ISY Portal Maintenance - 09-30-2018

[bmercier]

The maintenance should not have affected licences.

Please open a ticket with your UUID referencing this thread. Will check it out promptly.

Benoit

[Bumbershoot]

On 9/30/2018 at 6:31 AM, bmercier said:

Instructions below. This will be on the wiki soon.

 

Using Alexa Routines

<sniparoo>

 

 Now your ISY can talk!

<sniparoo>

This is great!  This is different than the Notify Me skill, as the audio enunciation only targets a single device, and there's immediate notification, without an alert tone and without the yellow notification ring on the echo's.

My immediate use for this is to announce my arrival home to my wife when she's in her art studio, without making the announcement to the rest of the house.  The absence of the alert tone, as well as the need to ask for the notification is a plus for my application.

Nicely done!

[nathagt]

This is amazing. I've already created routines to announce my arrival, an opening of the garage door when I'm in the shower, welcome messages based on the user who disarmed the security system, among others. Great work, Benoit.

I read somewhere on the Alexa announcement that you'd eventually be able to ask Alexa what the status of a sensor is. I tried this and it didn't work yet. Is this something that will be available later? 

[bmercier]

37 minutes ago, nathagt said:

I read somewhere on the Alexa announcement that you'd eventually be able to ask Alexa what the status of a sensor is. I tried this and it didn't work yet. Is this something that will be available later? 

Let me share with you some of the inner workings.

At the API level, Alexa can query the status of motion sensor or contact sensor. Whenever you use the Alexa app to see the status of a sensor, this uses the API.

Now, in the case of a contact sensor, I know you can ask "Alexa, is <sensor> closed?". Same for open.

I'm not aware what is/if there is a vernacular to query a motion sensor. If there is one and you can figure out what it is, I can tell you the API to actually query the sensor is implemented and will work.

Benoit

[larryllix]

15 minutes ago, bmercier said:

Let me share with you some of the inner workings.

At the API level, Alexa can query the status of motion sensor or contact sensor. Whenever you use the Alexa app to see the status of a sensor, this uses the API.

Now, in the case of a contact sensor, I know you can ask "Alexa, is <sensor> closed?". Same for open.

I'm not aware what is/if there is a vernacular to query a motion sensor. If there is one and you can figure out what it is, I can tell you the API to actually query the sensor is implemented and will work.

Benoit

Nice development! Is there a way to query an analogue value? eg: Alexa. what is the value of MS humidity?

[bmercier]

2 minutes ago, larryllix said:

Nice development! Is there a way to query an analogue value? eg: Alexa. what is the value of MS humidity?

Not that I know of.

If you can get the humidity to a state variable, and expose the variable as a light, the brightness level could be queried. But I don't know if there is a vernacular for this. I did not find it when V3 was released, but perhaps Amazon added it. Not sure.

Benoit

[nathagt]

50 minutes ago, bmercier said:

Let me share with you some of the inner workings.

At the API level, Alexa can query the status of motion sensor or contact sensor. Whenever you use the Alexa app to see the status of a sensor, this uses the API.

Now, in the case of a contact sensor, I know you can ask "Alexa, is <sensor> closed?". Same for open.

I'm not aware what is/if there is a vernacular to query a motion sensor. If there is one and you can figure out what it is, I can tell you the API to actually query the sensor is implemented and will work.

Benoit

So it looks like I can create a motion sensor from a state variable, but I can only create a contact sensor from a device. Is this by design? I would like to create a contact sensor from a state variable for my garage door. It also appears that not every device shows up under devices, not sure if this has always been this way. I have a z-wave tilt sensor but not all of the nodes are available under devices. 

[kohai]

ooooh, interesting.  This solves the limitation of the ring notification that stopped me from trying more stuff.

[bmercier]

6 hours ago, nathagt said:

So it looks like I can create a motion sensor from a state variable, but I can only create a contact sensor from a device. Is this by design? I would like to create a contact sensor from a state variable for my garage door. It also appears that not every device shows up under devices, not sure if this has always been this way. I have a z-wave tilt sensor but not all of the nodes are available under devices. 

Variables can only be exposed by as motion sensors, and this is by design. I figured that the only use case would be to trigger routines, so this was sufficient. But I understand that querying if the garage door is open is an interesting one. 

The list of devices shown has not changed. There are devices that are excluded, such as Remotelinc nodes, range extenders, energy nodes.

If you have a node missing that you would like to see there, such as your zwave tilt sensor, please PM me the output of the ZWave node. 

/rest/nodes/<your node>

Benoit

[bgrubb1]

I can’t for the life of me get this to work. I have a state variable called alexa_test that I change via a hidden door sensor (also tried node status from my dsc panel) I watch the state of the variable and it changes correctly. I have a amazon routine set up multiple ways including seeing the device change in the Alexa app. It is enabled. Telling the app to play the spoken works correctly, but opening the door and seeing the state variable change does not result in Alexa saying the spoken.  Am I missing a step ?. Any suggestions ?

...Barry

[south]

I too am not getting this to work. I must be not to smart either. I can have the routine run in the app but not from the ISY. I also can see the variable change from 0 to 1 but no speech from Alexa. Maybe I am  missing a step some where also.

[bmercier]

Here's some troubleshooting tips:

• In the Alexa spoken window, make sure "Live update" is enabled.
• Make sure in your routine action that it speaks to the correct echo (A common mistake, at least for me, is to have the wrong echo)
• On the routine, use the menu | Play routine. Make sure it does what you expect.
• Try deleting the routine and recreate it. If for example you created a routine triggered by a variable exposed as an contact sensor, then you change it to a motion sensor in ISY Portal. The routine will no longer work.
• If nothing works, find the device in the Alexa app, and check the status. It is refreshed every 2 seconds or so. This should always work.

[asbril]

23 minutes ago, south said:

I must be not to smart either.

Sounds like me..............

[south]

I have deleted and rebuilt  many times without any results. I am able to get Alexa to speak from the app. I have deleted from the portal and redid them all and did a discover many times. I can see the variable change but it does not fire any response.

[keepersg]

On ‎9‎/‎30‎/‎2018 at 6:31 AM, bmercier said:

Quote

In addition to ISY nodes and ELK zones, you can also expose a state variable as a motion sensor. When configuring this, you need to specify a "Motion detected value". Whenever the state variable will be set to that value, the motion sensor status will be set to "Detected". Any other value will set the motion sensor to "Not detected".

 

 

Thanks for adding this capability.  My system for leak detection in the furnace room now includes a spoken alert from Alexa.  Works great!

[bmercier]

1 minute ago, south said:

I have deleted and rebuilt  many times without any results. I am able to get Alexa to speak from the app. I have deleted from the portal and redid them all and did a discover many times. I can see the variable change but it does not fire any response.

Is "Live update" is enabled?

Can you find the device in the Alexa app, and check the status? Can you set it to detected/not-detected based on the variable value?

[bgrubb1]

Live update was my issue.   Thank you.   It does however take 10 plus seconds from variable change to spoken. Is that normal ??

[south]

Yes it is set to auto update. In the app I can see the motion sensor change to "motion detected" then change back to " no motion detected" but no vocal responses. I do have my echo in the room with me selected.

Edited October 4, 2018 by south

[bmercier]

40 minutes ago, bgrubb1 said:

Live update was my issue.   Thank you.   It does however take 10 plus seconds from variable change to spoken. Is that normal ??

It may.

As per Amazon specs, state changes are debounced. They can't be more often than every 30 seconds. 

So, if there was no activity in the last 30 seconds, the change should be fairly immediate.

If it went detected, it won't go to non-detected state until 30 (or more).

Benoit

[bmercier]

40 minutes ago, south said:

Yes it is set to auto update. In the app I can see the motion sensor change to "motion detected" then change back to " no motion detected" but no vocal responses. I do have my echo in the room with me selected.

So we know that:

• Your spoken is correctly set.
• It has been discovered by Alexa.
• You are changing your state variable to the correct values.

Now, the issue could be:

Live update not enabled (But you already checked that it is enabled)

So, what's left is the routine itself.

Please delete and re-create the routine. Make sure the action works by doing a "play routine".

Benoit

 

[bgrubb1]

That seems about right. First time is 2 seconds. Thank you again

[south]

I can "play routine" and that works. But when I manually change the variable everything works but the vocal response is not heard. I am at a loss as what to do now.

Thanks.

[nathagt]

42 minutes ago, south said:

I can "play routine" and that works. But when I manually change the variable everything works but the vocal response is not heard. I am at a loss as what to do now.

Thanks.

I would try the following:

1. Try using a different echo if possible
2. Try having the routine do something in addition to speaking (like send a message to the app) to verify if the routine is being kicked off
3. Check volume level of the echo
4. Make sure the variable isn't already set to the "trigger motion" value in all your tests
5. Try using a program to change the variable instead of changing it manually (IF time is 1130am THEN set var = 1)
6. Try running the routine with "not detected" for 1 min to see if it runs

[nathagt]

On 10/2/2018 at 8:47 PM, bmercier said:

Variables can only be exposed by as motion sensors, and this is by design. I figured that the only use case would be to trigger routines, so this was sufficient. But I understand that querying if the garage door is open is an interesting one. 

The list of devices shown has not changed. There are devices that are excluded, such as Remotelinc nodes, range extenders, energy nodes.

If you have a node missing that you would like to see there, such as your zwave tilt sensor, please PM me the output of the ZWave node. 

/rest/nodes/<your node>

Benoit

Would you consider allowing state variable to be created at contact sensors as well? I'm finding that a lot of my use cases are better suited for contact sensors and have the added benefit of being able to query their status. Besides the garage door, I have DSCLink set up and all the zones populate as state variables. It would be nice to simply ask "is the bedroom window open?" and get a response. I've so far not had any success querying the status of a motion sensor. 

[bmercier]

On 10/4/2018 at 12:34 PM, nathagt said:

Would you consider allowing state variable to be created at contact sensors as well? I'm finding that a lot of my use cases are better suited for contact sensors and have the added benefit of being able to query their status. Besides the garage door, I have DSCLink set up and all the zones populate as state variables. It would be nice to simply ask "is the bedroom window open?" and get a response. I've so far not had any success querying the status of a motion sensor. 

Thanks for the suggestion. This will be implemented.

Benoit