ahwman Posted April 5, 2016 Share Posted April 5, 2016 Well, it looks like Amazon is at it again - making major changes behind the scenes with zero warning to users. All of a sudden as of this evening, many of my connected home voice commands are no longer understood. These same commands have been working flawlessly for months... Example: I have a command called "Guide" which populates my TiVo guide, which no longer works. Instead I hear a quick tone on my Echo. I have another command called "Reverse" which would trigger the replay command on my TiVo and now Echo tries to play the song called "Reverse" from Amazon Prime. It's so very frustrating when you have everything working as you like and then Amazon just decides to make major changes to how things work and you're screwed... Anyone else seeing this? Link to comment
jerlands Posted April 5, 2016 Share Posted April 5, 2016 Tried two device commands and both almost instantaneous. Jon... Link to comment
madcodger Posted April 5, 2016 Share Posted April 5, 2016 Well, it looks like Amazon is at it again - making major changes behind the scenes with zero warning to users. All of a sudden as of this evening, many of my connected home voice commands are no longer understood. These same commands have been working flawlessly for months... Example: I have a command called "Guide" which populates my TiVo guide, which no longer works. Instead I hear a quick tone on my Echo. I have another command called "Reverse" which would trigger the replay command on my TiVo and now Echo tries to play the song called "Reverse" from Amazon Prime. It's so very frustrating when you have everything working as you like and then Amazon just decides to make major changes to how things work and you're screwed... Anyone else seeing this? Modest increase in delay this evening, but have not tried a anything extensive. Do wish they would stop messing with things "randomly" at Amazon, though. A predictable release cycle would be nice. Link to comment
ahwman Posted April 5, 2016 Author Share Posted April 5, 2016 It's not a latency issue I'm referring to but rather the fact that Amazon has altered the list of connected home command names which are now recognized. If you're not using any exotic command names like I am, you probably won't notice it. However if you're doing more than simple lighting commands, such as TV, DVR, etc which require more exotic command names, you will notice what I'm saying... Now I must come up with many new command names and HOPE Amazon doesn't mess with them yet again... Chuck Link to comment
garybixler Posted April 5, 2016 Share Posted April 5, 2016 Same issue here. My group name was no longer recognized or any name with day in it. I did inform Amazon. Link to comment
jerlands Posted April 5, 2016 Share Posted April 5, 2016 You might look at the Alexa App > Smart Home and see state of Groups and/or devices. Jon... Link to comment
gregf Posted April 5, 2016 Share Posted April 5, 2016 I have a program named "phone" that triggers the Apple "find my phone" that gets the quick tone now. Link to comment
Xathros Posted April 5, 2016 Share Posted April 5, 2016 I have a program names "phone" that triggers the Apple "find my phone" that gets the quick tone now. Can you provide details as to how that was accomplished before it broke please? Thanks. -Xathros Link to comment
ahwman Posted April 6, 2016 Author Share Posted April 6, 2016 Guys, there's no question that Amazon is yet again making changes in the background as I also noticed today that the verbiage has changed when asking Alexa how much time is left on a timer. I'm concerned as to why all of a sudden so many words are no longer recognized in regards to the connected home functionality. Also, what the heck does the tone mean after invoking a failed request? I hope others will voice their concern to Amazon so they take this seriously. It's causing me a huge problem.. Chuck Link to comment
gregf Posted April 6, 2016 Share Posted April 6, 2016 Can you provide details as to how that was accomplished before it broke please? Thanks. -Xathros I'm calling a php script that calls the Apple find my phone api. I found it here. https://github.com/a...HP-FindMyiPhone You feed it your iCloud userid and password, and a device id. One of the Youtube videos I found around Christmas showed all of the devices he was controlling with Alexa, spotted that he was doing this. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hzjeq_L0X0U I'm still using the emulator on a Raspberry, the web server serving up the script is also on the same Pi. I bought the portal just haven't switched to it. A big thanks again to Barry Gordon for the configurator program, never woudl have gotten it to work without it and his tips on setting it up. Greg Link to comment
Xathros Posted April 6, 2016 Share Posted April 6, 2016 I'm calling a php script that calls the Apple find my phone api. I found it here. https://github.com/a...HP-FindMyiPhone You feed it your iCloud userid and password, and a device id. One of the Youtube videos someone posted around Christmas showed all of the devices he was controlling with Alexa, spotted that he was doing this. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hzjeq_L0X0U I'm still using the emulator on a Raspberry, the web server serving up the script is also on the same Pi. I bought the portal just haven't switched to it. A big thanks again to Barry Gordon for the configurator program, never woudl have gotten it to work without it and his tips on setting it up. Greg Nice find. I'll have to see if I can translate that into a python script. If so, I could execute it from node link's relay server. Thanks! -Xathros Link to comment
gregf Posted April 6, 2016 Share Posted April 6, 2016 I don't think it's a coincidence that this happened the same time as the announcement for the Connected Home enhancements. Wonder what word to replace phone with? Alexa turn on the effem phone! Link to comment
ahwman Posted April 6, 2016 Author Share Posted April 6, 2016 I don't think it's a coincidence that this happened the same time as the announcement for the Connected Home enhancements. Wonder what word to replace phone with? Alexa turn on the effem phone! I'm just curious how Amazon is marketing this as an enhancement?? Link to comment
gregf Posted April 6, 2016 Share Posted April 6, 2016 It may be a simple oops. They are very responsive in fixing things they bork. Link to comment
ahwman Posted April 6, 2016 Author Share Posted April 6, 2016 It may be a simple oops. They are very responsive in fixing things they bork. I sure hope so, as my set up is a mess right now with so many commands not being recognized. Also, I noticed that some commands will work for "On" yet will fail when invoking the "Off" command. Crossing my fingers this gets fixed soon if at all... Chuck Link to comment
Paulk8 Posted April 6, 2016 Share Posted April 6, 2016 I was having the same problem. In the Alexa app I forgot all the devices and then rediscovered. Seems everything is back to normal Link to comment
ahwman Posted April 6, 2016 Author Share Posted April 6, 2016 Tried I was having the same problem. In the Alexa app I forgot all the devices and then rediscovered. Seems everything is back to normal Tried this many times, problem still exists... Link to comment
Michel Kohanim Posted April 6, 2016 Share Posted April 6, 2016 Hello everyone, Most definitely related to Amazon changing to V2 version of their APIs. We are looking into it. With kind regards, Michel Link to comment
Teken Posted April 6, 2016 Share Posted April 6, 2016 I don't think it's a coincidence that this happened the same time as the announcement for the Connected Home enhancements. Wonder what word to replace phone with? Alexa turn on the effem phone! GregF, That just made my day thanks! Link to comment
ahwman Posted April 6, 2016 Author Share Posted April 6, 2016 Hello everyone,Most definitely related to Amazon changing to V2 version of their APIs. We are looking into it.With kind regards,Michel Thanks Michel, I will be interested to find out why Amazon would remove or limit our device names. It has really caused me big issues, since I use my Echo's to control much more than just lighting. Everything has been working perfectly for months until just recently... Chuck Link to comment
btreinders Posted April 6, 2016 Share Posted April 6, 2016 Same here. Skip does not work anymore and quite a few others. Had to change to IFTTT for that command but the delay is awful now. I tried "turn on jump commercials" and "turn on bypass commercials" too and they don't work either. Frustrating. I assume the Hue emulator would also have this issue as well. I might try firing it back up just to check. I also had issues with discovering last night, Alexa would say found one device or even no devices but the webpage showed them all. Link to comment
wmcneil Posted April 6, 2016 Share Posted April 6, 2016 Hello everyone, Most definitely related to Amazon changing to V2 version of their APIs. We are looking into it. With kind regards, Michel Thanks....Does anyone know where one can find a list of all the supported connected home v2 commands? Link to comment
gilkman Posted April 6, 2016 Share Posted April 6, 2016 I have a few scenes programmed. The following lighting scene commands have worked since I set it up several weeks ago: "Alexa, turn home on" (and off) "Alexa, turn party on" (and off) "Alexa, turn ambient on" (and off) Now, the command for my "Ambient" scene is unrecognized. I changed the spoken word to "dim" and "romantic" neither works... Link to comment
ahwman Posted April 6, 2016 Author Share Posted April 6, 2016 Same here. Skip does not work anymore and quite a few others. Had to change to IFTTT for that command but the delay is awful now. I tried "turn on jump commercials" and "turn on bypass commercials" too and they don't work either. Frustrating. I assume the Hue emulator would also have this issue as well. I might try firing it back up just to check. I also had issues with discovering last night, Alexa would say found one device or even no devices but the webpage showed them all. I'm in the exact same boat and spent hours setting up all of my commands on IFTTT using the Maket channel and the latency is plain terrible. I sure hope Amazon has a fix for this and doesn't leave us in this predicament... Link to comment
jerlands Posted April 7, 2016 Share Posted April 7, 2016 The best way to get Amazon's attention is to leave feedback. Jon... Link to comment
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