Alexa skill importing names concatenated with location?

[wkearney99]

I'm sure someone better at HS scripting that I can offer suggestions on how to improve this, but this is the code I used to correct the importing problem I seem to be having between HS3 and Alexa.

I have some devices with possessives in the name. "Bill's Vanity" for example. Alexa often seems to get things wrong with names like that. So I've made it habit to use the 'Voice Command' field on devices to remove the apostrophe. So "Bill's Vanity" becomes just "Bills Vanity" and all is well.

I recently had some trouble with the Alexa-HS bridge and tried disabling the skill. This was a bad idea as the skill I'd been using was "an old one" and couldn't be re-enabled. When I tried using the new skill the devices all came in with the locations and name concatenated. What previously got imported as "Coffee Bar Lights" from the "1st floor" "Coffee Bar" now showed up in Alexa as "1st floor Coffee Bar Coffee Bar Lights" and voice commands to control just "Coffee Bar Lights" would fail.

So, something's going wrong with the importing. Yeah, that's not a great excuse when the wife starts complaining about why Alexa is broken.

I noticed that the error only happened on devices that DIDN'T have a Voice Command string entered.

This is my end-run around that problem.

I used a browser hack to delete only the devices with "HomeSeer" in the name from Alexa. From: https://lefkowitz.me/bulk-delete-sma...es-from-alexa/ and edited to use "HomeSeer" instead.

From a browser on the https://alexa.amazon.com/spa/index.html#appliances page I used this script in an F12 console window:

$x('//div[contains(text(), "HomeSeer")]')
.map((innerDiv) => innerDiv.parentNode.parentNode)
.map((parentDiv) => parentDiv.getElementsByTagName("button")[0])
.forEach((button) => {
fetch(
`https://alexa.amazon.com/api/phoenix/appliance/${button.getAttribute(
"appliance-id"
)}`,
{
method: "DELETE",
}
);
});

This removed all of the HomeSeer devices. Which is better than using the only other option of removing all devices, as doing so could cause a cascade of other problems if you have other skills connected.

Once the devices were gone from Alexa, I ran this code as manual script in HS3:

Sub Main(ByVal Param As Object)

Dim theCount
theCount = 0

Dim Debug As Boolean = False
Dim logName As String = "Voice_command: "

Dim dv As Scheduler.Classes.DeviceClass
Dim EN As Scheduler.Classes.clsDeviceEnumeration
EN = hs.GetDeviceEnumerator

If EN Is Nothing Then
hs.WriteLog(logName, "Error getting Enumerator")
Exit Sub
End If

Do
dv = EN.GetNext
If dv Is Nothing Then Continue Do

Dim s
Dim vc
Dim av

s = dv.name(Nothing)
vc = dv.voicecommand(Nothing)
av = dv.MISC_Check(Nothing, Enums.dvMISC.AUTO_VOICE_COMMAND)

If (av) Then
If (vc = "") Then
hs.writelog(logName, "Name: " & s)
hs.writelog(logName, "Voice: " & vc)
hs.writelog(logName, "Auto: " & av)

dv.voicecommand(Nothing) = dv.name(Nothing)
hs.writelog(logName, "Voice command copied for: " & s)

theCount += 1
End If
End If
Loop Until EN.Finished

hs.writelog(logName, theCount & " voice devices detected without command.")
End Sub

This marches through all of my HS3 devices and checks if they're voice enabled. If so, it checks to see if the voice command is empty. If so, it copies the device name into that field.

Once that was done I used the command "Alexa, discover devices" to re-import them.

This has solved my problem. I still question why the devices got imported that way. I have no idea if this is an Alexa problem or a Homeseer problem. Alexa does show the devices with separate room and floor info, so something is clearly being imported in a separate manner. I don't know why the device name then gets jumbled together.

But it's "fixed" for me, for now, and the wife no longer has that to complain about it.

[wkearney99]

And if you want to reverse this, use this script.

It'll check if the voice command string is the same as the device name and, if so, remove the voice command string. After that. use the browser script to remove the HomeSeer devices from the Alexa website. Then use the "Alexa, discover devices" voice command re-discover them. This will allow the devices to be re-imported using their device names.

Sub Main(ByVal Param As Object)

Dim theCount
theCount = 0

Dim Debug As Boolean = False
Dim logName As String = "Voice_command: "

Dim dv As Scheduler.Classes.DeviceClass
Dim EN As Scheduler.Classes.clsDeviceEnumeration
EN = hs.GetDeviceEnumerator

If EN Is Nothing Then
hs.WriteLog(logName, "Error getting Enumerator")
Exit Sub
End If

Do
dv = EN.GetNext
If dv Is Nothing Then Continue Do

Dim s
Dim vc
Dim av

s = dv.name(Nothing)
vc = dv.voicecommand(Nothing)
av = dv.MISC_Check(Nothing, Enums.dvMISC.AUTO_VOICE_COMMAND)

If (av) Then
If (vc = s) Then
hs.writelog(logName, "Name: " & s)
hs.writelog(logName, "Voice: " & vc)
hs.writelog(logName, "Auto: " & av)

dv.voicecommand(Nothing) = ""
hs.writelog(logName, "Voice command removed for: " & s)

theCount += 1
End If
End If
Loop Until EN.Finished

hs.writelog(logName, theCount & " voice devices same name command removed.")
End Sub​