I started many years ago with an ISY and upgraded the system a few years ago to an Eisy. These primarily control Insteon devices but have grown over the years to include a few Hue devices, some Yolink. It has all worked pretty well. Except integration of voice control with Aleza.

While I have been able to make Alexa voice control work, it is inconsistent. Alexa loses the connection. Worst of all, Alexa, hands down, has the most frustrating and unintuitive interface I have ever experience. They should be ashamed to produce it.

I am looking for a good approach to create some simple voice controls that will work with the Eisy. Basically, I am controlling some office and bedroom lights. All are Insteon based and work within the UD interface. Two of the bedroom lamps are Phillips Hue bulbs. I have the Hue add-in for Eisy but that has also stopped working. I can control the Hue lights directly with the Hue App.

I'm wondering which way to go, of give up. Apple Homekit with hub? Home Assistant? Or something else. Whatever it is, the interface needs to be user friendly. I am more than happy to spend a few bucks to throw the Alexa product in the trash.,

Any Suggestions?

Edited 16 hours ago16 hr by DJonas

There is only Google and Alexa that natively integrate with isy. For that matter, I am not aware of any cross platform voice system besides those two regardless. I use Alexa, and while I agree that it is a bit convoluted, it consistently works once you know what you are doing. I find that using Alexa routines is really the way to go. I prefer to expose my ISY devices to Alexa with the "spoken" purposefully not the logical name. I prefer to use routines to trigger things which opens up your phrase structure, not just "turn on x". You can also specify that only certain Alexa's respond to certain commands.

I'd be interested in knowing how to specify that "only certain Alexa's respond to certain commands." Can you point me in that direction? I have Alexa devices in guest bedrooms in the house each with a different name (Echo, Ziggy, Computer). It would be nice to prohibit one room from commanding actions in other parts of the house.

I used mine though my ecobee thermostat. Initially worked great for about 8 months, then started either ignoring the command, indicating it completed the command-but nothing happened, or a response said it couldn't do it or didn't understand. Even with native functions like a timer, not isy integration

Wife got frustrated. I shut Alexa off in ecobee and added switches where they were voice only. I could pull off Google home with devices I have, but not worth it to me.

Edited 39 minutes ago39 min by paulbates

16 minutes ago, slimypizza said:

I'd be interested in knowing how to specify that "only certain Alexa's respond to certain commands." Can you point me in that direction? I have Alexa devices in guest bedrooms in the house each with a different name (Echo, Ziggy, Computer). It would be nice to prohibit one room from commanding actions in other parts of the house.

Here is a forum describing it as well as an example of mine. I have only done this from routines.