Voice control of Fanlink + Keypad

[Noircogi]

Hello All,

 

I'm a new user here.  I've been using insteon for quite a while and have 68 devices in my home including all of the light switches plus some other things.

 

I was previously using a PLM connected to a hydroflash system for my yard light controls and an insteon Hub2 connected to OpenHAB for Google Home connectivity.  The back door method I was using (Hue Emulation) can no longer be used with Google home as you now must go through the Philips web site to pair a Hue hub, which breaks all of the emulation solutions.

 

I ordered the 994 and then a couple of days later, Insteon released their native integration for the Hub2.  I tried it and had very unsatisfactory results: slow performance, lots of errors, and the impossibility of using voice control for anything connected to an I/O Linc (Like one of my fireplaces is).  Insteon does this on purpose because it might be used to control a garage door...

 

My ISY arrived on Friday and I've spent the last couple of days getting things set up.  I'm pretty technical and so I LOVE the product.  There is great, complete documentation with examples for pretty much everything. Nice work to the dev team!  Performance is excellent and everything works as expected (once I figured out to export my multi-way switch scenes to Google Home as "Light" type).

 

The one thing I can't really figure out is the best way to voice-control a Fanlinc which I have connected to a Keypad Linc exactly as described here:

https://wiki.universal-devices.com/index.php?title=ISY994i:INSTEON_Device:FanLinc-KPL_FanLinc_KeypadLinc_Configuration

 

I exported the 4 scenes and can select them using Google Home, but it would be nicer to just be able to say "Hey Google, set the fan to medium" or something like that.

 

Is it possible?

 

Thanks,

Scott

 

PS: The one piece of documentation which was not obvious was the order of steps needed to install, configure and activate the ISY portal prior to enabling Google Home support.

[stusviews]

I found that "to" is the problem. Although including "to" makes for natural speech, AI as used in the Amazon Echo and Google Home doesn't support that. It would be similar to saying, "turn the light to on." "Set the fan medium," works. I use Amazon's smartphone Alexa app, which allow creating virtually any voice command to control a device.

 

Not all commands are accepted, however. The app won't let use, "let the sun shine in," to open the bedroom window coverings

Edited January 7, 2018 by stusviews

[Noircogi]

To make this work, I decided to only export one speed (medium) to Google Home.  I then made a sweeper program which checks for all of the fan speed buttons being in the off state, and if so, selects the "off" scene to fix it.

So now I can say:  "Hey Google, Turn the Ceiling Fan on" or "Hey Google, Turn the Ceiling Fan off" and it works and the keypad buttons indicate the right thing about 1/2 second after the off command runs.

[beninsteon]

You can use shortcuts to use any voice command to do another, so for example:

 

Hey Google set fan to low ---> interpreted by Google home as hey Google turn on fan program 1

 

Hey Google set fan to medium ---> interpreted by Google home as hey Google turn on fan program 2

 

Hey Google set fan to high ---> interpreted by Google home as hey Google turn on fan program 3

 

This setting is accessed through the GH app by clicking the hamburger icon, then more settings then my shortcuts

 

Ben

[Noircogi]

Right, but the problem I had was with "Off".  I had to say "Turn the Fan Off On" to select the "Fan Off" scene.  That's why I decided to try a program to fix up the keypad buttons after just a normal "Turn the fan off" type command.

 

After all that, I realized that teaching everyone to use High, Medium and Low would be more trouble than value from a usability standpoint, so I just trimmed it down to "On" meaning medium speed for voice control  They still have all of the speeds available on the keypad.

[beninsteon]

Hey google, turn fan off --> shortcut to run whatever program you want that turns the fan off.

[larryllix]

Hey google, turn fan off --> shortcut to run whatever program you want that turns the fan off.

You need to write your program in the Else section then you can use.

 

• Hey Google! Turn Fan Off.