Thrag's Echo Plugin Discussion Thread

[Thrag]

I almost forgot that I had put in the exclude ini parameters (DeviceLocationsToExclude, DevicesToExclude). Try setting the location the GC devices are in, or the device names themselves, into the exclude settings to see if that will work around the problem. If it doesn't at least it will tell me that the issue is getting the device object in the first place, and not trying to get the command labels from it.

[madas]

Sorry I should have mentioned that I already had them in the exclude field in the config

-----------------CONFIG FILE-------------
DeviceLocationsToExclude=Global Cache
DevicesToExclude=
-----------------CONFIG FILE-------------

I've attached screenshots showing one of the devices in the device manager - is this what you need? all are in the same floor/room just with different device names

[gfs]

Hey. Just got the echo and loaded the HS skill. About to experiment. I see there are different plug ins what is the functionality and what do I need to begin.
Is there a list of what yours will do? Thanks

[Thrag]

My script has two main functions. An Alexa Skill similar to the official HS skill and the ability to automatically configure the "HA Bridge" server. You can use either or both of these abilities. You can also use either or both alongside the HS skill, you just need to give my skill a name other than "home seer" if you want to set up both to try them out side by side.

Similar to the HS skill it is an Alexa Skill that allows you to run events, control devices, and query the state of devices. The main difference is that the HS skill goes through myhs and my skill can be set up locally so you don't need to depending on another cloud service. My skill also has various configuration options that the official skill lacks like being able to customize what is said in response to commands, to control whether the echo listens for additional commands after the first one, and the ability to create alises for device and events either through a config file or on the fly while talking to the Echo. Since you set it up as your own developer skill, you have flexibility to customize that name of the skill (e.g. "computer" instead of "homeseer" for that star trek feel) and also add or change the language used to control things.

The HA Bridge software works with Amazon's connected home feature to basically mimic Phillips Hue bulbs. It allow you to turn on and off lights (and groups of lights you can define in the Echo app) by simply saying "Alexa, turn off X", rather than the skill method of having to preface each command like Alexa, tell home seer to turn off X".

The skill setup is a little involved since to have it communicate directly with your homeseer instance rather than go through a cloud service like myhs you need to set up my skill as a developer skill in your account, and set up an https proxy on your local network to allow the Echo to communicate with the skill. It probably take a half hour to an hour to set things up initially.

The HA bridge config setup is in comparison simple. You set up the HA bridge which just take a few minutes, set some ini settings, and hit my script page which automatically loads all your devices into the bridge. Finally you ask Alexa to discover devices and that's the whole setup.

[Thrag]

Sorry I should have mentioned that I already had them in the exclude field in the config

-----------------CONFIG FILE-------------
DeviceLocationsToExclude=Global Cache
DevicesToExclude=
-----------------CONFIG FILE-------------

I've attached screenshots showing one of the devices in the device manager - is this what you need? all are in the same floor/room just with different device names

Damn, that means it might be just the call to get all devices that throws that error. That would explain why my attempts to catch it when looping through the devices doesn't work, the error is happening before the loop.

[gfs]

Thanks Thrag. That sounds great


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[gfs]

What's the difference between HS bridge and skill?


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[Thrag]

The difference to the end user is that for Skills, you need to first invoke the skill by saying "Alexa, tell skill name to..." or "Alexa, Ask skill name...". The HA Bridge uses Amazon's "Connected Home" features for lighting devices so you don't need the "tell skill name to" part. You can say just "Alexa, Turn on the hall light" or "Alexa, set kitchen lights to twenty percent". It's only for lights as they are the only types of devices that connected home currently supports (or to be more technically accurate, it only supports on, off and dim commands so a thermostat setpoint can probably be jury rigged in the bridge config, but my configurator doesn't attempt that.)

[jbbtex]

I'm using just the HA Bridge part of the plug in and it works great.

However, does anyone know of a way to suppress Alexa's response? Every time I tell it to turn something off/on, it turns it off/on and then says the device is not responding.

[jbbtex]

Anyone?

[Thrag]

Anyone?

I haven't seen that problem before. For me it just says "okay" after a successful command to the HA bridge. Are you seeing any significant delay when you issue a command? While I haven't had it happen with the HA bridge, with my skill I'd occasionally get that response even though the command worked because the skill too a little too long to respond, usually after I made a code change and the re-compile would take longer than the timeout.

[madas]

Hi Thrag,

Any further thoughts on the global cache issue?

M

[jbbtex]

I haven't seen that problem before. For me it just says "okay" after a successful command to the HA bridge. Are you seeing any significant delay when you issue a command? While I haven't had it happen with the HA bridge, with my skill I'd occasionally get that response even though the command worked because the skill too a little too long to respond, usually after I made a code change and the re-compile would take longer than the timeout.

Installed bridge on another machine. Works fine now. Getting "OK" response. I guess it was something with Kaspersky. Don't have that on the machine that is running bridge server now.

[Thrag]

Hi Thrag,

Any further thoughts on the global cache issue?

M

I've found out a little more about the problem. It's not something I can work around in the code. but it should be solvable with a bit of IIS config.

So the base problem is that the GC plugin becomes required by my script by nature of me pulling the enumeration of all devices. The script is an apsx so the container it's really running in is IIS, not homeseer. Homeseer must do something to register it's libraries with IIS, but the GC plug in does not. So the solution is to add the GC plug in library to IIS. I don't quite know how to do that yet. While I can hack my way though an apache config I know little of IIS. Somewhere there should be a menu when you can add a module to IIS and point it at the dll or exe file that makes up the GC plugin.

After this weekend I should have the opportunity to try installing the GC plugin in so I can reproduce the problem and figure it out.

[madas]

Hi Thrag,

I'm not using IIS on that machine. The webserver we are using it whatever is built in to HS.

Unless I am missing something here.

M