Defeating the stupid Nest naming convention, so you can control your lights

[jtara92101]

Just getting used to 5.x/Polyglot/Polisy and just set up Google Home on portal.

I don't use the Nest node server, not sure if it even works or if there is some use for it. I already transitioned my account.

I have a related concern, though, and ugly workaround...

I set up a few commands for Google Home e.g. to turn control living room and kitchen main scenes.

I ran into a roadblock because Nest defaults to naming after the room the Nest is in.

Well,  my Nest is in the living room, so it's called Living Room.

Which is insanely stupid. Because then I can't have a Google Home scene Living Room. It will turn the Nest on/off instead of the lights!

I found out the ugly solution is to make a custom room - "Nest".

I had to change it in BOTH the Nest app and Google Home app before things would work as I expect.

Now I can say "turn living room on". And it will turn on the lights. Not the thermostat...

Is there a better way? Of course, now my Nest is shown in a room called Nest...

Edited May 17, 2020 by jtara92101

[lilyoyo1]

I use ecobee and simply say turn on the AC or heat. This works without issue

[jtara92101]

Haven't decided yet if I am going to replace the Nest with an Ecobee. But pretty sure I will. In the mean time, Google's naming conventions are driving me batty.

Next problem I have is that I have a Chromcast device. It's of course called Living Room.

So, I guess I have to do something wacky with it as well so that I can turn my living room lights on and off.

I think I should take a clue from one of my neighbors. She's an Alexa fan. And one of her lights is named "Bob"...

Off topic, but I guess Insteon scenes are less than useful for controlling from Google Home. Because you can only turn them on or off.

Going to try controlling the switch that is linked to the scene instead.

But haven't found a trigger word that will work yet, because of the "multiple things called living room" problem. So, I think I will call that switch Chester.

I have a red lamp. That is, it's a decorative lamp with a red fiberglass shade. At least "red lamp" works, and also makes sense.

Edited May 17, 2020 by jtara92101

[jtara92101]

OK, giving up for now.

I set up Chester. The keypadlinc that controls the living room lights scene.

Now Home app shows Living room lights. I can turn on or off in the Home app. But it just turns the red lamp on/off.

Google Home does nothing speaker does nothing now.

I've been able to control individual lights. Maybe best to stick with that. I just have to give them silly names.

Edited May 17, 2020 by jtara92101

[jtara92101]

I've deleted the Universal Devices device from Google Home.

Too complicated. I can get up and push buttons easily enough.

I guess you have to do this in order to delete anything you've added anyway? You have to delete ALL of the spokens, right and delete the device, right?

Not ready for prime time.

Geez, Red Lamp is still there. Even though deleted along with everything else.

Arggh! Red Lamp won't go away. The Universal Devices integration won't go away.

 

[lilyoyo1]

3 minutes ago, jtara92101 said:

I've deleted the Universal Devices device from Google Home.

Too complicated. I can get up and push buttons easily enough.

I guess you have to do this in order to delete anything you've added anyway? You have to delete ALL of the spokens, right and delete the device, right?

Not ready for prime time.

Geez, Red Lamp is still there. Even though deleted along with everything else.

Arggh! Red Lamp won't go away. The Universal Devices integration won't go away.

 

I'm not sure why you're having such a hard time. I simply tell Google or alexa to turn my lights on or off and they simply work. If something is in the room you don't have to say the room name. It's literally as simple as saying turn on the light. If I want to control something in another room such as the master bedroom, I'll say turn off the master bedroom light. 

Most likely, the issues you're having is with how you have set up your system vs the system itself. 

[jtara92101]

1 hour ago, lilyoyo1 said:

I'm not sure why you're having such a hard time. I simply tell Google or alexa to turn my lights on or off and they simply work. If something is in the room you don't have to say the room name. It's literally as simple as saying turn on the light. If I want to control something in another room such as the master bedroom, I'll say turn off the master bedroom light.

We must be using entirely different things.

I'm using the Google Home integration available in the ISY Portal. Connectivity/Google Home.

You have to create a Spoken mapping for each action you want to be able to perform, AFAIK. Each to a device, scene, program, or variable.

Is there some way that it "just works"? What am I missing here?

My device names in ISY aren't the best to speak!

For example, I have scenes called "LR Main" "BR Main", etc. But scenes don't even seem that useful, since you can apparently only turn them on or off.

And devices called for example "BR Lamp Window".

Because when I set it up I wasn't thinking of convenient names for spoken commands.

To add to the trouble, Google insists of defaulting the name of my Nest to "Living Room" because it's been assigned to that room. As well as my Chromecast. So I have two devices called "Living Room" so good luck getting "Living Room" to turn on the lights! I try to turn on the living room lights, and it turns on the cooling...

I changed the name of the Nest. I had to create a room called "Nest"!

 

Edited May 18, 2020 by jtara92101

[lilyoyo1]

51 minutes ago, jtara92101 said:

We must be using entirely different things.

I'm using the Google Home integration available in the ISY Portal. Connectivity/Google Home.

You have to create a Spoken mapping for each action you want to be able to perform, AFAIK. Each to a device, scene, program, or variable.

Is there some way that it "just works"? What am I missing here?

My device names in ISY aren't the best to speak!

For example, I have scenes called "LR Main" "BR Main", etc. But scenes don't even seem that useful, since you can apparently only turn them on or off.

And devices called for example "BR Lamp Window".

Because when I set it up I wasn't thinking of convenient names for spoken commands.

To add to the trouble, Google insists of defaulting the name of my Nest to "Living Room" because it's been assigned to that room. As well as my Chromecast. So I have two devices called "Living Room" so good luck getting "Living Room" to turn on the lights! I try to turn on the living room lights, and it turns on the cooling...

I changed the name of the Nest. I had to create a room called "Nest"!

 

I use the portal for my google and alexa setups as well without any issues. At one time, I did use google and alexa speakers but have since switched over to using Sonos 1 speakers in their place. I do still have 2 google devices (a hub and clock). All work exactly the same. Even when I switched over, I didnt have to make any changes. The system itself just worked.

Everything you do starts with how you set your system up. Any shortcuts will only compound matters worse the farther you get. You say your naming covention in the ISY isnt the best. If thats the case, how can you expect things to work right 2 or 3 steps down?

For starters, you dont necessarily need to put the name of the device in your spoken. Using your kitchen for example. You dont need to put kitchen in front of each device. You can simply add them to the room in the portal with their name. Island can be called island not kitchen island. Cabinet lights can be called cabinet,breakfast nook can be called Nook, etc. etc. Once you add it to google, they should appear in the app in the assigned room. Then, when you're in the kitchen, simply saying turn on the island will turn that light on. For my setup, I simply used the lights I use most in the room to turn on. I dont try to control every single device as I dont want to remember specific phrases or names. When turning off, I trigger a program which turns off everything. That way, regardless of whats on, they all turn off. I can walk out and say turn off the lights. No phrasing or remembering what something is called. Whatever is on turns off.

 

Edited May 18, 2020 by lilyoyo1

[larryllix]

1 hour ago, jtara92101 said:

We must be using entirely different things.

I'm using the Google Home integration available in the ISY Portal. Connectivity/Google Home.

You have to create a Spoken mapping for each action you want to be able to perform, AFAIK. Each to a device, scene, program, or variable.

Is there some way that it "just works"? What am I missing here?

My device names in ISY aren't the best to speak!

For example, I have scenes called "LR Main" "BR Main", etc. But scenes don't even seem that useful, since you can apparently only turn them on or off.

And devices called for example "BR Lamp Window".

Because when I set it up I wasn't thinking of convenient names for spoken commands.

To add to the trouble, Google insists of defaulting the name of my Nest to "Living Room" because it's been assigned to that room. As well as my Chromecast. So I have two devices called "Living Room" so good luck getting "Living Room" to turn on the lights! I try to turn on the living room lights, and it turns on the cooling...

I changed the name of the Nest. I had to create a room called "Nest"!

 

You are missing the fact that the ISY Portal is a conversion table from ISY elements (programs,scenes, variables, devices, etc..) to vocal device names. It doesn't matter what your elements in ISY are named, you must supply independent name, or up to five different vocal names for each element you want to control.

eg. My Ceiling pot lights over my kitchen eating bar are named. Kitchen Lights, Kitchen bar lights, bar lights, counter lights, and kitchen counter lights. You have to remember one of them.

With Google I found you have to watch the multiple usage of any device name.
IOW: If you have red bedroom lights, and bedroom lights it will often confuse the two names. If you have 8 different colours for a light strip   eg. Red Bedroom lights, Blue Bedroom Lights, Orange Bedroom lights, etc... when you say Hey Google...turn off the bedroom lights. It would respond with OK...turning off eight devices, and send every one of the codes out flooding the comm channels.

After Google constantly changing their security systems and having to restart or create a new account, about three times now,  I stopped using my four GH devices. Now I found out  when my router would get a power blink, and they couldn't connect right away (competing with about 70 other devices), my GH devices would all start sending out their own SSID WiFi beacons on the last known WiFi channel and flooding my router's WiFi system, causing comm problems on my LAN. Now my sit in my junk box doing nothing and I rely on my 10 Alexa devices only.

Edited May 18, 2020 by larryllix

[asbril]

1 minute ago, larryllix said:

my kitchen eating bar are named. Kitchen Lights, Kitchen bar lights,

Why not simply call then "beer lights" ?

[larryllix]

1 minute ago, asbril said:

Why not simply call then "beer lights" ?

I drink and eat different things each day. I might have to change the vocals each day then.

[jtara92101]

4 hours ago, larryllix said:

You are missing the fact that the ISY Portal is a conversion table from ISY elements (programs,scenes, variables, devices, etc..) to vocal device names. It doesn't matter what your elements in ISY are named, you must supply independent name, or up to five different vocal names for each element you want to control.

No, that's exactly what I thought! So, we are on the same page.

Still unclear if the Google Home portal adapter will just automatically use the names I assigned to ISY devices.

Assumption is made here that one has a Google Home in each room. I don't. In fact I only have one. The place is so small, it can hear me in my office, living room, or kitchen. So, can't depend on the Google Home to locate where I am. I've been meaning to get a mini for the bedroom.

I was assuming you could use a voice prefix for the room to disambiguate. So, yes, I started out with just "lights'. And, so, I say "turn on the living room lights" and the air conditioning came on...

I'm going to re-add the Home connection and start over from scratch.

[asbril]

6 hours ago, jtara92101 said:

No, that's exactly what I thought! So, we are on the same page.

Still unclear if the Google Home portal adapter will just automatically use the names I assigned to ISY devices.

Assumption is made here that one has a Google Home in each room. I don't. In fact I only have one. The place is so small, it can hear me in my office, living room, or kitchen. So, can't depend on the Google Home to locate where I am. I've been meaning to get a mini for the bedroom.

I was assuming you could use a voice prefix for the room to disambiguate. So, yes, I started out with just "lights'. And, so, I say "turn on the living room lights" and the air conditioning came on...

I'm going to re-add the Home connection and start over from scratch.

I use pre-fixes such as "master fan" ; "office fan", etc and this works for me.

[larryllix]

6 hours ago, jtara92101 said:

No, that's exactly what I thought! So, we are on the same page.

Still unclear if the Google Home portal adapter will just automatically use the names I assigned to ISY devices.

Assumption is made here that one has a Google Home in each room. I don't. In fact I only have one. The place is so small, it can hear me in my office, living room, or kitchen. So, can't depend on the Google Home to locate where I am. I've been meaning to get a mini for the bedroom.

I was assuming you could use a voice prefix for the room to disambiguate. So, yes, I started out with just "lights'. And, so, I say "turn on the living room lights" and the air conditioning came on...

I'm going to re-add the Home connection and start over from scratch.

That was my problem. I started out with only devices in my Gathering Room and didn't use any prefixes. I have most of my devices with no room prefix like blue lights, red lights, TV, etc,.
When I started adding things like bedroom TV,  blue bedroom lights etc... Google got confused a lot, and with it's additional attempt at grouping devices, it didn't work well at all.
With Alexa, these combinations of prefixes and no prefixes, are not a problem, and I still have use them all except for All lights, which I changed for GH when I used it. When I would use All lights before bed, GH would shut my whole house off,  including the heat, making it's AI attempt assumptions.

 

ISY Portal doesn't send your ISY names for devices to GH/Alexa.

Edited May 18, 2020 by larryllix

[asbril]

32 minutes ago, larryllix said:

That was my problem. I started out with only devices in my Gathering Room and didn't use any prefixes. I have most of my devices with no room prefix like blue lights, red lights, TV, etc,.
When I started adding things like bedroom TV,  blue bedroom lights etc... Google got confused a lot, and with it's additional attempt at grouping devices, it didn't work well at all.
With Alexa, these combinations of prefixes and no prefixes, are not a problem, and I still have use them all except for All lights, which I changed for GH when I used it. When I would use All lights before bed, GH would shut my whole house off,  including the heat, making it's AI attempt assumptions.

 

ISY Portal doesn't send your ISY names for devices to GH/Alexa.

Larryllix, probably your hacienda is too large for GH........?

[larryllix]

3 hours ago, asbril said:

Larryllix, probably your hacienda is too large for GH........?

If I would have gone with GH rooms idea it may have worked better but it would have required renaming all my device vocals, once I figure out what was likely to be happening.

Eleven years now and we are thinking of taking off the switchplate labels for lights but I don;t know how to label the vocal commands now.
Alexa....give me a list of the closest light control commands