Alexa - please remind me of my appointment

[larryllix]

I can't believe that the Echo has no function to notify you about appointments.

 

Sure I can set a reminder with constant beeping. 

Sure I can create an event that I have to remember myself and ask about it.

 

With all this awesome voice recognition and output where is the basic notification

 

• Larry, You have a Dentist appointment in one hour at 3 o'oclock!

 

What am I missing?

Is there a skill to cover this basic 1980's tech gadget?

 

Edited August 1, 2016 by larryllix

[TheFallenAngel]

I can't believe that the Echo has no function to notify you about appointments.

 

Sure I can set a reminder with constant beeping.

Sure I can create an event that I have to remember myself and ask about it.

 

With all this awesome voice recognition and output where is the basic notification

 

• Larry, You have a Dentist appointment in one hour at 3 o'oclock!

What am I missing?

Is there a skill to cover this basic 1980's tech gadget?

You can say Alexa, what's in my schedule.. But that's pretty much it.. It is sad it doesn't give voice reminders..

 

Cheers,

Alex

[larryllix]

You can say Alexa, what's in my schedule.. But that's pretty much it.. It is sad it doesn't give voice reminders..

 

Cheers,

Alex

That's the part that irritates me. The mechanisms are all there.

• ability to voice what the events are, when asked
• ability to notify you of alarms with tone sound bytes, unprompted
• ability to remember events dates and times.

Very strange that such a basic feature would be missing in such a nice high-tech level gadget.

 

@Alex. It surprises me that you wouldn't have changed Alexa to Echo or other name to avoid confusion. Maybe you are familiar with being ordered about?  

Edited August 1, 2016 by larryllix

[TheFallenAngel]

That's the part that irritates me. The mechanisms are all there.

• ability to voice what the events are, when asked
• ability to notify you of alarms with tone sound bytes, unprompted
• ability to remember events dates and times.

Very strange that such a basic feature would be missing in such a nice high-tech level gadget.

 

@Alex. It surprises me that you wouldn't have changed Alexa to Echo or other name to avoid confusion. Maybe you are familiar with being ordered about?

I have one Echo called Alexa and two Dots called Echo (in different rooms)

 

Haven't had confusion with my name yet tho..

 

As for the push notifications they have been greatly discussed in Alexa forums and asked for a lot.. Amazon has certain security concerns for implementing push notifications in the API.. I am not I see them since I know what skill I am enabling, so spacing ones won't fly.. But what do I know.. It's good idea to fit me and more requests for that to be sent to Amazon..

 

Cheers,

Alex

Edited August 1, 2016 by TheFallenAngel

[stusviews]

You can set an alarm for 3PM. Then you only need to ask Alexa how much time is left. Far from ideal, but, minimally, accomplishes the task.

[coyote-1]

You can set an alarm for 3PM. Then you only need to ask Alexa how much time is left. Far from ideal, but, minimally, accomplishes the task.

Actually, no it doesn't.

 

If you have to remind your assistant to remind you of something that occurs daily or weekly, or on any predetermined schedule, you lose virtually all the benefits of an assistant!

 

Here's something I programmed in Tasker that should be easily doable with something like Alexa.

A ) automatically speak out garbage/rubbish/yard waste/recycling at 6:30 am on the appropriate day. So if it's Wednesday, it says "please take out garbage and recycling"; on Monday it says "please take out garbage and yard waste".

B ) it does the above unless the day in question is a holiday. It checks the google holiday calendar against the holidays taken by my town's sanitation service, and it they coincide it does not blurt out any reminder at all. So it will be silent on Labor Day, but on Columbus Day they still pick up the trash - so it automatically speaks the reminder.

C ) if you ask "ok google, what is the next garbage pickup?", on a Saturday, for example, it takes all the above into account. If the impending Monday is a holiday, it replies "wednesday, garbage and recycling". If I ask on the second to last Tuesday of this year, it will reply "Friday, garbage and rubbish" because that Tuesday is the 24th and the next Wednesday is Xmas which has no sanitation pickup.

 

So hypothetically, (C ) is doable as an Alexa skill. But (A,B ) is what an assistant should be doing - reminding you in timely fashion, without you having to ask!

 

Alexa doesn't even show up as a 'that' in IFTTT. You can't make it respond to any external inputs.

Edited November 24, 2016 by coyote-1

[barrygordon]

Throw an RPi into the loop as a central controller; write some code.  You can then do it all including voice announcements based on events time, etc.

 

I am thinking about releasing my full RPi system which has all of that operating in conjunction with the ISY (ELK, Insteon switches, Z-Wave thermostats network resources) Amazon echo/dots, and iPads   

 

I just am not sure what I would be signing up for as I take support very seriously.  I am retired with a reasonable amount of free time.

[gregf]

Throw an RPi into the loop as a central controller; write some code.  You can then do it all including voice announcements based on events time, etc.

 

I am thinking about releasing my full RPi system which has all of that operating in conjunction with the ISY (ELK, Insteon switches, Z-Wave thermostats network resources) Amazon echo/dots, and iPads   

 

I just am not sure what I would be signing up for as I take support very seriously.  I am retired with a reasonable amount of free time.

You have been quiet lately, I have occasionally wondered what you were up to.

[Teken]

Throw an RPi into the loop as a central controller; write some code.  You can then do it all including voice announcements based on events time, etc.

 

I am thinking about releasing my full RPi system which has all of that operating in conjunction with the ISY (ELK, Insteon switches, Z-Wave thermostats network resources) Amazon echo/dots, and iPads   

 

I just am not sure what I would be signing up for as I take support very seriously.  I am retired with a reasonable amount of free time.

 

I would say it would bring you to the 2017 Super God Status if you did. 

[barrygordon]

I just put up a bunch of posts at various points in these forums. I guess you could search for posts by me.

 

I am in the final stage of removing my Homeseer system which was the central controller.  I should be done by next week.  

 

Then I will document all of the RPi modules and see who would like to play.

 

The RPi has been up for several months running its current software I expect the reliability to be the same with the changes.

 

I do not access the RPi from the Internet but there is no reason other than security paranoia that I couldn't. Every module has an IP interface the RPi can speak for any system in the house.

 

Status events from the RPi are broadcast by the RPi using UDP and my own enveloping protocol as JSON strings. This is not done for the ISY as the ISY has its own subscription service, but would be a simple change which I may do for uniformity. The RPI does subscribe to the ISY so repeating the status change from the ISY would be trivial. I favor the UDP broadcasts as each room has an in wall iPad that is the main status/command device for the room, although Alexa is catching up fast as a command source.  

[barrygordon]

I had that status for a while on the Pronto PRO. I still have Pronto PRO's (I just like the buttons and the fact I can use them under the covers with out looking at the for TV control). 

 

Naturally the Pronto PRO's talk to the RPi  to control ISY based things or IR based things.

 

I use one RPi running headless (no keyboard, no screen no mouse) mounted on the wall in my server closet. It is an RPi 3 with a 16G microSD card. running the latest Raspbian OS.

 

All development and testing work is on my Windows development system using Visual Studio and NodeJS

[tmorse305]

I can't believe that the Echo has no function to notify you about appointments.

 

Sure I can set a reminder with constant beeping. 

Sure I can create an event that I have to remember myself and ask about it.

 

With all this awesome voice recognition and output where is the basic notification

 

• Larry, You have a Dentist appointment in one hour at 3 o'oclock!

 

What am I missing?

Is there a skill to cover this basic 1980's tech gadget?

Since Alexa can't do it yet, maybe you need one of these. 

 

https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/glance-clock-see-what-you-need-when-you-need-it-smartphone--2#/

[larryllix]

Since Alexa can't do it yet, maybe you need one of these. 

 

https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/glance-clock-see-what-you-need-when-you-need-it-smartphone--2#/

Very cool display idea! What are the arms sticking out in various directions for?

 

LOL

 

Seriously! My one sons loves to do this at parties. Nobody ever believes him,until he demonstrates it.

 

It went like this with two teenage girls.

 

Hi! What grade are you in?

....we are both in grade ten.

 

(pulls out his pocket watch with hands)

Can you tell me what time this shows?

...I don't know...(shrugging shoulders)

 

(turns to the other girl)

How about you? Can you tell me what time this shows?

....I don't know. We never took that in school.

[stusviews]

There's absolutely no way my wife could read an analog clock without numbers, even less so at a glance. Everything else the clock does is great.

 

I kinda agree. I can glance at an analog clock and immediately see how much time I have for a two-fifteen appointment if it's ten-thirty. Much easier than seeing 10:30 and calculating the duration until 2:15.

[larryllix]

Another thing I noticed is the restricted text area. The outside only seems to generate patterns and the Centre displayed about seven characters of text. Way too small for larger messages.

 

Sent from a tiny keyboard. Response may be brief.