Turn off Everything

[beninsteon]

Hi,

 

I have a program that I've made called AllOff. The else branch turns off all the devices in a particular room. With alexa, I created a spoken called "everything" so that I could say "Alexa, turn off everything" and the else branch of AllOff ran and my devices turned off.

 

I've just changed to Google Home and with the same set up (spoken "everything" for "alloff" program), Google Home responds by saying "OK, turning off X devices" instead of running the program and turns off the devices in sequence. Not all my individual devices are exposed to GH via the portal so it doesn't actually turn off everything.

 

Has anyone else encountered this problem? Is there a way to have Google not reserve the word "everything" and instead to what I want? BTW - I also tried "lights", "devices", "things" and GH has the same behaviour. It seems these spokens are reserved.....

 

Thanks,

 

Ben

Edited December 31, 2017 by beninsteon

[asbril]

Hi,

 

I have a program that I've made called AllOff. The else branch turns off all the devices in a particular room. With alexa, I created a spoken called "everything" so that I could say "Alexa, turn off everything" and the else branch of AllOff ran and my devices turned off.

 

I've just changed to Google Home and with the same set up (spoken "everything" for "alloff: program), Google Home responds by saying "OK, turning off X devices" instead of running the program and turns off the devices in sequence. Not all my individual devices are exposed to GH via the portal so it doesn't actually turn off everything.

 

Has anyone else encountered this problem? Is there a way to have Google not reserve the word "everything" and instead to what I want? BTW - I also tried "lights", "devices", "things" and GH has the same behaviour. It seems these spokens are reserved.....

 

Thanks,

 

Ben

Ben, I do not know whether my solution works in your case, but try using the "shortcut" option in Google Home. In the GH App, click on menu (top left), then 'More Settings' and then all the way down 'shortcuts.

[beninsteon]

Thanks for the suggestion. Unfortunately it seems that all reserved words (everything, lights, devices, things, good morning.....) can't be used for anything other than what google programs them for. This even includes shortcuts unfortunately.

 

How do you manage turn off all devices in a particular room?

 

Ben

[Screw Loose Dan]

I had a similar problem, I have a scene called "All Lights", which includes all my house lights to I can turn them all off at once (or in theory all on).  I got the same results you had, it would turn off XX number of lights that I had added.

 

My work around was in the ISY portal to give the spoke mapping "entire house".  Perhaps that will help?

[asbril]

What about creating a scene and name it for example 'master bedroom', and then set, if necessary, a shortcut in GH with names like master bedroom ON and master bedroom off ?

[andrewm]

I had a very similar issue to others here which stumped me for a while. I have multiple scenes in the kitchen, one of which is "All kitchen lights". At some point that scene stopped working via Google Home - the lights would turn on then immediately off, or some random combination thereof. But it worked fine via Amazon Echo. I guess Google is trying to be clever by interpreting the world "all" and then controlling all the related "devices" it knows about, which given they are scenes has weird results.

The work round is to use synonyms for "all" (entire, complete, everything) but that's effectively whack-a-mole, because Google will eventually work out the synonyms and I'll be back at square one. Google should instead try for a more exact / literal word match against the spoken before trying to add interpretations based on word meanings.

So much for Artificial intelligence!

[larryllix]

I found the same AI BS with GH as anrdewm above. GH artificial intelligence is not wanted in the case of HA usage.

Perhaps if GH only knew about individual devices it could work, as it wants to auto-create all the groups, scenes, and  rooms, by itself and there isn't enough room for two smart devices (ISY and GH).

I avoid GH for my ISY control and just use Alexa. It's dumber actions are so much smarter, when it comes to HA.
GH is much better for information look up and playing games.

[asbril]

23 minutes ago, larryllix said:

I found the same AI BS with GH as anrdewm above. GH artificial intelligence is not wanted in the case of HA usage.

Perhaps if GH only knew about individual devices it could work, as it wants to auto-create all the groups, scenes, and  rooms, by itself and there isn't enough room for two smart devices (ISY and GH).

I avoid GH for my ISY control and just use Alexa. It's dumber actions are so much smarter, when it comes to HA.
GH is much better for information look up and playing games.

I respectfully disagree.  While still far from perfection, I make good use of GH with my ISY.  I frequently use GH commands to turn on lights when I have my hands fulls (or just lazy..) and especially the routine (shortcut)  'Open Curtains X'  is being used all the time.

Unfortunately as mentioned yesterday, my wife is confused about GH and believes that the right command is OK "my name"  Open Curtains.......

[larryllix]

59 minutes ago, asbril said:

I respectfully disagree.  While still far from perfection, I make good use of GH with my ISY.  I frequently use GH commands to turn on lights when I have my hands fulls (or just lazy..) and especially the routine (shortcut)  'Open Curtains X'  is being used all the time.

Unfortunately as mentioned yesterday, my wife is confused about GH and believes that the right command is OK "my name"  Open Curtains.......

GH's assumption level makes it a poor voice recognition device for HA. Most ISY HA systems and ideas have to be modified  to make it work properly. 
With ISY and GH, it's like two automation systems trying to get their own way at the same time, but GH is not going to disclose what it will do, at setup time.  If GH disclosed their secrets it wouldn't seem so magic to the lay crowd. Amazon has some of that too, but not quite so interfering with HA, yet, and likely jealous of GH too.

Alexa performs with much less conceptual change.