only issue I have is how long it takes from the time I finish what I am saying until the device actually changes state. I am seeing times ranging from 3-5 seconds followed by another 2-3 seconds before I hear "Okay". IIRC my experience with the Hue Emulator was an almost instantaneous state change after I finished speaking with a 2-3 second additional delay till I heard "Okay". I have 91 entries in the Portal and the emulator had 93 entries spread across 4 instances of the emulator with the largest on any one instance of the emulator being 35.   What type of timing are others seeing?

 

I typically see 1-3 second wait after I finish command to activation... which seems pretty good to me

 

Edit:  however, I've narrowed down my enrollment to 31 devices (scenes, programs, devices.)

 

 

Jon...

Edited January 22, 2016 by jerlands

[joemac]

Interesting. I had the exact same issue. I was able to fix it by unplugging my PLM for ~30 seconds and then rebooting the ISY.

 One other person mentioned the same issue.  I bought a new PLM and it is working now. I did struggle a bit to get it working after replacing the PLM.  I followed the instructions on one of these forums to replace the PLM but still had issues.  I reverted to my last ISY backup and then it worked.

 

Joe

[barrygordon]

Jon ...

 

I expect the speed of response is related to the number of entries that Amazon has to search through.  That would make sense especially if they are doing a linear search. 

[KMan]

Jon ...

 

I expect the speed of response is related to the number of entries that Amazon has to search through.  That would make sense especially if they are doing a linear search. 

 

Wouldn't that time be insignificant compared to the speech recognition and the cloud transactions (echo -> amazon -> portal -> ISY)?

[stusviews]

Jon ...

 

I expect the speed of response is related to the number of entries that Amazon has to search through.  That would make sense especially if they are doing a linear search. 

 

I cna't see anything digital doing a linear search, but if it did would it be through the portal which lists devices alphabetically or via Echo which does not used alphabetical listings?

[barrygordon]

Probably the best approach would be for the connected home to associate a priority with an entry and search in priority order. I bet there are just a few entries in each home that get 80-90 percent of the action.  It is just that when I was using the Emulator it was definitely much faster from spoken phrase to the beginning o the device action.

[btreinders]

I am not having the issue with the word "lights". I was careful when selecting the spoken words to always use "Lights" and never "Light". How the Echo does a match against the speech (what you say) vs its table of spoken names is interesting. If there is a spoken word ending in Lights and the beginning of that spoken word is never repeated in any other spoken word, then my experience is that Alexa will accept either light or lights as the speech ending, but nothing else.   If however that beginning speech part does appear in some other spoken name the Echo will reply with "I found several devices matching. . . " .   To clarify what I am saying; I have a spoken name that is "Cafe Picture", Which is a picture with an art light. The Echo operates that light just fine if I say "Cafe", Cafe Picture", "Cafe Light", "Cafe Lights", but does not find a device named "Cafe Dingbat". I have several spoken names that begin with "Office" as in "Office lights", "Office Fan" Office Fan Low", "Office Fan Medium", and Office Fan High. In this case the speech must exactly match the Spoken name I wish to operate.  To me that makes sense in a best match sense and ambiguity resolution. 

 

The only issue I have is how long it takes from the time I finish what I am saying until the device actually changes state. I am seeing times ranging from 3-5 seconds followed by another 2-3 seconds before I hear "Okay". IIRC my experience with the Hue Emulator was an almost instantaneous state change after I finished speaking with a 2-3 second additional delay till I heard "Okay". I have 91 entries in the Portal and the emulator had 93 entries spread across 4 instances of the emulator with the largest on any one instance of the emulator being 35.   What type of timing are others seeing?

 

I am seeing the same, the emulator is definitely faster, but the connected home understands more commands.  I never got "close the garage door" to work with the emulator but with connected home it works great.  Also, TV would not work with the emulator, but with connected home it works every time.  I did not play with the skill much, but telling Izzy to do everything was annoying.  I still use the emulator for about 35 things that I haven't created duplicate programs for but eventually I might move away totally just to keep it simpler.  I guess with connected home, there is no reason for the skill in my mind.

[Hunter Aviator]

First off - Thank you UDI for never ceasing to amaze me with functionality!   I received my echo last week thinking I was going to have to go through the hacks to integrate it with ISY - I was proven wrong when I ran across the portal integration.  Signed up and am well on my way to controlling my theater purely with voice!

 

One thing that I did struggle with, however is getting my AV components integrated.  I was finally able to get them into a program (using a mix of IR and TCP commands through the Network module and my iTach), however there were a couple of spoken words that I am missing:   Satellite or Direct TV (Something other than just TV to turn on my satellite receiver), FireTV or StreamingPlayer, Playstation or Game Console.  Right now if I want to watch satellite, I use the Spoken Word "TV" (which I can live with) with Echo, however satellite would be more direct.  Also, the FireTV word i'm using is "Video", which although functional, isn't completely intuitive.

 

Also, in my room I have two different scenes for my lights.  One to turn every light in the room on and one to "dim" the lights by turning off a couple of unnecessary lights and then just dim the sconces.  Because I want to turn off a couple of lights as part of the dim, there is currently no means with the integration with echo to turn off or dim a scene - I have to have separate phrases (i.e Great Room Lights for all lights and Theater to dim the lights).  It would be great if there was a way to use a single phrase in echo to turn on all lights, turn all lights off or dim (i.e. Great Room Lights On would turn on all lights (Scene Great Room Lights), Great Room lights Off would turn off all lights (Scene Great Room Lights) and Dim Great Room Lights would run my separate Dimming scene - turning off a few lights and dimming the others.

 

If Amazon ever gets to the point of allowing multiple Echos in a home (and I don't see why they wouldn't go in that direction), it would great if the road map allowed us to fence each Echo to a room so that if i'm in my Theater, that Echo wouldn't require me to say "Theater", I could just say "Lights".  Likewise, if I'm in my bedroom, I could use the same word "Lights" and because it was spoken to the Echo in my bedroom, it would only control those lights.  If that were to become reality, it would still be useful to be able to state the room name, in the event I want to turn off the lights in my theater from my bedroom.

 

All of that said, I am very happy where I am at - these are mere suggestions for the backburner.  I truly appreciate all the hard work you have all put into this and ISY as a whole!  My friends and family all come to me with the problems they have with their pure cloud hubs (i.e. Wink) and I am always thankful that I don't have to deal with those issues at my house.

 

For anyone else's reference, what I had to do in order to get my AV equipment commands to work properly in a program was the following:

 

1.  Create Program WatchSatellite

2.  Disable the program (so it only runs when called)

3.  In If condition, have a true statement (so it doesn't run the else when "turned on" with Alexa)

4.  In the Then, have your device on commands

5.  In the Else, have your device off commands

6.  In Isy Portal, add the program with the Spoken Word "TV"

 

I also created a program WatchFireTV with similar programming (just doesn't turn on Satellite and sets receiver to a different input)

 

Now I can say the following:

 

Alexa, Turn On TV to turn on my projector, satellite and receiver (setting it to Satellite input)

Alexa, Turn Off TV to turn off my projector, satellite and receiver

Alexa, Turn On Video to turn on my projector and receiver (setting it to FireTV's input)

 

Now if only I could find a decent way to integrate with FireTV (mainly just to turn it on), but I suppose I can use the Echo directly for that.

 

Chris

[stusviews]

It is possible to have multiple Echos (I have three), but they're all identical. If you want each to be different, then you'll need a separate portal and ISY for each.

 

You do not need a true condition to cause Then or Else statements to be executed. In fact, you don't need any If condition at all. On runs Then and Off runs Else.

[barrygordon]

You can have multiple echos in a home today.  The only problem is that all the echos that recognize their name will respond to what is spoken. In the connected home all Echos run off the same data set that is provided by the ISY. There is no fencing. Amazon claims to someday add additional recognition words besides Alexa and Amazon, but still there will be no fencing except through a skill.  You can assign a different skill to each Echo, but then UDI would have to be able to have multiple skills. It would be nice if Amazon provided fencing along with multiple wake up words.  They would probably sell more Echos.

 

You have to keep in mind that the "connected home" was developed strictly for lighting.  It will be interesting to see if Amazon expands that to handle other "Smart Things".  

 

I handle my theater using a Pronto PRO as I play it at significant volume and was concerned about using an Echo.   The theater is controlled by a PC so I can have Alexa/ISY send any command I want to the Theater's control PC. I do this with a network resource and a simple program with only a then section. I control my kitchen TV in that manner. I currently can turn on the theater by telling Alexa to do so:  "Alexa, turn on the theater";  Lights dim, shades drop, music plays, components turn on and warm up . . . 

 

I have a program I wrote some time ago that handles all my non-Theater IR requirements based upon commands it gets over raw TCP which is no problem for ISY network resources, or my Pronto PRO's. It deals with the Global Cache line, but mainly with a GC 100 which has 6 IR ports. The program holds all the Global cache timing information for each IR driven device I own, there is a companion program that will develop all the needed timing information form a standard description (know as IRP files) that I co-developed many many years ago with John Fine.  A typical input string to that program looks like "DOIR, 1, STB, Channel UP" or "Macro, 1, CNN". It should be obvious what each string does. The named device (e.g. STB) denotes which IR protocol to use.  The integer is the GC port number. With a Macro, the macro name (e.g. CNN, Tivo-CNN) denotes the protocol to be used which can be mapped to any GC IR transmitter. I am currently driving three TV locations (Guest bedroom, kitchen, Master bedroom). If I give house guests the Amazon Echo remote, they can control the Guest Bedroom TV by voice via the Echo in the kitchen.

 

I am considering converting that IR system, to an RPi. The IR generator is already on my web site as the IRGEN program.  If I do that I will probably integrate it as a node server for the ISY.  But that is a ways off.

Edited January 23, 2016 by barrygordon

[stusviews]

My latest Echo has three awake choices, Alexa, Amazon and Echo. I don't see a way to add different skills to each Echo.

[barrygordon]

Yes, mine also has the same three wake up words, and yes there is no way to assign skills to a particular echo at this time.

[Jamison_IO]

I just got my echo (haven't even plugged it in yet) - i want to try it with my ISY, but before I spend the 50 on the portal, can you tell me how many beta spots are available?

[stusviews]

You'll need the portal even for the skill which is freely available. The only constraint is that you'll need to ask Alexa to tell Izzy to perform a task. Also, even it there's only one slot available, why not try for it

[rusgrafx]

Just a quick note.. I just discovered that my Amazon FireTV (the latest model) can also talk to ISY through voice remote - sweet!

[Jamison_IO]

You'll need the portal even for the skill which is freely available. The only constraint is that you'll need to ask Alexa to tell Izzy to perform a task. Also, even it there's only one slot available, why not try for it

 

What does this mean? As far as the constraint - is that removed somehow withe the "connected home" that I've read about?  Sorry to veer off but I am so confused with all of this stuff - I start reading one thing then start going down another path! Echo, nodes, IR, skills, portals, mobilinc,  - i wish there was a big diagram showing how all of this stuff worked together.

[Michel Kohanim]

Hello everyone,

 

Just wanted to let you know that we were given the go ahead by Amazon to open the gate. So, everyone is now welcome and we are no longer in Beta.

 

With kind regards,

Michel

[DannyFresh]

Hello everyone,

 

Just wanted to let you know that we were given the go ahead by Amazon to open the gate. So, everyone is now welcome and we are no longer in Beta.

 

With kind regards,

Michel

This is excellent news. Things can only get better from here. Thanks Michel.

 

 

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[MWareman]

Hello everyone,

 

Just wanted to let you know that we were given the go ahead by Amazon to open the gate. So, everyone is now welcome and we are no longer in Beta.

 

With kind regards,

Michel

Woot!

 

Does that mean ISY will show up in the Alexa app even for those that haven't clicked the activation link? If so - that even better and should drive sales of ISY. You should put out a press release and yell it from the rooftops!

 

Congratulations! An amazing milestone.

[Michel Kohanim]

Hi MWareman,

 

It should but we are in the queue!

 

With kind regards,

Michel