Group bug?

[steveng57]

Hi all, I think I may have found a bug with Echo groups and the ISY skill.  Wondering if its just me or others are seeing it.  I am running skill v3.

Seems that whenever I create a group in the Echo/Alexa app, if I only put scenes in there, it doesn't register properly and none of the on/off settings are enabled, nor can I add it to a "routine".  This only happens when a group is made entirely of "scenes".  All the scenes are present, you just can't do anything with them.  The problem goes away if the group has at least one "device" in it.  This is my workaround of course, to just add a device from one of the already included scenes as a kind of dummy device to trick the app into working.  Once I do that, all the scenes can be controlled on/off with the app and thru the Echo, and they can be assigned to a routine.

This seems to be the case on the Alexa web app or the mobile app.  This leads me to think that its a problem is with the skill and not the app.

[bmercier]

This is not a bug.

Scenes do not have a status. So when you have only scenes in a group, the app does not show you the on/off buttons which also acts as a status. But whenever there is a device in the scene, the button will pick up the status of that device.

Benoit

[steveng57]

True, makes sense.  Having said that, I don't need to know the state of a scene in this scenario, I just need to be able to turn it on or off, and I don't care what it is currently set to.  Is it the Alexa app that wants to know the state, its not me :-)?

[gwarthur]

This was my experience as well: I followed the directions for migrating from V2 to V3 in the "ISY Portal Amazon Echo Integration V3" wiki, but when I performed a Discover under Smart Home > Devices, it picked up the devices but none of my ISY-based scenes.  What worked was to delete each scene in the portal's Amazon Echo device list and then re-add each (Add > Scene) as a Light (Switch designation might work, too.  But not scene) under the Alexa Category drop-down in the portal's Spoken Mapping pop-up. 

I just tried this and for some reason, after performing a Discover devices in the Alexa app, the spoken command failed the first time.  After that, they all worked.  

Edited February 27, 2018 by gwarthur
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[steveng57]

Interesting trick to change the type from scene to light.  It might also solve a problem with "Alexa-enabled" groups, where you add an Echo to the group so you don't have to say the name all the time...Seems you can say just "Alexa, turn off the lights" with an Alexa-enabled group and it will turn off all the lights in that group, but it will not do anything to scenes.

The drawback to setting the type from scene to light might be that one cannot say, "Alexa, dim the lights"...while Alexa might understand that, scenes cannot be dimmed, only set on or off.

[bmercier]

2 minutes ago, steveng57 said:

The drawback to setting the type from scene to light might be that one cannot say, "Alexa, dim the lights"...while Alexa might understand that, scenes cannot be dimmed, only set on or off.

From Alexa's perspective, a dimmable device or a scene exposed as a light is identical. When the brightness request is sent to ISY Portal, it knows if this is an ISY device or ISY scene.

Also, there is 2 cases to brightness setting.

Relative (Example: Alexa, brighten kitchen)

This works on both ISY devices and ISY scenes, but slightly differently in the way it is handled.

Absolute (Example: Alexa, turn on kitchen to 80%)

This works on both devices and scenes, but it the case of a scene, the percentage is ignored. If it is > 0%, then the scene is turned on. This is a recent change which allows to add scenes exposed as lights used in Alexa routines. In that case, Alexa always sens a brightness command (absolute),  which normally would not work with ISY scenes.

Benoit

[steveng57]

Thanks Benoit.  Yeah I was just plain wrong about scenes.  Thanks for the correction/clarification.

Could use another: Does that mean we are recommended to add ISY "Scenes" as Echo "Lights" almost all the time?  Seems adding them as Echo "scenes" has little value.

Re the dimming thing...I've decided to solve my particular dimming problems another way...I already had "high, medium, and low" scenes for most of the rooms in my house, controlled by insteon keypad ABCD buttons anyway, so I just added those scenes to Echo with a bunch of spokens, ie. "Turn on Kitchen Lights High", "Turn on Kitchen Lights Low". etc  Seems to work pretty well, and it was already intuitive to the family since they knew the buttons already.

Also, for a couple of things like an Echo routine called "bedtime", it calls an ISY program (exposed as a "Light" to Echo) that turns off a bunch of scenes in the 'else' clause.  There is nothing in the 'if' and nothing in the 'then' (I NEVER want all those scenes coming on at once :-)).  Let me know if that's the recommended way to do it.  It  seems to work well enough, and MUCH faster than putting the scenes in the echo routine directly.