HS Alexa Skill

[Gunneyk]

OK there used to be a very long thread about the Amazon Echo skill that was submitted to Amazon. I saw the other day that it was finally accepted and decided to give it a try. I have been holding off since it was so up in the air and hard to follow. However now I can't even find that thread and I searched everywhere. It is like it vanished. In any case I took a screen shot from the end of the thread the other night as shown below that gave basic instructions for using the new skill. However I have a few questions. Directly below is a set of my devices directly from the HS Device Management Tab.



In the instructions from Sgt. Shultz it says to use this format:

{Command} {Device} {Room} {Floor}

"Tell HomeSeer to turn on the light in the kitchen"

First off their example doesn't appear to use the {Floor} but I guess that is optional.
OK well I customized my settings long ago and I think my Category maps to {Floor} and my Room still maps to {Room} but I am not 100% sure. And I also assume that my {Device} is what is shown in the Devices tab of HS as Name. In the highlighted case this would be "Under Cabinet Lights". So I assume I am supposed to say this:

"Tell HomeSeer to turn on the Under Cabinet Lights in the kitchen"

Well all I get is Alexa telling me she can't find the device. So lots of questions here.
1. Will Alexa understand that my device is actually a 3 part name (Under Cabinet Lights)?
1a. How is she supposed to know a 1 part from a 3 or 4 art device name?

2. Do I have my rooms, devices and floors mapped properly?

3. Is the {Floor} really optional?

4. Is there any other documentation on all of this and what happened to the original thread?




Thanks in advance

[wkomorow]

You are making it more complicated than you need to. As long as the device name is unique you can simply use it.

"Tell HomeSeer to turn on the Under Cabinet Lights in the kitchen"

really you just need to say -

"Tell HomeSeer to turn on the Under Cabinet Lights"

I have a device red light and I say Alexa tell homeseer to turn on the red light.

If I had multiple red light named devices, I would have to specify the room and/or floor

alternatively, you can create an event that triggers the Under cabinet lights to come on

Alexa, tell homeseer to run under cabinet lights event.

[dobermin]

I have a hometroller zee with HS3. I created a 'free' myhs.homeseer.com account and enabled my Alexa skill via my IOS app.

What do I have to do next?? So far, Alexa doesn't appear to see my HomeSeer system.

Appreciate the help.

Thank you,

Paul

[Gunneyk]

You are making it more complicated than you need to. As long as the device name is unique you can simply use it.

"Tell HomeSeer to turn on the Under Cabinet Lights in the kitchen"

really you just need to say -

"Tell HomeSeer to turn on the Under Cabinet Lights"

alternatively, you can create an event that triggers the Under cabinet lights to come on.

OK believe me I tried that and every other combination I could think of last night with no luck. However this morning I created an event as you suggested and asked Alexa to runt eh event which worked. I then tried the Under Cabinet Lights again directly and now it worked. However I can't get most of my other devices to be recognized by Alexa. I even tried renaming one to make it very unique and nothing works. Is there a resync period after adding or renaming a device before Alexa knows about it?

It seems like I will need to rename most of my devices in order to make this work well with Alexa. Many have long multipart names which makes it great for the UI but not so great for humans. I think for this to be fully useful we would need some sort of Alias functionality. But in any case I don't know why this is so difficult to master and why it recognizes some devices but not most. Is there anywhere that I can see what Alexa is thinking she heard or what she is trying to match to? Unlike other Alexa commands the responses are not sent to my Echo web site and nothing is listed in the HS logs. It makes it very difficult to troubleshoot.

[Gunneyk]

Am I really the only one who is having issues like this? How many of you are actually using the new Skill and more importantly how many got it to work without any of these issues?

[wkomorow]

Am I really the only one who is having issues like this? How many of you are actually using the new Skill and more importantly how many got it to work without any of these issues?

Last night before posting I tried Alexa tell homeseer to turn on my red light - and it worked. I have sometimes needed to change my syntax and sometimes pronounce works more carefully. Alexa tell homeseer to turn my red light on. The turn on my .... works better for me than turn .... on.

But to be honest, I have set up everything as events and I use those both in IFTTT and HS skill set.

red light / kill red light
basement (meaning the basement lights) / kill basement
Christmas (turn on the Christmas lights) / kill Christmas (horrible but turn them off)

[wkomorow]

Thought of something - try another event and then try accessing the device directly - I am wondering if it may be a vocabulary building issue ( learning speech pattern)

[dbmet]

I'm having the same problems. I have a kitchen light and 2 out of 10 times will it actually turn it on or off. Everything else I try with the echo works great. This skill not so much. They wife just laughs and says that's too much stuff to say.

Am I really the only one who is having issues like this? How many of you are actually using the new Skill and more importantly how many got it to work without any of these issues?

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Gunneyk]

Thought of something - try another event and then try accessing the device directly - I am wondering if it may be a vocabulary building issue ( learning speech pattern)

I gave it a try but with less than stellar results. I created another event to turn on my "E Switch" and named it "All Switch" so as not to confuse it with any other device or event. After about 12 tries I was never able to have it actually fire the event although it did seem to recognize it once. I know this because she repeated that she ran the event although she said RUN twice. But the device never turned on. If I run the event manually it works just fine. I found something else that is a clue but to what exactly I don't know . If I say this:

Alexa tell HomeSeer to turn on the E Switch

Nothing happens to the light but Alexa gives me a beep tone like something is amiss. However if I say this:

Alexa tell HomeSeer to turn on the E Switch in the Living Room

She tells me she can't find the device. I think the interface has issues distinguishing the parts of the commands but since there is no where that I know of to see what she hears or tries to do it is only a guess. There really needs to be a verbose logging mode that can show us what is happening so we aren't chasing our tails like this.
For the record I have been using the old Echo-Bridge with about 5 of my devices for some time now and Alexa never gets them wrong. She also is excellent at hearing all other conversations so I have to believe the issue is in the HS interface and not the Echo. I was really hoping to get a more feature rich experience with the HS interface but at this point I think I will drop it until someone can explain what is going on.

[TechHA]

Gunneyk, to see what Alexa is hearing visit http://echo.amazon.com/

[waynehead99]

I have been struggling too. So far I can only control one device and even that is hit or miss. Funny thing is, sometimes it will respond back saying it can't find the device and states it's name which is correct and other times it just states it can't find device.

I see now way of looking at what is happening behind the scenes to figure it out either.

I tried ifttt which works but is painfully slow setup and limited, and sometimes slow to react, but is much fewer words to say.

[Gunneyk]

Gunneyk, to see what Alexa is hearing visit http://echo.amazon.com/

I wish and that is what I expected but no cigar. There are no commands (good or bad) referenced in the Echo app like there is if you talk to it directly.

[wkomorow]

One other suggestion -

try something like alexa tell homeseer to turn on MY kitchen light. Putting MY before the device might emphasize it.

Sorry I can not be more helpful, but it is working pretty good for me.

You could also try IFTTT - which works well but has slowed down lately.

[bruces]

Does the HomeSeer Alexa skill actually work? I tried to add it today, through the Alexa app, and got this error.

[MdeMan]

I realize this thread is an older thread but I was wondering if anyone is successfully using Amazon Echo these days. My status after working with it for about 3 months. Voice control of devices don't work 99% of the time (and yes I have voice command enabled for the devices i want to use). So I use events since it works a bit better but still a lot of hit and miss. I did find that naming convention is very important. Does anyone have any advice what format works best?

Thanks
Marcel