Triggering Alexa Routines from Indigo Events/Action Groups

Posted on
Sun May 30, 2021 4:14 pm
mgolden50 offline
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Triggering Alexa Routines from Indigo Events/Action Groups

I have been reviewing this draft description of the forthcoming Indigo/Alexa integration plugin. https://wiki.indigodomo.com/doku.php?id ... gins:alexa

Because I have 130 Alexa Hue-Bridge Actions published across 12 Hue-Bridges I had consiered just continuing to use the Hue-Bridge solution until I realized the the most important reason for switching to the new plugin is the protection it will provide from Amazon disabling the "back-door" connection relied upon by the Hue-Bridge plugin. So I'll republish all 130 and then some.

Although the new plugin will provide a mechanism for asking Alexa to speak the contents of a variable. I have found a very well implemented Alexa skill that supports an Indigo event triggering Alexa to play an Alexa routine which can be anything including announcing events.

The Alexa skill is called IFTTT-Trigger by mkZenze This skill provides 3 free triggers and unlimited number of triggers for $5/yr

It work by creating a doorbell type device in Alexa's devices that responds to an IFTTT webhook that has the same name as the IFTTT-trigger name. The trigger device can then be used for triggering an Alexa routine. It might prove useful to integrate a similar capability into a future release of the Alexa plugin.

It's important to note that the webhook must exactly match the trigger name for the trigger to work. Also if you happen to two identical triggers defined accidentally (as I did), the skill will stop creating new devices. I found it convenient to create a naming convention to make it easier to keep track of triggers on the Alexa app's Devices and Routines pages as well as in Indigo's Action Groups listings as shown in the attached screen shots:
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Posted on
Thu Jun 03, 2021 5:29 pm
jay (support) offline
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Re: Triggering Alexa Routines from Indigo Events/Action Grou

Added to the feature request list for the Alexa plugin. We'll investigate more.

Jay (Indigo Support)
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Posted on
Tue Aug 15, 2023 1:45 pm
ckeyes888 offline
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Re: Triggering Alexa Routines from Indigo Events/Action Grou

Ugh, been too long since I’ve set this up and now can’t remember how I did it.
I’ve created the web hooks but am stuck creating the Doorbell device in Alexa.
When you select Doorbell as a device it wants to discover it which isn’t possible since
it’s a virtual IFTTT device?
Appreciate any help in getting this working again.

Thanks,

Carl

Posted on
Wed Aug 16, 2023 3:08 pm
mgolden50 offline
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Re: Triggering Alexa Routines from Indigo Events/Action Grou



Hi Carl,

Well until, if, or when, Alexa routines can be triggering directly from within the Indigo Alexa plug-in, as byzantine as it is now to set up, the IFTTTrigger skill, it does work reliably--and has done so for me for over two years.

Here's the steps I use.
• In your Alexa app, search for and enable the IFTTTrigger skill. Making sure it is linked.
You can create three Alexa routine triggers for free. Unlimited for $5/yr (I have more than 50)
Add as many trigger names as you would like. Then press "next". After it's done processing it will start discovering the new triggers as Alexa trigger devices.
The new trigger names you have added will each show up as a trigger device with that name in Alexa's device list.

Note 1: (If you create any duplicate trigger names, no trigger after the duplicate in the list will work.) Remove any duplicates.
Note 2: (When checkin on how to write these instructions. I disabled the skill and couldn't re-enable it. After sending a message to info@mksense.com, the skill author got back to me
in several hours later apologizing that his SSL certificate had expired, And the service was back up. [first time anything this happened in two years.]

• You also need to create an IFTTT account if you don't already have one.
• Log-in to your IFTTT account and begin creating your Applet as follows:
• Click on "Explore" at the bottom of the screen.
Search for "AlexaActions"
Select "Alexa Actions by mkZense"
Click on "Add new account"
Click on "Login with Amazon. This will connect Alexa's trigger-actions function to the new IFTTTrigger skill.
• Save the applet.
• In your Alexa app, create new Alexa routines to do just about anything:
In the "When This Happens" section of the new routine look for a device under Smarthome with the same trigger name used in the skill's
trigger list. Then add the Alexa actions you want (including Alexa plug-in actions)
• Complete and save the Alexa routine.
• The final steps are to create Indigo Actions with an embedded script to send a web-hook to IFTTT (which will in turn trigger the Alexa routine.

Note 3: I use a naming convention to name triggers in both the skill and in Indigo so I can keep track of them.
In the skill I use "IFTTTrigger-CurtainOpen" as an example.
In Indigo I use the same name as the action's name. This groups all of the triggers in Alexa's device list. And I user a folder in Action Group
named "IFTTT Triggers to group all of the Indigo Alexa triggers

• Each trigger action should use a web-hook script like the following example:
Code: Select all
                        import requests
                        requests.get("https://mkzense.com/webhook/alexa/cdd4fdxxxxxxxfad3c82edfcb34xxxxx4b75e8f/IFTTTrigger-CurtainOpen")
                       

• The last entry in the script must match character-for character the trigger name your created in the skill.
• You can find the api key that follows "alexa/" in the script by going to "My Services" in the IFTTT app and clicking on "Web Hooks"
then click on the gear symbol and then on "generate key" Copy the new key and replace it in the example script above.
• As you keep creating new Indigo Alexa trigger actions just copy the script into each new action and just change the trigger names.

Happy triggering Please let me know if these instructions worked for you.

Posted on
Wed Aug 16, 2023 6:16 pm
ckeyes888 offline
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Re: Triggering Alexa Routines from Indigo Events/Action Grou

Perfect! Thanks so much!
What happened is the IFTTTtrigger wasn’t working so the doorbell devices weren’t showing up in Alexa.

Carl

Posted on
Tue Jan 23, 2024 10:21 am
mgolden50 offline
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Re: Triggering Alexa Routines from Indigo Events/Action Grou

As of 1/23/24 the Alexa Actions by mkZense website appears to be down. This disables about 10% of my automation functions. Hopefully It will be back up soon. But, it sure makes me wish that this basic capability would become part of the next release of the Indigo Alexa Plug-in, running on Indio's wonderfully stable platform.

Posted on
Tue Jan 23, 2024 2:22 pm
jay (support) offline
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Re: Triggering Alexa Routines from Indigo Events/Action Grou

I'm still unclear whether what he's doing is via a public API or through some other method. But in any event, until we hear more about Amazon's plans for Alexa (particularly in light of the recent information about a paid tier), we're not going to do any more enhancements to our integration.

Jay (Indigo Support)
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Posted on
Tue Jan 23, 2024 2:34 pm
mgolden50 offline
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Re: Triggering Alexa Routines from Indigo Events/Action Grou

Jay,
It's looking like the cause of the skill not working is that Amazon is disallowing IFTTT based skills because they have deprecated the API that IFTTT was using to integrate with Alexa and IFTTT either can't or won't update the skill to use the new API.

Posted on
Thu Jan 25, 2024 5:12 pm
mgolden50 offline
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Re: Triggering Alexa Routines from Indigo Events/Action Grou

Update:

Turns out there are multiple options for triggering Alexa routines using web hooks to trigger virtual "doorbell" devices which in-turn can activate Alexa routines.. All of them are based on a doorbell skills kit provided by Amazon: https://developer.amazon.com/en-US/docs/alexa/device-apis/alexa-doorbelleventsource.html. It also urns out there are many Alexa doorbell trigger skills available. Some are free, Some charge various amounts.. All of the skills are from unrecognized skill developers.

I selected one which is free and which does not require IFTTT called "Webhook Routine Trigger".: https://www.amazon.com/Michael-Dworkin-Webhook-Routine-Trigger/dp/B09RGPYHLL.

It took me several hours to recreate my forty-some IFTTT triggers with the new Webhook skill's triggers , to replace the IFTTT triggers within each Alexa routine with the new button device triggers, and to replace the URLs in each Indigo action group used to used to initiate Alexa routine triggers. But nonetheless it's all working again.

My only reason for continuing to request that this capability eventually gets integrated into an update of the Indigo Alexa Plug-in is that I think many more Indigo users would make use of the capability to add Indigo's conditional logic capably to Alexa routines as well as Alexa announcements to Indigo actions. Additionally, Indigo is solid and reliable, unknown skill developers may or may not continue to support their skill. If/when they stop for any reason, it's disruptive..

Also, I believe, unlike some commenters in the Matter-standard thread https://forums.indigodomo.com/viewtopic.php?f=139&t=26020&p=222966&hilit=matter#p222966, that Indigo will be around for a long time (even as the big guys begin to cooperate) because of Its ability to support HA hobbyists' desired to integrate many more diverse devices, systems, and platforms than the average consumer will ever want to do because of Indigo's ability to support HA "corner cases". that don't matter to the average consumer.

And, finally, as AI broadens Alexa's core abilities, the combined ability of Indigo and Alexa to support complex HA solutions enabled by the ability to freely move back and forth between Alexa 's and Indigo's capabilities. will become ever more useful to the Indigo user base..

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