Alexa confuses "Sunset"

[Chevelle]

I recently moved and am setting up my home automation from scratch.  (I moved from the old ISY box to EISY.)  After a few initial hiccups, I am adding more devices and integrating more with Alexa.

One of my programs is called DoSunset.  When it is 30 minutes before sunset, several of the lights in the house go on.  It all works great.  That program is also added to Alexa.  The spoken word is "It's Sunset."

Here is the issue.  When I tell Alexa, "It's Sunset" it goes to the Big Sky skill and starts telling me about when sunset will be.  My other programs are working fine with Alexa but this one gets fouled up.

I realize this is an Alexa thing but has anyone else run across this and how did you get around it?

[Guy Lavoie]

Finding good, reliable and non conflicting spokens becomes a challenge as the number of them grows. I have over 60 different ones and creating any new ones is getting difficult. Then you gotta remember them all!

[larryllix]

It takes some real thinking and creativity to fabricate so many names. There has become so many taboo words also that Alexa gets confused with.

For my motorised blinds I had a big problem for different positions and finally settled on"

Alexa...
Open "full living room blinds"
Close "full living room blinds"
Open "living room blinds" Opens to about 2/3 and cuts some sky glare.
Close "living room blinds" closes to about 1/3 but leaves a gap behind couch, or A/C unit in another location.

Any other position of "partial" or "full" would make Alexa angry an I am tired of sleeping on the couch.  

[apostolakisl]

the hardest thing is remembering the exact words.  Need to get a Grok assistant that can recognize what you want rather than requiring literal requests.  And the real pisser is when you start to say what you want and halfway through realize you are saying the words in the wrong order and then Alexa gets all confused and you have to wait for it to clear out before you can go again.

[Guy Lavoie]

Next step: Alexa, please remind me your device name for the living room lights? 🤨

[Chevelle]

I have several different lights in the livingroom.

Grandfather Clock - An Insteon on/off module that turns on and off the light in the clock
Floor Light1 - One floor "up light"
Floor Light2 - Another floor "up light"
Table Lamp - a Hue color bulb in a table lamp
Fan Light - The lights in the ceiling fan

All of these respond OK with Alexa.  I will group the two floor lights so that they both do the same thing when commanded instead of having to command them separately.

I am not sure why, but things are working better now after fiddling with things.  I am not sure if Alexa has "learned" anything or that I am now doing things slightly differently.

I have an IoX program called DoSunset.  It affects most of the lights on my system, not just the livingroom.  It automatically runs 30 minutes before sunset.  If it is cloudy, sometimes I want it to run earlier and so I have it setup to run by Alexa when I ask.  If found that if I set the spoken word in the portal to "It's Sunset" and also set the voice command in Alexa to "It's Sunset", it runs.

I have a "TV Time" scene for when I want to watch television.  It doesn't work if I have the Alexa voice command set to "It's TV Time" but it does work if the voice command is just "TV Time."  I had the same problem in my last house when I had scenes for watching television in the family room and for the home theater.  "It's TV Time" and "It's Movie Time" did not work but if they were just "TV Time" and "Movie Time", they worked.  Just quirks of Alexa.

[slimypizza]

I guess this is just another quirk of Alexa but I’ve had the voice command “It’s movie time” in our house for a few years now.  It correctly turns off all lights in and around the family room for watching TV.  Maybe it’s because I don’t have any other commands beginning with “It’s” so there is no potential conflict.

[apostolakisl]

This discussion got me playing with Alexa a bit.

I discovered that you can have each device respond uniquely to a command.  So for example, the Alexa on my back patio would respond to "fans high" by turning on the patio fans, and that same command in the exercise rm would turn on the fans there.

To the point here, by isolating commands to the relevantly located Alexa, Each Alexa will have fewer commands to understand and thus lower the chance of it confusing commands.

[larryllix]

2 hours ago, apostolakisl said:

This discussion got me playing with Alexa a bit.

I discovered that you can have each device respond uniquely to a command.  So for example, the Alexa on my back patio would respond to "fans high" by turning on the patio fans, and that same command in the exercise rm would turn on the fans there.

To the point here, by isolating commands to the relevantly located Alexa, Each Alexa will have fewer commands to understand and thus lower the chance of it confusing commands.

I keep contemplating that style but have avoided assigning rooms until now.

How would you operate the fans in another room then? Say to operate the fans in the exercise room from the back patio? Can two different names be assigned? Absolute and relative?

[apostolakisl]

3 hours ago, larryllix said:

I keep contemplating that style but have avoided assigning rooms until now.

How would you operate the fans in another room then? Say to operate the fans in the exercise room from the back patio? Can two different names be assigned? Absolute and relative?

I assume you could use "<name of location> fans <speed>" and create a routine that is not device specific.  And the do "fans <speed>" that is device specific.  Personally don't see myself controlling fans in a room I am not located in except for my shut down routine, and that is a single command that triggers an ISY program that then executes a shut down of all kinds of stuff.