Two Homes, Two ISY's... Howto:

[majorlance]

My problem is simple yet I can't find a direct answer in the forums... although I know it must be "right there" I can only find fragments to the answer.

 

I have two house and, of course, two ISY's. The ISY's have been setup to control some of the basic's of each house, lights, sonos audio, thermostats, etc. and each is independent o the the other.

 

I have the ISY portal and purchased an Amazon Echo for one and a Dot for the other.  Added these to the ISY portal and that's where my challenges emerged.  When I had only one house linked to he Amazon echo everything worked well. My ISY Programs would execute with the appropriate syntax and (in spite to the difficulty of linking an older Russound and Sonos system together), we were all all one happy family.  In one house...

 

The challenge I have is in adding a second home with an entirely unique set of commands to the ISY portal with a second ISY.  I'm perfectly fine with having a second set of local commands at one house vs. the other to do a similar task (and even write these up as a cheat sheet for my wife and guests.  But the second ISY is not recognized by the ISY portal and ignores my tries to link the ISY to the Echo vocabulary.  In the ISY portal it shows both the ISY hubs and I can add a  program to the spoken list.  But when I attempt to use the ALEXA app to discover the new commands it doesn't see them.

 

Without going into to many arcane details, how do I simply create two households with an ISY in each of them, controlled by an Amazon Echo, one in each house?  I don't care about shared command,etc. I just want each house to work with the commands that I have programmed for that home...

 

Any advice is appreciated!

 

Lee

 

 

 

[stusviews]

Which revision of the ISY are you running? AFAIK, only version 5.+ allows switching ISYs. You may also need two portals and/or Amazon accounts. I currently have four Amazon accounts with one ISY and one portal. Each account is independent of the other. Each has a different list of devices, scenes, programs and, somewhat, spokens.

[majorlance]

Hmmm.  I'm running 4.4.x, not 5. so that may be the problem.  But I'm seeing very inconsistent flaky behavior out of the setup.

 

Can one of the admins comment on my setup?

 

Thanks,

 

Lee

[majorlance]

By dropping one of the ISY's I was able to re-link my programs and have them execute consistently.  I'm happy to do the work to move to 5.x but was waiting for the final stable release if that is what is required to be able to support two ISY's in the portal.  

 

I have an Echo and a Dot at my main house, along with one ISY, and everything worked fine through the portal.  Adding the Second ISY seemed to have gummed things up.  

 

What I have learned (please anyone help and confirm):

1) You can only have one Amazon account tied to the ISY portal

2) My challenge is adding a second ISY.  Even thought I'm only using programs with unique names between the two homes, it seems to be mixed up as to how to execute a command through the Echo with two ISY's on the ISY Portal.

 

Any help or further clarification would be greatly appreciated.

 

Lee

[stusviews]

1) I have four portal/Amazon accounts tied to my ISY. I'll be adding a fifth (that maximum).

 

2) You may need a portal for each ISY.

[starmanj]

See my other thread on this issue.  You must purchase a portal subscription for each ISY.  Then you must tell each Alexa which ISY you want it to control. It is very difficult to get Alexa to switch ISY's I have found.

My other thread is "observations and questions"

[larryllix]

I would think it would be easier/better to control just one ISY and set up a communications channel/protocol between ISY's.

 

A few variables in each ISY and Network modules in each ISY could set up a code protocol for each command and a handshake variable back to indicate communication successful. An operator, operand and back handshake variable for each direction should be enough.

 

The Echo end ISY/Master may need some pseudo X10 modules set up to duplicate devices in the remote.

 

Once the small programs and Network resources are written for each to operate the opposite ends it should be fairly easy.

[stusviews]

Pseudo modules with X10 house/units codes are subject to be turned on and/or off by line noise and even neighbors with X10. Insteon devices are more impervious to line noise produced by modern electronic devices than the older technology was.

[larryllix]

Pseudo modules with X10 house/units codes are subject to be turned on and/or off by line noise and even neighbors with X10. Insteon devices are more impervious to line noise produced by modern electronic devices than the older technology was.

That would be no different or more trouble than any X10 system, but there is also blockers for x10 signals at entrance panels.

 

The x10 pseudo technique was only to satisfy the Echo/ISY connection. Perhaps there is another way to make the devices available to the local Echo for easy access.

 

Once UDI implements some type of psuedo device, with a name, this may all change the ease of implementation.