Over the last few weeks I have been working on a major upgrade to to the ALexa-Hue Bridge Plugin - So much so that I have decided it is worthy of a new version number i.e. V3.
The major feature I have added is for Alexa to be able to directly control Indigo Actions in addition to Indigo Devices.
To facilitate this I have had to do some fundamental changes to how the plugin works.
At the moment in Version 2, if an Indigo device is added to Alexa, then internal to the Indigo Device there is information (properties) stored as to which Alexa-Hue Bridge the Device belongs to and also its alternate Alexa name if set. The V2 plugin scans devices to determine if the device is linked to an Alexa device and to which Alexa-Hue Bridge a device belongs to. This method would be become overly complicated when trying to align Alexa Devices (e.g. names know to Alexa) to a multiplicity of Actions.
The new version allows you to define all the the Alexa Devices and decided whether they are Indigo Devices or Indigo Actions. The Devices works pretty much as before. With Actions, you can assign an ON Action, an OFF Action and a DIM action.
in addition you can assign an ON/OFF variable which will be set to True or False dependent on whether you asked Alexa to turn the device on or off. This is done before the ON or OFF actions are called and so the variable can be accessed in a common action to determine the On/Off state.
You can also assign a DIM variable. So when you ask Alexa to dim a device to say 50%, the value 50 will be updated into the variable and the associated DIM action will be called. This means that the DIM action can access the variable and process accordingly.
As in version 2, Version 3 supports multiple Alexa-Hue bridges.
The current state of play is definitely "alpha" testing. However, the basics work, device and actions are being controlled by Alexa.
I am now working through the code to make sure there is enough error checking in place. I also want to add in some logic if at all possible, to ease the migration from V2 to V3.
I anticipate being able to release this as a beta within a week.