Home Automation Skill for Alexa - HomeSeer has done it!

Posted on
Mon Feb 20, 2017 6:24 pm
ricvieira offline
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Home Automation Skill for Alexa - HomeSeer has done it!

Just saw that HomeSeer implemented an Alexa skill that allows for quite sophisticated commands. I am currently using the Alexa-Hue bridge which is okay for basic commands, but reading HomeSeer's skill made my mouth water :P .

http://homeseer.com/amazon-echo-integration.html

Posted on
Tue Feb 21, 2017 4:03 pm
jay (support) offline
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Re: Home Automation Skill for Alexa - HomeSeer has done it!

Yes - it's on our feature request list. We wrote a blog post about it some time ago. Unfortunately, Amazon hasn't addressed the limitations, particularly the configuration/security issues, so it's still a very large undertaking.

Jay (Indigo Support)
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Posted on
Thu Apr 06, 2017 7:12 am
taber offline
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Re: Home Automation Skill for Alexa - HomeSeer has done it!

Have you looked at the new Amazon Alexa API ?

https://developer.amazon.com/blogs/alex ... -dashboard

Are we any closer to seeing a release with Alexa support?

Posted on
Thu Apr 06, 2017 1:36 pm
bkmar1192 offline
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Re: Home Automation Skill for Alexa - HomeSeer has done it!

Reading through the HS article I accomplished almost everything that the article talks about except for getting Alexa to talk back to me.

The only oddity is saying, "Alexa, turn on {action}". However, I don't have to say, "Alexa, tell Indigo to...". So I view it as a trade off.

Some of my main commands:
"Alexa, turn on main lights"
"Alexa, set living room speakers to 75"
"Alexa, turn on/off front lock"





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Posted on
Thu Apr 06, 2017 2:35 pm
jay (support) offline
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Re: Home Automation Skill for Alexa - HomeSeer has done it!

taber wrote:
Have you looked at the new Amazon Alexa API ?

https://developer.amazon.com/blogs/alex ... -dashboard

Are we any closer to seeing a release with Alexa support?


That's doesn't address the issues I outlined above. So, no, it doesn't help us any. We still have to address security and authentication on our side. we're looking at how to best and most securely address that.

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Posted on
Tue Jun 04, 2019 10:17 pm
whmoorejr offline
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Re: Home Automation Skill for Alexa - HomeSeer has done it!

The Alexa Connect Kit...Does this open any doors? I'm not totally sure what it is.... just that it looks like a way to skip around the Alexa cloud authentication security issues to use the developer's service....

https://developer.amazon.com/alexa/connected-devices/alexa-connect-kit

or....

Is it possible to add the "Sensors API" definitions to the hue plugin? If we could add a virtual sensor, you could set up routines within Alexa that could do fancy Alexa things... like announce stuff.

https://developer.amazon.com/docs/smarthome/build-smart-home-skills-for-sensors.html

Bill
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Posted on
Wed Jun 05, 2019 10:02 am
jay (support) offline
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Re: Home Automation Skill for Alexa - HomeSeer has done it!

whmoorejr wrote:
The Alexa Connect Kit...Does this open any doors? I'm not totally sure what it is.... just that it looks like a way to skip around the Alexa cloud authentication security issues to use the developer's service....

https://developer.amazon.com/alexa/connected-devices/alexa-connect-kit


This is for hardware makers to add their hardware (blenders, washing machines, etc) more easily to the Alexa ecosystem. Doesn't apply for us.

whmoorejr wrote:
Is it possible to add the "Sensors API" definitions to the hue plugin? If we could add a virtual sensor, you could set up routines within Alexa that could do fancy Alexa things... like announce stuff.

https://developer.amazon.com/docs/smarthome/build-smart-home-skills-for-sensors.html


Once a real Alexa Skill can be built, then the skill should be able to expose Indigo Sensor devices in this way. This isn't the place to discuss the Hue Plugin, so you'd want to clarify and post your question on that forum.

Jay (Indigo Support)
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Posted on
Wed Jun 05, 2019 6:15 pm
whmoorejr offline
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Re: Home Automation Skill for Alexa - HomeSeer has done it!

jay (support) wrote:
This is for hardware makers to add their hardware (blenders, washing machines, etc) more easily to the Alexa ecosystem. Doesn't apply for us.

Thanks for the quick reply Jay. I wasn't sure if it was something that could be incorporated at the reflector level... the documentation wasn't very clear to me.

jay (support) wrote:
Once a real Alexa Skill can be built, then the skill should be able to expose Indigo Sensor devices in this way. This isn't the place to discuss the Hue Plugin, so you'd want to clarify and post your question on that forum.

I misspoke. I was actually referring to the Alexa Hue Bridge plugin.... so I'm heading over to Alexa-Hue Bridge.

Bill
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Posted on
Wed Jun 05, 2019 8:41 pm
ckeyes888 offline
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Re: Home Automation Skill for Alexa - HomeSeer has done it!

Assuming there was native Alexa support, would the commands have to be prefaced with, “Tell Indigo”?
If that’s the case I prefer it the way it is.

Carl

Posted on
Wed Jun 05, 2019 8:57 pm
whmoorejr offline
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Re: Home Automation Skill for Alexa - HomeSeer has done it!

ckeyes888 wrote:
“Tell Indigo”?
If that’s the case I prefer it the way it is.


I agree. The way it is... you can control anything in indigo. There are only two downsides...
1) You have to use "light" commands (turn off, turn on, set to 50 <-dimmers). For most stuff that works great. But I can never remember if "Turn on front door lock" unlocks the door or locks the door.

2) One way communication only. Alexa can control Indigo, but Indigo can't really control Alexa.

I have tried various approaches to using Airfoil on several devices to do announcements which have all been problematic. Alexa has this down, but it's hard to get her to make a custom announcement based off an indigo action. I currently have routines that listen for "Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, etc..." Each routine runs a unique announcement. So if my wife's code is used to unlock the front door, the Mac speaker next to my echo dot speaks "Alexa, run Bravo", then that routine is launched to welcome her / let everyone know Mom's home.

Hopefully, Alexa will expand to trigger routines off lights. Right now they only trigger off voice, schedule, echo button, location, and sensor devices (contact or motion).

I could hack a button and connect to an I/O device... but that would be one button and one I/O device per routine.

Bill
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Posted on
Thu Jun 06, 2019 7:34 am
siclark offline
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Re: Home Automation Skill for Alexa - HomeSeer has done it!

ckeyes888 wrote:
Assuming there was native Alexa support, would the commands have to be prefaced with, “Tell Indigo”?
If that’s the case I prefer it the way it is.

Carl


That used to be the way you had to control harmony remotes but now you can drop that through use of scenes. Maybe we could do similar with indigo?



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Posted on
Thu Jun 06, 2019 9:33 am
jay (support) offline
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Re: Home Automation Skill for Alexa - HomeSeer has done it!

There are 2 types of Alexa skills: smart home skills and custom skills. The former doesn't require a user to preface "tell Indigo" because once a full skill is available Alexa would just see an Indigo switch (for instance) as any other switch, so "turn on Living Room Lights" would get translated into the appropriate command to "Living Room Lights" which the Alexa would then dispatch to the skill that "owns" that device, in this case Indigo.

The custom skill would be necessary to implement stuff that's not defined by the smart home skills API - perhaps like speaking the value of a variable or executing an Action Group.

The good news is that Amazon recently started allowing a single skill to contain both of those types in the same skill. Before, you would have to installed 2 separate skills.

Also, yes, there are a couple of ways to help avoid the use of "tell Indigo" as well that are now part of the Alexa experience.

Jay (Indigo Support)
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Posted on
Thu Jun 06, 2019 10:10 am
racarter offline
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Re: Home Automation Skill for Alexa - HomeSeer has done it!

whmoorejr wrote:
The way it is... you can control anything in indigo. There are only two downsides...
1) You have to use "light" commands (turn off, turn on, set to 50 <-dimmers). For most stuff that works great. But I can never remember if "Turn on front door lock" unlocks the door or locks the door.



Why not use an Alexa routine for this? I can say “Alexa, open the curtains” and that turns on an Indigo switch device via the Hue plugin.

Posted on
Thu Jun 06, 2019 3:53 pm
whmoorejr offline
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Re: Home Automation Skill for Alexa - HomeSeer has done it!

racarter wrote:
Why not use an Alexa routine for this? I can say “Alexa, open the curtains” and that turns on an Indigo switch device via the Hue plugin.


Because I'm an idiot and even though the answer has been sitting right in front of me, I never put that together until you said it. Thank you!!

Bill
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Posted on
Thu Jun 06, 2019 11:07 pm
RogueProeliator offline
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Re: Home Automation Skill for Alexa - HomeSeer has done it!

The good news is that Amazon recently started allowing a single skill to contain both of those types in the same skill. Before, you would have to installed 2 separate skills.

So, simple, right? Have it by Sunday? :: ducks ::

Now all you need is the Indigo community to donate a $50k so you can contract that out and be done with it. LOL

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