Making Alexa commands to trigger programs?

[greazer]

I have several programs that trigger when an insteon swtich gets turned on or off. Oftentimes it's used to maintain state.  However if Alexa is used to toggle the same switch no programs are triggered. This often results in a screwed up state within the house.

 

Any suggests as to how to deal with this? Or has a best-practices been established yet?

[andyf0]

Does your program for the switch test for CONTROL On or STATUS On? If CONTROL then only pressing the paddle will cause the program to trigger. If you want to let Alexa trigger the programs then you must use STATUS.

Edited January 20, 2017 by andyf0

[stusviews]

Alexa can run Then and/or Else. If you want Alexa to run If, then you must invoke Izzy as in, "Alexa, tell Izzy to run program_spoken."

[greazer]

Basically, what I was hoping for that the Alexa integration would cause actual device gestures (on/off at least) to mimic the gesture on the device itself. In other words, if I say "Alexa, turn on bedroom light", it would be equivalent to actually pressing the insteon switch I have in the bedroom to turn on the light. Unfortunately, this doesn't seem to be the case.

 

What I've decided to do (which is kind of a pain), is to create a program for any command I want to invoke through Alexa. By doing this I am able to detect when such an event occurs. I did try using STATUS, but that will fail if I have a program that doesn't depend on the actual state of the device but rather the gesture. For example, I have situations where pressing a switch on needs to do something if the light it controls is already on.

 

Of course this may become cumbersome to maintain, down the line. Oh well.

[larryllix]

See Stu's comment above. If you are using the latest V2 Skill then On runs Then and Off runs Else. It doesn't matter what is in the If section then as ut will never be run.

 

 

I don't use scenes as they are only for Insteon (I have no Zwave) but I have many other types of lighting LED strips and smart bulbs. I only use programs and single devices to control from my Alexa vocals.