How does EISY work with SCENES, KPLs, and Alexa?

[baabm]

HISTORY:

In my ISY994, I had a scene called HOME. It has only 3 KPL push buttons in it that are all controllers. So pushing any one of them turns the scene on or off.

There are also two (enabled) programs (SET HOME or SET AWAY) that check the control of each of those switches and then does stuff (sets variables, turns things on or off, etc).  I was using mobilinc at the time and I gave the home scene a name HOME that was seen by Alexa.

I had an Alexa routine such that if I said ‘Alexa, I’m leaving, it would turn the scene off and the program SET AWAY would run, and conversely, if I said Alexa, Im home, the scene would turn on and the program SET HOME would run.

TODAY’s problem:

So I switch to EISY and try to implement this in UD mobile.

I have a Favorite in UD mobile called HOME. It is  a conditional favorite that runs a disabled program called set away/home. So when I push the button on UDM, it runs either SET HOME or SET AWAY, and the scene HOME that contains the 3 KPLs changes state and all the stuff that is supposed to happen, happens as expected. This works fine.

When I tried to implement this in Alexa, I couldn’t get it to work.

So I just tried manually changing the state of HOME SCENE from the HOME SCREEN of UDM and although the 3 KPLs change state when I do that, neither program (SET HOME or SET AWAY) run. This doesn’t seem right to me.

So I decided to look at one of the 3 KPLs on the HOME page of UDM and I noticed that it just shows the status of the switch, there is no way to change that status.

And when I change the status of the Home SCENE from the HOME SCREEN, the status of each of the 3 switches changes but it doesn’t trigger the programs that are linked to them.

Right now, I can’t figure out how to give something an Alexa name and have these programs run.

Is there another way for me to get this working with Alexa?

Thanks

 

[Javi]

KPL buttons, with the exception of the button controlling a load, can not be controlled directly. KPL buttons must be controlled by a scene, this is an Insteon limitation. This explains why they can't be controlled directly from UDM.

My guess for Alexa is the program needs to be controlled not the scene. This would make it work like UDM as Alexa will runThen for on and runElse for off.

My guess for the program not being triggered is that it is using "control" instead of "status" so it only runs when the buttons touched not when status is changed.

[baabm]

Thanks for the response.

I finally got it to work the way I want it to. I wasn't sure what the following sentence meant

4 hours ago, Javi said:

My guess for the program not being triggered is that it is using "control" instead of "status" so it only runs when the buttons touched not when status is changed.

- should it be checking the status of the 3 KPLs or of the scene (although It appears you can't check the status of a scene), should I create a new program or modify the existing one, should it be enabled or disabled....

So since I wanted to use Alexa routines to run set home and set away, and I didn't know how to have a routine run a Then or an ELSE, I created 2 programs with only THENs, one to run set home and one to run set away. I gave them each unique spokens. I then wrote Alexa routines so I can say I'm leaving or I'm home and it will respond with appropriate sayings and do other stuff that isn't connected to EISY (yet).

There may be an easier way to do this, but this is working now, so I'm happy.

Thanks

[Javi]

The quoted answer was for this statement

On 9/6/2023 at 2:52 PM, baabm said:

So I just tried manually changing the state of HOME SCENE from the HOME SCREEN of UDM and although the 3 KPLs change state when I do that, neither program (SET HOME or SET AWAY) run. This doesn’t seem right to me.

The Scene was "Controlled" not the KPLs.  So if the IF Condition of the Program is looking for the KPLs to be "Controlled" then the program will not trigger.   If the Program IF Condition is looking for "Status" should be triggered, assuming the condition is fulfilled.