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 Tuesday at 10:08 PM2 days 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 Wednesday at 02:03 PM1 day 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.

With some additional hardware you could use Home Assistant with local processing.

12 hours ago, apostolakisl said:

, I am not aware of any cross platform voice system besides those two regardless.

I suppose, now that we have a little bit of integration with Apple HomeKit through the matter plug-in, one could use siri as a voice assistant. This may not be quite as good due to the limited device support but may work for some people.

19 hours ago, DJonas said:

. I have the Hue add-in for Eisy but that has also stopped working.

The Hue plugin underwent an update to address a change in the API, I understand. Unless your plugin updated automatically, I am surprised that it stopped working for you. It has been rock solid for me. I unknowingly updated my plugin and broke it, but was able to get it working again. Unfortunately, it took a not-small amount of time.

Between alexa and google home, I have settled upon alexa for a voice assistant, but mostly because that is what I started with. I have some google hub devices around and they seem to work fine as well. I just don’t want to take the time to maintain both systems. In both cases, it has taken me a while to get efficient at adding new devices and understanding of the difference between scenes and switches and lights and sensors and with navigating through the Alexa app. After time, it has gotten easier.

21 hours ago, DJonas said:

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 can comment on Alexa network connection. Perhaps you can try to work it out with Amazon support. But as far as interface - why do you even need to use it? I set up all voice commands via ISY portal. I don't think I ever needed to touch Alexa interface or app for that. Just set up devices and scenes. I can turn on (hue) bedroom lights (that will auto shut off in 30 min). I can open z-wave blinds. I can turn on some selected Insteon switches. Alexa doesn't like certain words but other than that, it mostly works fine for me.

Home assistant does have "voice preview edition". People have various success with it, from what I've read. But I do believe it's local only and doesn't need cloud. So definitely a plus there. I, personally, use Alexas as speaker so that doesn't really work for me. But if Amazon further messes it up down the line, will definitely look into it.

On 12/3/2025 at 7:46 AM, 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.

We have about 20 different Echo Dots and Echo Shows throughout our house - that makes for a lot of different devices listening for our voice commands. I actually feel better that all the devices can hear as it's nice when you have multiple levels in your home.

We have found it much easier to use a very clear syntax when putting together the names of all devices we want to control. We do things like “Turn on bedroom light” for primary bedroom and “Turn of name’s lights” for children’s bedrooms”, “Turn on names/room fan on / speed / etc.” as appropriate. Other examples: “Turn on Christmas Lights” for outside lights, “Turn on Christmas Tree lights” for the tree in our living room, “Turn on kitchen lights”.

We try to use naming conventions that would allow someone who has never been in our home to have a high likelihood of controlling the device or scene they want. When we have a visitor we basically tell them exactly that along with the primary commands – “Turn on…” / “Turn off…” . We point to something and say “Turn off kitchen table light”, "Turn on sunroom fan”, “Turn on main floor lights”, “Turn off basement lights”. I’m guessing the success rates of properly executing a device by our children’s friends or guests is well over 95%.

The new version of the Alexa operating system didn't work great at first release but it seems to be doing an excellent job at this point differentiating between voice commands and it works really well