HouseBot and Amazon Echo

[Richard Naninck]

future deviceTypes maybe

[Steve Horn]

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

Agreed. Currently I have to "turn on/off the bedroom volume".
Although at some point I plan on developing a method to be able to "turn up/down the bedroom volume to..."

And thanks for that link to the accepted request phrqses. Good info.

[Richard Naninck]

Would it be possible to come up with or expand the current HouseBot skill with the ASK statement? Alexa, Ask HouseBot to say Outside Temperature

Device Properties could be read back with their name followed by the value.

NULL Device:
Alexa Reporting
Properties:
Outside Temperature = -0.3C
Inside Temperature = 15.3C

Alexa, Ask HouseBot to say Outside Temperature... The response would be: The 'Outside Temperature' is 'minus zero point three degrees Celcius'

Or something like that.

[ScottBot]

So that's what you can do with a normal skill (non-Smart Home skill). And that's what I had initially written. The pros of that approach are that you can be responsive to any pre-defined command phrases. You can also tell Alexa what to say back when something happens (as opposed to OK for everything with Smart Home).

However, I thought the cons of this approach really made the Smart Home skill better for most things. Cons are:

1. You have to say "Ask HouseBot" before everything.
2. I have to define all of the possible ways that you could say something and have Alexa learn it. Not a big deal, but when there are too many different/similar things, Alexa can get confused (Like "Turn On Light" for device control vs. "Turn on Away Mode" for mode control).
3. Alexa had a much harder time understanding commands. For several reasons:
   • It had to understand more. "Ask HouseBot" just provided more words for her to trip over.
   • With Smart Home, the device names are all sent to Alexa in text. Alexa's language processing only has to try and match your voice command to the device name and her voice processing is actually pretty good at figuring out alternatives and variations in speech to still get a match. With the old skill, she would send me some text about what she though was said and I had to try and see if I could figure it out. Alexa will always be better at language processing than HouseBot.
   • Huge variation in device/task/mode names. This comes back to the training. If there are a limited number of things to say, you can train her pretty good. But since there are a million different user defined device names, she could never really learn things as well as I would like.

There were a couple of forum members that participated in the beta with the old non-Smart Home skill that might be able to add to this.

I've thought about publishing the skill again, but I've been hoping that Amazon will expand the Smart Home skill API and deal with some of these shortcomings instead. Still waiting...

[Richard Naninck]

LOL. I can see how this would have the potential to explode beyond to where it stops making sense but how about limiting the phrases the same way as the Alexa View in the Smart Home HouseBot Skill.
Therefore I named my NULL Device "Alexa Reporting" in my example above. Just the Properties listed in that device would be made available for this skill. For me as a non native English speaker I would have to come up with different names (Dutch) anyhow as soon as the Echo starts understanding my language. So I wouldn't bother about having to (re)define the properties I wanted to be available for Alexa.

Would it also be possible then to say: Alexa, Ask HouseBot to Open my Garagedoor.. ? In a certain way that would make way more sense than to turn the garagedoor on. But I got the part where you hoped that the Smart Home Skill would evolve into something more mature. Nice to able to participate in the discussion. Now all I have to do is get my hands on one of those insainly hard to come by devices.

[Steve Horn]

I was an early adopter/guinea pig for the HB skill. While it was novel going from a non Alexa world to use of the HB skill was exciting, the change over to the HB Smart Home implementation is more reliable from a request-and-response standpoint. Agreed that request phraseology is currently limited, as well as the ability to do anything other than turn on, off, or dim a device. I'm confident that will improve as more HA apps build in Alexa support. (I started to type "embrace Alexa" but decided it was too perverse.)
The original HB skill allowed for multiple aliases, but that was lost with the Smart Home implementation. For example, creating multiple devices intended for use by Alexa that do the same thing but are named differently gets around the problem of referring to a device by more than one name. Example, a "deck" device that turns on that audio zone does the same thing as a "Spa" device for that same physical location. (Although Alexa is pretty good at extrapolating the meaning of a request, some are too dissimilar.) So there seems to be work-arounds for most HB-related requests, some more combersome than others (like turning on or dimming the volume)
"Ask Housebot..." was a big one, especially since she did not deal well with the name "Housebot".. And still doesn't.

Richard, I'll send you an Echo Dot if it wll help. I have 2 spare that I bought when they went on sale before Christmas.

[Richard Naninck]

Thanks Steve for the added info. I wouldn't mind using a different word for HouseBot. I am sure we can figure multiple names that would make sense and which would be understood by the Echo.

Alexa, ask 'my system' to ...
my home
my setup
the computer
my assistant
jarvis
angel
...

For sure I will expiriment with this myself once I get one.

As for sending me one of your devices, that would be awesome if you would go through all the trouble. I would gladly PayPal you the amount plus shipping

[Richard Naninck]

I was able to buy an Echo today and can control HouseBot with it using the Smart Home Skill. Tried to rate it 5 stars but I don't see the review yet because it has to be reviewed first;)

Amazing what this thing can do. Can't wait to see smart phones and smart watches with Alexa installed.

Scott, what about my previous post about getting the sandard Skill live again, but maybe with some restrictions. In my setup that would be really something. I could probably ask Alexa where my Phone would be using Google Maps API returns.

[Richard Naninck]

Currently running the Bridge from the first post in this thread with succes. It failed discovery until I stopped using --server.port=
The list with extra phrases I posted from Reddit now also works. Open and Stop however don't seem to work but that is probably for Obvious reasons.
The HB Smart Home Skill and the Bridge can coexist so if turning off curtains really is a big deal, you can now close them again using the old bridge
I will also try to build my own skill to see where that will get me in terms of flexibilty using phrases to trigger commands.

[ScottBot]

Scott, what about my previous post about getting the sandard Skill live again, but maybe with some restrictions. In my setup that would be really something. I could probably ask Alexa where my Phone would be using Google Maps API returns.

I'd really rather only have one published skill, and I'm worried that the standard skill will be too problematic with voice recognition. However, I could add it back and give you beta access. Since you mentioned developing your own skill, I would also be open to giving you the source and letting *you* develop it out

[Richard Naninck]

Since yesterday I am able to run my own skill. Had to do lots of registrations everywhere but I can now get and set properties in HouseBot using my own ASK skill labelled 'Computer'.
The very basic works and I am now thinking about what the best solution would be concerning Slot Types.
I think I will create an Open intent and a Close intent and use my devices as slot types and the Utterances for Start, Run, Turn On, Enable etc.
This would all be very custom to my own system and it will be written in js and trust me, I have some learning to do.
So I am OK with not getting the skill republished. Just wondering about how long I can keep my own skills running using Lambda without any costs.
If your source is in js, it would Always be very welcome and maybe I might be able to make something Generic out of it. But right now I have my hands full

[Richard Naninck]

Scott, any clue as to why I cn use a device called "Office Heater" but cannot use a Device called "Office Temperature"?
The words are all understood by Alexa but the reply is that she can't find "office" in the group or device list. Is there something special about the keyword "Temperature"?

In the mean time my own skill can do what I expected it to do and I choose to use your smart home skill alongside my own skill to prevent long questions for simple on / off tasks.

The words I got for On and Off are listed below. It works like a charm.

LIST_OF_ON_NAMES
on
up
arm
set
turn on
turn up
upper
higher
run
open
start
begin
enable
unlock
make
queue

LIST_OF_OFF_NAMES
off
down
disarm
turn off
turn down
low
lower
quit
close
shut
shutdown
stop
end
disable
lock
undo
clear

[ScottBot]

Richard,

Good work on your skill. I'm glad to hear that you were able to get something working as you needed.

I would bet that "Temperature" is a reserved/key word that it uses for thermostat control in the Smart Home API. Another benefit of the Smart Home skill is that it seems to take precedence over other skills in cases like this.

[Steve Horn]

Just read where Amazon has added a new Wake Word: "Computer". You can change the wake word in the Alexa App. (BTW, the wake word setting is per echo device- each can be different.)
FWIW

[Richard Naninck]

So that would make me call me own skill something like this:
Computer, ask computer to tell me the outside temperature.

Still like the Echo so far. My own skill works very good I must say. Hopefully it will evolve over time and we would see features like ID numbers per Echo where a standard Amazon Slot type could be the mac address or something like it. Another cool feature would be an intercom feature however that can already be done with Nucleus.
Primairy features would obviously be more languages...