Amazon adds thermostat query capabilities to echo

[paulbates]

Amazon is trickling out improvements to the initial thin skillsets released with the echo. Amazon announced this week that it added thermostat query to their smarthome skill set. The individual smarthome skills need to be updated by their manufacturers to support it. 

 

A handful like Honeywell, seem to have made the update,  Nest users are reporting that it does not work, neither does it work yet for Venstar. 

 

Here are the additional capabilities. Not earth-shattering, but it is progress. Time to bug your manufacturer if its not working for your thermostat.

 

Paul

[Bumbershoot]

Amazon is trickling out improvements to the initial thin skillsets released with the echo. Amazon announced this week that it added thermostat query to their smarthome skill set. The individual smarthome skills need to be updated by their manufacturers to support it. 

 

A handful like Honeywell, seem to have made the update,  Nest users are reporting that it does not work, neither does it work yet for Venstar. 

 

Here are the additional capabilities. Not earth-shattering, but it is progress. Time to bug your manufacturer if its not working for your thermostat.

 

Paul

 

As of 2/25, this appears to be working with Nest thermostats.  When queried, "Alexa, what's the temperature of Family Room", here's how Alexa responds, "According to Family Room, it's currently 65 degrees".

 

Thanks for the notice.  One more thing to help improve the WAF...

[paulbates]

Great, thanks for the follow up.. For Nest, I was referring to user comments to amazon's post a few days ago. I know that today it still doesn't work for Venstar.

 

To clarify, you didn't need to delete the old skill, and/or load a new one? 
 

Paul

 

As of 2/25, this appears to be working with Nest thermostats.  When queried, "Alexa, what's the temperature of Family Room", here's how Alexa responds, "According to Family Room, it's currently 65 degrees".

 

Thanks for the notice.  One more thing to help improve the WAF...

Edited February 25, 2017 by paulbates

[Bumbershoot]

Great, thanks for the follow up.. For Nest, I was referring to user comments to amazon's post a few days ago. I know that today it still doesn't work for Venstar.

 

To clarify, you didn't need to delete the old skill, and/or load a new one? 

 

Paul

No, I didn't touch a thing with either Nest or Alexa.  It "just worked"™.

[alambertus]

It works for my Ecobee3, without any additional setup. In fact, it added all of my sensors so I can ask what temperature it is in each room......

[cheezit73]

Does anyone know if this should/will work with Insteon thermostats throughout the ISY skill?

[paulbates]

Got a confirmation email from Venstar, they said to watch for a press release

 

Paul

[Michel Kohanim]

Hi Paul,

 

Thanks so very much for the update. We will be working on it as soon as we are a littel more comfortable with Google Assistant. Benoit is pretty much overworked at this point!

 

With kind regards,
​Michel

[paulbates]

Hi Paul,

 

Thanks so very much for the update. We will be working on it as soon as we are a littel more comfortable with Google Assistant. Benoit is pretty much overworked at this point!

 

With kind regards,

​Michel

 

Hi Michel, Yes, I understand that for sure.

 

Paul

[nickp]

So, I have an Ecobee three, and this is sometimes working, sometimes not.

 

I originally setup my Ecobee and called it StreetName.  It made sense to me when looking at the app, but when Alexa supported it, saying "set streetname temp to 74 degrees" was confusing for the wife.

So, i changed the ecobee name to home. 

Now, I can say "set home temperature to 74 degrees" and everyone is happy.

 

However, with the new voice commands, I cannot say "alexa, what is the temperature at home" - she always replies with the weather report.

 

I also cannot say "alexa, what is the temperature at master bed" as it tells me that device does not support that command.

My ISY also has a device called "master bed" and I belive that is confusing.

 

Lastly, the HUGE bug is that if I say "alexa, set home temperature to 74 degrees", it does so, but puts a permanent hold at that temp.  It does not cancel the hold after 4 hours like the controller does, and does not switch to home/away/night mode.  So until I manually cancel the 74 degrees on the controller, the temp is on hold

 

So, this alexa stuff is almost working with my ecobee, but really not enough to be useful...

[stusviews]

There's a ready made IFTTT recipe to return the ecobee3 thermostat to regular scheduling that's easy to implement is you have the ISY portal. It's called, "Resume Ecobee program at night."