Originally posted by jon00
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Jon00 Homeseer/Echo Skill Helper for Homeseer 3 & Homeseer 4
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Hector
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Win.2003 OS, HS3
BLDSC,BLstat,BLRadar,BLRamdom,BLOccupied
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It was not really an ad... When you say "good morning" GH will give you a brief outline of your day including a tit bit of information that is sometimes "off the wall" and not relevant to much of anything. GH will sometimes give information about some sports team - I could care less about sports and I do not get upset about hearing that bit of information.
NO ONE hates ads more than I do and I did not feel offended about hearing Beauty and the Beast had been released.
Yes, the Echo is very popular and has at least a year's head start over GH but side by side just the response to a question is so much better that Echo's Bing search. Let's face it, Google does do web search far better than Bing. I also really like that you can ask a follow up question about a topic without referencing the topic again and a again. The skills of the Echo are impressive - at least the number of them but really how many of them do you use on a daily basis and how many of them are just plain silly. We have two main skills enabled on the Echo's, HomeSeer and Our Groceries, there maybe a couple others we have played with but fact is we only use the two. Of course this is true for GH as well.
I too like the pricing of the Dot but here again if you plan on using it for music playback then the Dot fails (as does the Chromecast Audio due to having amp and speakers attached). Echo is okay but GH is better and cheaper than the Echo by $50 (in the US at least). I have had both setting it the same room and people will always comment on the Echo but Google Home seems to blend in to the decor and goes unnoticed. Now weather they think it is an air freshener - I do not know...
I have an Echo and two Dots scattered about the first floor of our home. GH (two) are upstairs for now but with ability to synchronize music playback between GH and Chromecast Audio devices it will soon take over our whole house. When GH is placed side by side with an Echo and music is played back I think GH does a far better job with background music sound quality.
Please remember this is my opinion. They both have their pros and cons...
But with either of them exact phrases must be used and using your plugin with the ability to add several phrases makes it far more family friendly.
Originally posted by jon00 View PostI'm not sure if Google have left it too late for the UK as the Echo DOT is very popular and potentially half the price of the GH. If they start to insert adverts it will definitely turn many away.
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I hope for a little help here... Running HS3, Linux version on RPI3.
My Alexa responds with an error when trying to trigger "alexa tell homeseer to play radio"
Alexa echos: "Error, bad request:Object reference not set to an instance of an object"
The HS3 log says:
Code:Mar-19 15:49:03 Info Heard: play radio Mar-19 15:49:03 Jon00_Alexa Script processing time: 66 ms Mar-19 15:49:03 Jon00_Alexa Response sent to Alexa: '' Mar-19 15:49:03 Jon00_Alexa Alexa command heard: 'play radio'
Code:[Settings] Logging=1 AlexaNoMatchResponse= EnableEchoLocation=0 LocalMode=0 InvocationWord=homeseer [Trigger1] AlexaText=play radio|radio on Mode=1 AlexaResponse=OK RunEvent=Radio on Runscript= Speak=Hello SPClient= SpeakDevice= CAPI= Json= DeviceValue= SetDeviceValue= SetCapiValue= Delay= AlexaSource=skill
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Not home to test this at the moment. But my question is, can this be used to just send responses to Alexa? For example I currently tell alexa to turn on a virtual device "Alexa Turn on Game Room" This triggers an event which switches on lights and other stuff. So in the event that is triggered will i be able to tell this plugin to send a response to alexa?
Simplicity is key for the family and having them have to tell alexa to run an event doesnt always work out.
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Originally posted by jon00 View PostYou cannot get the event to respond back to Alexa; this is done by the trigger.
So if you triggered on the words "game room", this would be used to trigger your game room event and also provide the response you want Alexa to speak.
Would it be possible using the location ability in your plugin to rename that virtual device to "lights" and then use your triggers based on location to know what room to turn the lights on in?
Hope I'm clear on that.
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I think you are complicating things with the renaming device idea.
You can say "Alexa, tell Homeseer to turn on the light" and with the location method enabled, it will cause a different trigger depending on the echo location. That trigger can be an event, set a device value, CAPI command etc. Should you wish to use a device value change and trigger on that for your events, then that's fine.
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Originally posted by jon00 View PostI think you are complicating things with the renaming device idea.
You can say "Alexa, tell Homeseer to turn on the light" and with the location method enabled, it will cause a different trigger depending on the echo location. That trigger can be an event, set a device value, CAPI command etc. Should you wish to use a device value change and trigger on that for your events, then that's fine.
Is the echo location ability on by default? I think i am missing that part somewhere.
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The Echo location method is experimental and needs setting up. This is clearly explained in the documentation but relies on a Chrome browser session running 24/7. I have this running quite reliably now apart from when Chrome decides to update itself. This may not be to the liking of some hence the "experimental" banner.
What you can do is set the helper to work in local mode and use the location method at the same time. If you then set up a device called 'light' which can be detected by Alexa as a skill device (but is a dummy device) then you can say "Alexa, turn on the light". The Smart-home skill will get Alexa to respond with "OK" (but do nothing) and the local/location mode in the helper can be used trigger the actual device per location.
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Originally posted by jon00 View PostThe Echo location method is experimental and needs setting up. This is clearly explained in the documentation but relies on a Chrome browser session running 24/7. I have this running quite reliably now apart from when Chrome decides to update itself. This may not be to the liking of some hence the "experimental" banner.
What you can do is set the helper to work in local mode and use the location method at the same time. If you then set up a device called 'light' which can be detected by Alexa as a skill device (but is a dummy device) then you can say "Alexa, turn on the light". The Smart-home skill will get Alexa to respond with "OK" (but do nothing) and the local/location mode in the helper can be used trigger the actual device per location.
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