HouseBot and Amazon Echo

[Steve Horn]

Tip: When controlling a dimmable light, she does not recognize "dim <whatever device> by x percent" or "dim <whever device> x percent". The command must be jn the form of "dim <whatever device> TO x percent". And you can go from off to that dim level immediately; you don't need to "turn on" the device first.

[markd]

Just pre-ordered the new Dot- can't wait!

[Steve Horn]

Just saw that. Correct me if im wrong. But isnt that a lot cheaper than the original Dot was? IIRC, it was initially offered to Prime members for $90. Same hardware, capabilities?
Edit: never mind. Saw on the amazon web site, Dot page, that several have written in to deacribe technical differences between generations. Still, $49 isnt bad.

[markd]

Didn't see much for technical changes, other than a faster CPU and the volume wheel. I'm not planning to use the volume controls much anyways. Most of the comments are people complaining that they bought the 1st gen for more money. Having done a teardown on the Echo, I'm not surprised that they were able to find a lot of cost savings in the 2nd gen.

[Steve Horn]

Tip: i had been having trouble with Alexa understnding radio station call letters as part of a task name and Execute Task Device name. Example: "Deck zone KUSC". Apparetly by changing the call letters to "K.U.S.C" she seems to do better. So far...

[Richard Naninck]

Probably best asked in another Echo from but maybe you guys have the answer...

Does the Echo support other deviceTypes than just "switch"? ("deviceType" : "switch")

Apple Siri uses lots of different types (Door, Lock, Switch, Lightbulb etc). For each type it uses different words to trigger the On and Off URL's. A Door can be opened and Closed whereas a Switch can be turned On and Off.
I read somewhere that the Echo supports all kinds of different words to trigger the On URL like Turn On, Start, Open, Run, Enable etc and if that really still is the case than the one deviceType (switch) would be enough. So, just curious here.

Second question would be if the Echo could provide status. Sire handles Set and Get. I can ask Siri the state of my Garagedoor and it would answer opened or closed. Can the Echo do the same? I can't find any info on it.

I installed the latest jar V0.4.0 as a service and the test buttons work. Now the only thing left would be to get myself an Echo but they are hard to come by especially here in the Netherlands.

[ScottBot]

Richard,

The instructions in this topic about using the Amazon Echo Bridge Jar is out of date. You can still do it that way, but since there is now an official HouseBot Smart Home skill that can be setup in the Alexa app, it's probably a better way to go.

Unfortunately, Smart Home skills can only do a small set of things. Turn things On and Off, or set percentage. I think there are also some thermostat logic that isn't supported in the current HouseBot skill. They don't really offer anything as far as reporting status. Hopefully that will improve with time. You can, however, create an "Execute Task" Device and configure an On and Off task to do whatever you want. It's a pretty major hack, but it works well.

I had initially written a normal Alexa skill that would allow you to ask for the state of a Device, Task, or Mode. It was more flexible in that way, and you could say "Execute Task" instead of having to turn a dummy device On to get it to execute. However, the standard skill had several drawbacks that the Smart Home skill fixed (I can go into them if you are interested). About two days after I submitted the skill for approval, they announced the Smart Home skill API, so I went back and re-wrote the whole thing.

[Richard Naninck]

Thanks Scott, that is good to know. I did't get that from this thread.
I guess the jar could also only turn switches on and off plus a percentage.
Really want to start using this echo and it will make more sense once I get it to work.
So here some questions still:
1. can I say; turn on tv in living room
2. when using multiple echoes, can I determine an ID to know which echo was addressed?
so if I say; turn on tv. Housebot would know to turn on the tv in the room corresponding to the ID.
3. Don't need/want tasks. I will create a script that handles all the switch commands. Is this a way to go?
4. are other words possible like start or open or run instead of just 'turn on'?

[Steve Horn]

Caveat: This is just based on my limited experience...

1) Alexa will key on/recognize your device names (or their alias). So, in my case, I have zones for audio that are associated with "devices" names like "kitchen tv", "bedroom Pandora", "shop KUSC" etc. each device is a execute task device that does whatever.. ("KUSC" is a radio station call letters)
2) doubtful based on what ive read on echo forum. But who knows? My echos (echoes?) are separated such that only one can hear a command. Dunno what would happen if they were close enough to both react.
3) whatever works best for you. I suppose for complex duties that are beyond the scope of a task, then a script that watches the status of the device(s) would be the way to go. My Alexa tasks, so far, have been simple enough to not warrent a script. But i wouldnt rule it out in the future. Alexa/HB here is evolving..
4) not that I'm aware of. Turn on/off, and dim are it. Variations of those are however recognized. That is, "turn on bedroom Pandora" and "Turn bedroom Pandora On" both work.
FWIW
Welcome to AlexaWorld!

[ScottBot]

Steve answered this for me (thanks).

Alexa doesn't have a notion of "Rooms", nor does any kind of Alexa ID get passed on the request to HouseBot. Alexa just keeps a list of the device names it got from HouseBot during the last DISCOVERY request it made to HouseBot and uses that to voice match your Smart Home commands. So you would need to say "Alexa, turn on the Bedroom TV" to get a "Bedroom TV" device to turn on. Maybe you could call one a "TV" and the other "Tele" or something . Before you start renaming all your Devices to something more voice friendly, check out the newesh "Alias" feature for Devices. The Alias will be sent to Alexa for the Device Name if set.

If you want to geek out and read the Smart Home API, here it is. The API is very simple at this point. I had expected Amazon to expand it in some ways, but I haven't seen any changes yet.

[Steve Horn]

Another possible twist, though Ihave not tried yet, is to use the two different wake words, "Alexa" and "Amazon", when there are two Echos located in the same room. Not sure how this could be spun to our benefit. But one that I am considering trying is to use an Echo Dot as an audio feed to the home audio diatribution system (since it has line level outputs), while a full height/grown up Echo resides in the same room (but does not have line level outputs).

[Richard Naninck]

Thanks all for the replies. Not all of my questions were understood I guess, so here my second try of explaining.

I didn't mean to put two Echoes in the same room however multiple Echoes could be within hearing distance of eachother. I know that the Echoes will figure out which one you stand closest to by measuring dB received by the microphones. In my setup I would buy 6 Echoes and would place them all around my house. I would have wanted to be able to say: Turn on the TV... and the TV in the room corresponding to the Echo placed in that room would turn on. But I now understand from Scott that ID's are not in the equasion so tough luck on that one. A huge missed opportunity since it seems too easy to just make every Echo discrete by sending and ID of some dort in the message string.

I really don't like to Turn on my Garagedoor. It does not make sense at all. I would want to Open my garagedoor and Close it again rather than Turning the garagedoor off. I cannot imagine that this would work and I read somewhere that the Echo handles multiple words for the On URL and multiple other words for the Off URL. You may want to Close your bedroom TV to see if it turns off. To make these words distinct, the deviceType would have to come in play. I will read up on the API link Scott provided to get some more understanding.

EDIT: Just read http://www.housebot.com/alexa for the first time. It explains a lot

Scott: Will Google Home also get some native integration at some point? I could imagine that Google Home would speak Dutch sooner than the Echo does since Google Now already supports my language, making the Google Home units a better choice.

[ScottBot]

I really don't like to Turn on my Garagedoor.

Same with curtain controls. On/Off is pretty limiting and I hope Amazon will expand this for the Smart Home skills moving forward.

Will Google Home also get some native integration at some point? I could imagine that Google Home would speak Dutch sooner than the Echo does since Google Now already supports my language, making the Google Home units a better choice.

I haven't tested anything with a Google Home, but I spent about 2 minutes looking into it and think you could get something working using IFTTT. As a matter of fact, I think it would give you more control, since you define the phrasing (so you could say "Open the garagedoor"). You can setup the "Google Assistant" service for the IF logic and use whatever phrasing you want. Then you should be able to use the "Maker" action to send a URL to MyHouseBot.com using the external control URL format. Like I said, I have *not* tested this at all, and things often don't implement like I design in my head

[Richard Naninck]

Thanks Scott. Could you please test out the phrases listed in this link: https://www.reddit.com/r/amazonecho/com ... n_phrases/

Google would probably be way more flexible. I will buy myself into 1 Echo Dot just to get rid of the native Windows / HouseBot Voice Control Device which currently connects hardware to my PC and uses the very ancient and thus limited Windows Voice Recognition. Thereafter I will but whichever device can understand Dutch.

Thnx

[ScottBot]

I agree that Google does seem more flexible, although there will be more setup on your side (isn't that always the case). But again, I haven't tested the IFTTT setup to be sure.

Several of the commands from that list did indeed work. On synonyms that worked are: Start, Run, Arm, Enable. Off synonyms are: Stop, Close, Shutdown, Disarm, Disable.

Odd that Close works, but Open doesn't. It seemed to recognize the word, but suggest that the device doesn't support it. Although I do give it a list of supported actions (turn on, turn off, etc), opening isn't one of the published actions. So there may be more to the API than is published at this time.