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    Originally posted by jon00 View Post
    The loss of AMAZON.LITERAL for certification will be a major headache if everything has to be defined on custom lists. The only reason I can see is to improve accuracy ratings.

    It looks like there are a number of rants from developers about this. I think this one hits the nail on the head.

    As Crocky22 states, UK (and German) users will have to follow the tutorial to create their own custom skill. Let's hope they don't remove LITERAL altogether.
    If they do stop the Literal altogether I guess the API method will be their supported solution.

    The other way which is far from ideal, would be to use the custom slot types in combination with a custom developer skill. That way you could set the Utterances as something like

    "Tell Homeseer to {action} the {devicename}"
    "Tell Homeseer to {action} the {roomname}{devicename}"
    "Tell Homeseer to run the event {eventname}"

    etc.

    Since it would be a developer skill, the user could go it and add all their devices to the {devicename} custom slot. This would probably make it more accurate as Alexa would know what to expect the user to say.

    Wouldn't really work too well as a published skill though as you would have to list Every concievable Room name and Device name. And each time a user requested a new one to be added, the skill would have to pass through certification again .

    If the Linux script hook worked, then I would have a play around with this but I don't know if that is ever going to get fixed

    Comment


      Originally posted by Croccy22 View Post
      It should come up with a screen asking you for your username, password and a Vendor ID. Do you not see that screen?


      No that does not appear I'm afraid.


      Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

      Comment


        Originally posted by rascasse View Post
        I've tried the tutorial and can't get past the account linking, when I click link account it opens a new window to myhomseer and nothing happens


        Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk
        When you say nothing happens, does it just stay as a blank window or does it have anything on the screen?

        In the tutorial, have a look at step 5 again, specifically this line "
        Under the account linking section choose Yes and copy and paste the following URL into the Authorization URL text box: https://myhs.homeseer.com/echo/user_app/"

        Make sure that the account linking URL is exaclty as lister, with no spaces etc. This is the part that tells the Alexa skill to go to this page to perform authentication. If that URL is wrong then it won't work.

        Matt.

        Comment


          I had a problem with blank account linking dialogues at first - check your browser popup settings.

          Comment


            I used the process today, and it worked fine for me apart from one statement in the tutorial:

            "Where it says Redirect URL you will notice there is a web URL, at the end of it it says vendorID=??????????????. Copy down the code that is listed there as you will need this later.

            In the Client ID box copy and paste the following: amzn1.application-oa2-client.d839fbb21603478dbd332ab26fc1f1f1

            Change the Authorization Grant Type to Implicit Grant.
            "

            You don't see the vendorID=??????????? part until after you change the Authorization Grant Type to Implicit. You do see another URL which ends in the correct code, but it doesn't actually state "vendorID="

            For step 8, I used the Alexa app on my phone and enabled the skill in there, didn't have an issue with pop-ups on my phone.

            Comment


              Originally posted by Croccy22 View Post
              When you say nothing happens, does it just stay as a blank window or does it have anything on the screen?

              In the tutorial, have a look at step 5 again, specifically this line "
              Under the account linking section choose Yes and copy and paste the following URL into the Authorization URL text box: https://myhs.homeseer.com/echo/user_app/"

              Make sure that the account linking URL is exaclty as lister, with no spaces etc. This is the part that tells the Alexa skill to go to this page to perform authentication. If that URL is wrong then it won't work.

              Matt.
              That's it my mistake, I'd duplicated the URL - silly me it's working now
              Thanks for your help

              Mark

              Comment


                Originally posted by Sgt. Shultz View Post
                I will continue to communicate with them regarding this, but at this time, no official HomeSeer custom skill for anything outside the US.
                Can you give an update on this please.....

                Comment


                  Amazon UK Homeseer skill

                  Hopefully it is just timing and a Amazon update will resolve the lack of UK Homeseer skill in due course.

                  I have tried the various workarounds including setting up US account and creating dev UK skill, none have worked so far. Mainly it is 'no devices found' when searching for devices. At a guess the poor voice recognition some have experienced may be a US account listening to a UK voice and not quite getting the accent, or lack of a US accent.

                  Just waiting...

                  Comment


                    You will now never get the Homeseer Skill (Tell Homeseer to....) in the UK (as it stands) due to the depreciation of using free-speech (AKA LITERAL) in a skill. This has been removed as it was considered a security breach where a skill could be malicious and record your conversation. The same Homeseer skill currently available in the US cannot be touched either, as any changes will fail Amazon's certification (from Nov 30th) and would be pulled from the approved skills list.

                    Free-speech (TTS) has never been supported on the UK Echo which is the reason the UK Alexa app does not have voice training (necessary for the correct operation of free speech and hence the unpredictable results from our regional accents.)

                    The only way for a replacement Homeseer skill to be certified would be to use lists in the skill where everything you could possibly want to say has to be defined explicitly. Basically impossible for HST to implement as they are not going to know the names of your events etc.

                    If you are in the UK, I strongly suggest you setup the UK dev skill now (while you can still use free speech in a dev app) as defined by Croccy22 and don't make any changes by switching accounts to US etc.

                    If they do pull the free-speech completely from Alexa, the only option will be to define your own dev skill and add all the words you intend to use within its structure.

                    There is still no word on the Smart Home Skill (the one which scans for your devices) and we will just have to wait until Wade provides us with an update.
                    Jon

                    Comment


                      Stuff Croccy22 rules

                      Thank gods I read all the way through this thread.

                      Followed Croccy22's tutorial and (with a slight hiccup where I couldn't find the vendor id) it worked instantly.

                      HUGE thanks - and it is MUCH better having my HA's name than the generic 'homeseer' (sorry but it makes it personal).

                      Now I have to look at Jon's script and see how the heck that works.

                      Well done HS et al - you've given me an excuse to buy more Dots, Amazon must be proud of you.

                      (I prefer Google's search but the Google Home is just big, more expensive and not as discreet as the Dot. I've got much better speakers so why would I want the vase?)

                      Thank you for being so clever.

                      Comment


                        Alternative to Amazon.LITERAL

                        If anyone has some spare time, can you try this. If it works then it will be an alternative to using the Amazon.LITERAL which would mean the homeseer skill would pass amazons certification

                        Edit the skill and change the Intent Schema to:

                        Code:
                        {
                        "intents": [
                        {
                        "intent": "ParseText",
                        "slots": [ 
                        {
                        "name": "TextToParse",
                        "type": "HOMESEER_PHRASE"
                        }
                        ]
                        }
                        ]
                        }
                        Then add a custom slot type called HOMESEER_PHRASE with the following values:

                        Code:
                        turn on the bedroom light
                        turn off the bedroom light
                        run event my event
                        The change the sample utterances to:

                        Code:
                        ParseText {TextToParse}
                        I'm on holiday at the moment so I can't test it out. If someone does give it a go then please post your results here.

                        If it works then the skill in this format would pass the certification in both the US and the UK. The more "examples" listed in the slot, the better. And would increase the accuracy of the skill. But you do NOT need to list every single phrase you want to say. (They have recently updated the documentation on thier site to reflect this).

                        Matt.

                        Comment


                          I've done what you suggest and can report that it works - good job !

                          Comment


                            Originally posted by Croccy22 View Post
                            The more "examples" listed in the slot, the better. And would increase the accuracy of the skill. But you do NOT need to list every single phrase you want to say. (They have recently updated the documentation on thier site to reflect this).

                            Matt.
                            That's very interesting. I reckon that there were so many complains about this that they have come to a compromise. Good to hear that it works. Now we need to add 'lounge' to the list as Alexa really has problems with that one here.
                            Jon

                            Comment


                              Originally posted by jon00 View Post
                              Now we need to add 'lounge' to the list as Alexa really has problems with that one here.
                              "Sitting Room" works.....

                              Comment


                                Originally posted by naellis View Post
                                I've done what you suggest and can report that it works - good job !
                                Excellent. Looks like Homeseer should have a way forwards. Have you noticed any difference in accuracy? From what I can tell, the more "examples" added to the custom slots, the better the accuracy should be.

                                Amazon really should have worded their documentation better the first time around. From what I can see, them removing the Literal function should have no real effect at all. Apart from perhaps making it better.

                                If I was writing this skill now I would probably split it up a bit.

                                So for the utterances have:

                                DeviceOn To turn on the {TextToParse}
                                DeviceOff To turn off the {TextToParse}
                                DeviceOpen To open the {TextToParse}
                                DeviceClose To close the {TextToParse}
                                DeviceUnlock to unlock the {TextToParse}
                                RunEvent to run event {TextToParse}

                                Etc.

                                Then the TextToParse would have a custom slot type with a list of as many rooms and devices that you could think of just to help alexa out a bit.

                                You could even seperate it out so you have a slot type of rooms and one of devices. Wouldn't take much to create a list of rooms names that would cover 90% of what people would actually say.

                                This way the echo will be able to easily and accurately match the beginning part of the command as it will know exactly what to expect. Then only the last part will be down to the interpretation of the alexa voice service.

                                Hopefully this would cut down on the number of times that devices get turned on instead of off for example.

                                The above method would need changes on the server side for it to work. But I don't think this would be very difficult to do.

                                As an example of my idea above you could split it up like this;

                                DeviceOn to turn on the {RoomName} {DeviceName}
                                DeviceOn to turn on the {DeviceName}

                                In the room name slot you would list as many rooms as you could think of.

                                Same for the devices, just list as many as you can.

                                This should help alexa with accuracy but still allow people to call devices weird and wonderful things you haven't thought of.
                                Last edited by Croccy22; November 23, 2016, 11:39 AM.

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