Homeseer Home Automation is DOWN

[thewizardofoz]

I can't tell Alexa to turn on anything. She says the skill is not linked. The only skill working is the "Tell Homeseer to..." skill.

[rjh]

The log should display exactly what was heard, what do you see in the log? If you don't see it logged, enabled JSON logging by going to the scripting control panel and enter:

&hs.debugmode=2048

You should then see the alexa voice request raw command in the log.

We did not change anything related to this skill, and we did not change the skill (Amazon no longer allows editing of the skill on Amazon).

[thewizardofoz]

I had an issue and had to disable the Alexa skills. When I tried to re-enable them, only the Homeseer Home Automation skill was able to be enabled. The Homeseer SmartHome skill was not able to be enabled.

edit: I just tried to enable the skill and Alexa said it was enabled, but when I try tell Alexa to turn on computer room light, she says "the skill linked with computer room light is not enabled, please enable the skill to control this device".

[mworsnop]

The log should display exactly what was heard, what do you see in the log? If you don't see it logged, enabled JSON logging by going to the scripting control panel and enter:

&hs.debugmode=2048

You should then see the alexa voice request raw command in the log.

We did not change anything related to this skill, and we did not change the skill (Amazon no longer allows editing of the skill on Amazon).

OK I tried with debug at 2048 and I didnt get anything at all in the log. As I said I used to be able to say Alexa Kitchen Lights instead of Alexa tell homeseer kitchen lights.

And something did change a few months ago as Alexa was sending back more responses to these commands. They were annoying, but it was working. How did this get changed? Weird.

[rjh]

I thought you always had to say "Tell HomeSeer..", otherwise how would Amazon know to send the voice command to HS? That is is the key to routing the command.
So if you had it working before without saying that, maybe Amazon routes the command if no other skills are enabled? Did you always have multiple skills enabled? Maybe there was a bug on their end and they just sent us all the VR they heard? We are using a skill format that tells Amazon to just send us the complete VR command without any parsing, so they might have changed something. We have not changed anything in HS.

When you enable the debug "hs.debugmode=2048", check the log, you should see a log message that says "json debug enabled". If you do, then its working and everything Amazon sends to us will be logged. If you don't see anything when you give a command, they are not sending it.

OK I tried with debug at 2048 and I didnt get anything at all in the log. As I said I used to be able to say Alexa Kitchen Lights instead of Alexa tell homeseer kitchen lights.

And something did change a few months ago as Alexa was sending back more responses to these commands. They were annoying, but it was working. How did this get changed? Weird.

[dzee]

There are two Alexa HomeSeer skills. One is called "HomeSeer Home Automation Skill" and requires commands in the form "Alexa, Tell HomeSeer to...". The other is called "HomeSeer SmartHome", and this one accepts simpler commands like "Alexa, turn on ESPN". It runs almost everything, my Harmony remote (Alexa, turn on TV, Turn up TV volume, Change TV to Channel 3), thermostat (set cooling setpoint to 78), all Insteon lights (on/off/dim), but doesn't support events.

I have also confirmed just saying "Alexa, Kitchen lights" will turn on the lights, so that implies the verb/phrase "turn on". It will not turn them back off again by repeating the same thing, so it's not a toggle. It also supports DIM commands like "Alexa, set den light to 50%", and I could set the thermostat set points with it. It doesn't support more obscure devices like arming or disarming my CADDX alarm. This may have more to do with the way the device represents numeric values or On/Off than the skill. I have set up my shades to have certain scenes that are represented by a single word in a virtual device. If I ask this direct skill to "Set Shades to Morning", it sets the virtual device "Shades" to the value of "Morning" and my events that watch the virtual device for a status change will run.

For this second skill, I did zero setup other than to provide myHS login to allow this direct skill access to devices. It set them all up by itself, and appears to capture new ones I add. Two or three times now, something at Amazon caused it to created duplicate devices and it stopped working, but as soon as I removed the duplicates it was back to normal. I think it runs a JSON API GetDevices call, and this is why it doesn't support events. For those I haven't tied to virtual device, I still say "Alexa, ask HomeSeer to run the <event> event."

[mworsnop]

I thought it was weird when the events worked without the tell hs part. Wonder if there is a way to make alexa discover events like it does devices? I just need a simple way to toggle an event. Setting up virtual devices works but if another routine turns off the event then the virtual device is still on.

[rjh]

Note that if you enable an HS event for voice, Alexa supports it with the SH skill, you can case "Alexa, enable scene EVENT_NAME".

There are two Alexa HomeSeer skills. One is called "HomeSeer Home Automation Skill" and requires commands in the form "Alexa, Tell HomeSeer to...". The other is called "HomeSeer SmartHome", and this one accepts simpler commands like "Alexa, turn on ESPN". It runs almost everything, my Harmony remote (Alexa, turn on TV, Turn up TV volume, Change TV to Channel 3), thermostat (set cooling setpoint to 78), all Insteon lights (on/off/dim), but doesn't support events.

I have also confirmed just saying "Alexa, Kitchen lights" will turn on the lights, so that implies the verb/phrase "turn on". It will not turn them back off again by repeating the same thing, so it's not a toggle. It also supports DIM commands like "Alexa, set den light to 50%", and I could set the thermostat set points with it. It doesn't support more obscure devices like arming or disarming my CADDX alarm. This may have more to do with the way the device represents numeric values or On/Off than the skill. I have set up my shades to have certain scenes that are represented by a single word in a virtual device. If I ask this direct skill to "Set Shades to Morning", it sets the virtual device "Shades" to the value of "Morning" and my events that watch the virtual device for a status change will run.

For this second skill, I did zero setup other than to provide myHS login to allow this direct skill access to devices. It set them all up by itself, and appears to capture new ones I add. Two or three times now, something at Amazon caused it to created duplicate devices and it stopped working, but as soon as I removed the duplicates it was back to normal. I think it runs a JSON API GetDevices call, and this is why it doesn't support events. For those I haven't tied to virtual device, I still say "Alexa, ask HomeSeer to run the <event> event."

[noopara]

I have been struggling for weeks trying to get the Home Automation skill to be fully enabled without any luck. It links ok and on one page it says it is enabled (the screen where you can disable it) and on another page (the smarthome menu screen with groups, devices, and scenes) it says that the skill is not enabled. It won't discover any HS3 devices. I can get the SmartHome skill to work like it should but not the Home Automation skill.

In my many posts back and forth with other users I found that there is a lot of confusion between these two skills. In one case I was trading posts back and forth with one individual for a week or so on the Home Automation skill forum about my problem and the other individual was not having the problem. Well, it turned out that he was really talking about his use of the SmartHome skill not the Home Automation skill. I have read about every post regarding difficulties in getting the Home Automation skill fully enabled and suspect that some users also have the SmartHome skill enabled and may have forgotten that it is also enabled because they are finding that they can get Alexa to control devices without the "tell homeseer to" preamble. I don't know for sure, it's just a hunch. Then I found this post from a few months ago which has confirmed my suspicion that Amazon must have changed something in the Home Automation skill. It still doesn't work. It won't discover any HS3 devices. It links ok to myhs but it doesn't pull any devices from the myhs server. The only devices that show are the amazon and other smart devices that Alexa recognizes. I would like to use the Home Automation skill so I can make use of Jon00's Alexa helper. I hope it will be fixed someday soon.

[noopara]

I discovered today that if I enable the Home Automation skill using my smart phone instead of alexa.amazon.com it will link and enable and see all the HS devices. So, there you go. The various platforms have different apps and they don't all behave the same.

[JoeT]

I still cannot get devices to be discovered. It simply does not discover them no matter what device I use or what I do beforehand (disable/reenable voice on devices, unlink/re-link, disable/enable the skill, rain dance, sacrifice a Z-Wave controller, etc...).

[Dhuras]

Here in Canada, the only homeseer skill available is the HomeSeer SmartHome skill ...searching on the Homeseer Home Automation skill returns nothing. I know each country has different skill availability, but I also know at one time both Homeseer skills were available. I'd like to use Jon00's Alexa Helper, but without the Home Automation skill I'm blocked...