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    #61
    When you say "Room Access", what feature are you looking for? I was in the latest Alexa App today and I can create a group, assign a room to it, then assign an Echo to it. Then add devices to that group. The devices in that group can be controlled by the echo in that group.

    Is that what you are looking to do? If so, it appears you can do that now.

    Originally posted by Rotech View Post
    Rich, please post when ready.
    💁‍♂️ Support & Customer Service 🙋‍♂️ Sales Questions 🛒 Shop HomeSeer Products

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      #62
      i thinkk people ( included me ) are looking to say '' Alexa turn on lights'' and the lights in the room you are in) ( the ligst in the same groups as your echo will turn on.

      Same thing with tv... Alexa turn on the tv

      or plex ? Alexa turn on Plex

      for now it does not work with hs3

      Comment


        #63
        Yes. This is the way I understood Amazon's update notes indicated.
        That is to say, if you created a group of devices that are all in the same room and then included the echo in that room as well,
        you'd be able to control the devices in the group via the Echo also in that group without having to use the room name + device name.

        For example: With a group called Master Bedroom with devices Master Bedroom Light, Master Bedroom Fan and Master Bedroom Echo. You could simply say "Alexa, turn on the light" and the Master Bedroom light would come on.

        While you can create the Master Bedroom group as above, you still have to say, "Alex, turn on the Master Bedroom light" for the light to turn on. Saying "Alex, turn on the light" gives you a response something like "There are several devices by that name. Which one did you want?"

        But perhaps my understanding of Amazon's notes is wrong.

        Originally posted by Summerguy View Post
        i thinkk people ( included me ) are looking to say '' Alexa turn on lights'' and the lights in the room you are in) ( the ligst in the same groups as your echo will turn on.

        Same thing with tv... Alexa turn on the tv

        or plex ? Alexa turn on Plex

        for now it does not work with hs3

        Comment


          #64
          Originally posted by jbbtex View Post
          Yes. This is the way I understood Amazon's update notes indicated.
          That is to say, if you created a group of devices that are all in the same room and then included the echo in that room as well,
          you'd be able to control the devices in the group via the Echo also in that group without having to use the room name + device name.

          For example: With a group called Master Bedroom with devices Master Bedroom Light, Master Bedroom Fan and Master Bedroom Echo. You could simply say "Alexa, turn on the light" and the Master Bedroom light would come on.

          While you can create the Master Bedroom group as above, you still have to say, "Alex, turn on the Master Bedroom light" for the light to turn on. Saying "Alex, turn on the light" gives you a response something like "There are several devices by that name. Which one did you want?"

          But perhaps my understanding of Amazon's notes is wrong.
          I was hoping this would work the way Rich suggested. I got 2 of my echos: living room and Office. i moved my office one to the living room now that they have ESP (Echo spacial perception) and only the closest one is supposed to listen, I think I can finally try this and have them all named "Alexa" (so far this is working, but it's only me in the house).

          So I set up Kitchen and added the Kitchen lights to voice control. Once it was in Alexa, I created a group called "Kitchen" and added the Kitchen echo and the lights to it. I then said "Alexa, turn off the lights" and it worked!

          So I then set up the living room, which consists of 3 banks of recessed lights (North, South and Center), but they are named "Recessed Lights [North/South/Center]". Created another groups....and well..it doesn't work. If I say "Turn on the living room lights" it works, but in that room, if I say "turn on/off the lights" it says "Ok", but nothing ever happens. I thought it was maybe because I called the kitchen lights just "Lights", so I renamed them "Kitchen Lights" and went to the kitchen and said "Alexa, turn on the lights" and it still worked (only turning that rooms lights on and off).

          So I'm confused. I don't know if it's because there are more than 1 "light" in the living room or what. It seems to think it did something, but nothing actually happens. I'll do more testing tomorrow and see if I can figure it out.

          Also, I found it nice that I can now rename devices directly in the Alexa App if I want.

          I'm also happy that the ESP seems to be working great, I do hear the other Echo start to recognize the command word, but it immediately stops when it realizes the living room echo is closer.

          Comment


            #65
            Yes this is what I meant thanks for the elaboration . My choice of words are limited Bcuz English is not my first language haha

            Originally posted by jbbtex View Post
            Yes. This is the way I understood Amazon's update notes indicated.
            That is to say, if you created a group of devices that are all in the same room and then included the echo in that room as well,
            you'd be able to control the devices in the group via the Echo also in that group without having to use the room name + device name.

            For example: With a group called Master Bedroom with devices Master Bedroom Light, Master Bedroom Fan and Master Bedroom Echo. You could simply say "Alexa, turn on the light" and the Master Bedroom light would come on.

            While you can create the Master Bedroom group as above, you still have to say, "Alex, turn on the Master Bedroom light" for the light to turn on. Saying "Alex, turn on the light" gives you a response something like "There are several devices by that name. Which one did you want?"

            But perhaps my understanding of Amazon's notes is wrong.

            Comment


              #66
              My question I guess is, If this works already, What are you updating in the skill?
              We need the HS3 skill updated to the newer V3 api to allow the use of the new room options and other smart home uses.

              John

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                #67
                I thought there were some changes to this in the V3 API, but it appears I was wrong, I don't see anything. I am asking Amazon if there is a way to do what you want.

                The grouping feature does allow you to assign an Echo to a room, but you have to say the room name to control those devices, like:

                "Alexa, turn off the kitchen lights". It will then turn off all the lights in the kitchen. Assigning the echo does not seem to be a benefit.

                Note you can do what you want if you get the HomeSeer premium MyHS service. You can then use multiple Amazon accounts. Assign one account to each Echo. Then in the MyHS setup, create mulitple user accounts like "kitchen, family room, etc.". Now link each Amazon account to each MyHS user. Now you can control just the lights in each room with:

                "Alexa, turn off the lights"

                Originally posted by lj502 View Post
                My question I guess is, If this works already, What are you updating in the skill?
                We need the HS3 skill updated to the newer V3 api to allow the use of the new room options and other smart home uses.

                John
                💁‍♂️ Support & Customer Service 🙋‍♂️ Sales Questions 🛒 Shop HomeSeer Products

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                  #68
                  Originally posted by sirmeili View Post
                  I was hoping this would work the way Rich suggested. I got 2 of my echos: living room and Office. i moved my office one to the living room now that they have ESP (Echo spacial perception) and only the closest one is supposed to listen, I think I can finally try this and have them all named "Alexa" (so far this is working, but it's only me in the house).

                  So I set up Kitchen and added the Kitchen lights to voice control. Once it was in Alexa, I created a group called "Kitchen" and added the Kitchen echo and the lights to it. I then said "Alexa, turn off the lights" and it worked!

                  So I then set up the living room, which consists of 3 banks of recessed lights (North, South and Center), but they are named "Recessed Lights [North/South/Center]". Created another groups....and well..it doesn't work. If I say "Turn on the living room lights" it works, but in that room, if I say "turn on/off the lights" it says "Ok", but nothing ever happens. I thought it was maybe because I called the kitchen lights just "Lights", so I renamed them "Kitchen Lights" and went to the kitchen and said "Alexa, turn on the lights" and it still worked (only turning that rooms lights on and off).

                  So I'm confused. I don't know if it's because there are more than 1 "light" in the living room or what. It seems to think it did something, but nothing actually happens. I'll do more testing tomorrow and see if I can figure it out.

                  Also, I found it nice that I can now rename devices directly in the Alexa App if I want.

                  I'm also happy that the ESP seems to be working great, I do hear the other Echo start to recognize the command word, but it immediately stops when it realizes the living room echo is closer.
                  I had the exact same situation. Worked great in my master bedroom, but wouldn't work in my living room. Even tried the changes you suggested....

                  I got distracted and haven't troubleshot anymore... but here's a few tidbits.

                  what you can't do via the Alexa app is set the lighting levels in the group... so all the lights come on 100%. So in the living room, i created a virtual device that runs an event to set the levels where i want. I attach that virtual device to the living room echo... sometimes it works, some times it does not. can't figure out why. Always works if i use the homeseer advanced skill.

                  Hmmmm.

                  Comment


                    #69
                    Lots of confusion I think, my understanding is that we should be able to walk into a room a say "Alexa turn lights on" and only the lights assigned to that Alexa device will turn on, same for dim , color, and things like volume control also. I can do this now with LIFX bulbs and it is very nice.
                    Gotta figure this one out
                    John

                    Alexa should also know the current status of all the connected devices now.

                    John

                    Some info here
                    https://developer.amazon.com/blogs/a...and-developers

                    John

                    And here
                    https://developer.amazon.com/blogs/a...home-skill-apihttps://developer.amazon.com/docs/sm...ion-guide.html

                    Had way to much coffee this morning!

                    John
                    Last edited by Rupp; December 5, 2017, 11:36 AM.

                    Comment


                      #70
                      Originally posted by lj502 View Post
                      Lots of confusion I think, my understanding is that we should be able to walk into a room a say "Alexa turn lights on" and only the lights assigned to that Alexa device will turn on, same for dim , color, and things like volume control also. I can do this now with LIFX bulbs and it is very nice.
                      Gotta figure this one out
                      John
                      Yeah, that works in my kitchen. In my living room Alexa replies "Ok", but nothing ever happens I did have my kitchen lights named "Lights" only, but I changed them to "Kitchen lights" to see if that stopped any confusion, but it didn't. No matter what, I can't get Alexa to turn on my living room lights by saying "Alexa, turn lights on", however, it works everytime in my Kitchen. Maybe it's because there is more than 1 light device in the living room? If so, that is still kind of confusing as I think it would work for any number of devices.

                      Another thing I'm lacking is that I wish Alexa would let you change device types. My ceiling fans show up as lights, so if I say "turn on lights" it also turns on the ceiling fans, which I may not want.

                      At this point, I picked up 2 more Google Homes and a Google Home Mini (to go with my existing Google Home). I'm gonna give google a try for a while. I'm gonna miss the "tell homeseer to.." part (that is missing on the google home), but I'm thinking of creating my own Google Assistant service to fill in that gap (hopefully).

                      I'll still keep my alexas around (1 original echo and 2 original dots) because I do like the ability to reorder stuff from them. For a while, I'll run both.

                      Comment


                        #71
                        This is what I read to...why it does not work with homeseer...or why homeseer it would not be able to take advantage of those with the updated app Rich ?

                        I am a little confused now


                        Originally posted by lj502 View Post
                        Lots of confusion I think, my understanding is that we should be able to walk into a room a say "Alexa turn lights on" and only the lights assigned to that Alexa device will turn on, same for dim , color, and things like volume control also. I can do this now with LIFX bulbs and it is very nice.
                        Gotta figure this one out
                        John

                        Alexa should also know the current status of all the connected devices now.

                        John

                        Some info here
                        https://developer.amazon.com/blogs/a...and-developers

                        John

                        And here
                        https://developer.amazon.com/blogs/a...home-skill-api

                        John

                        Quote from page:
                        With the improvements to Groups, customers no longer need to remember the specific name of a smart device or group of smart devices to control them. Now a customer can place their Echo devices into smart home groups, enabling Alexa to act more intelligently on requests. For example, when a customer walks into the kitchen, they can say, “Alexa, turn on the lights” rather than “Alexa, turn on the kitchen overhead lamp.”

                        Just want to get this on track, its a big deal.

                        John

                        This shows a lot of differences between V2 and V3 api's, it has to be upgraded or we can't access the new features.

                        https://developer.amazon.com/docs/sm...ion-guide.html

                        Had way to much coffee this morning!

                        John

                        Comment


                          #72
                          We are just about finished with coding for the V3 API. I did look over the docs and I don't see any mention of being able to do "turn on the lights", and have that work in each room with different echos. Its possible Amazon added this on the back end with the groups and it only works with the V3 API. When we start testing I will see if this feature works or not.
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                            #73
                            Thanks Rich

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                              #74
                              Originally posted by rjh View Post
                              We are just about finished with coding for the V3 API. I did look over the docs and I don't see any mention of being able to do "turn on the lights", and have that work in each room with different echos. Its possible Amazon added this on the back end with the groups and it only works with the V3 API. When we start testing I will see if this feature works or not.

                              So this is working PERFECTLY with Alexa to Hue Lights (without HomeSeer as bridge). I have about 30 hue lights, 20 HomeSeer voice enabled switches, and 7 Echo's through the house. 5 of those echos have their own Alexa enabled group (assigning Echo to a room via Alexa mobile app, not available in webapp).

                              With the update V3 API with Hue, I can say, "turn on lights", and all Hue lights, in room with the Alexa configured group, will turn on. I can also say "turn lights blue", and Alexa will change just that echo room's group lights to the color blue (not all my Hue lights in house). Note- Color changing requires a Hue v2 bridge.

                              However, any HomeSeer devices in the Alexa enabled group is ignored for group commands. In my case, I have a mix of hue and HomeSeer connected Z-Wave light switches in the Alexa enabled group. However, as most have pointed out, HomeSeer devices are ignored for group commands (most likely due to not using v3 api) and require you to use the full name to control discretely. So "turn lights off" will currently leave the HomeSeer ceiling light unchanged when all the Hue lights turn on/off in the room served by the echo.

                              My guess is Alexa is using a "displayCategory" of device (i.e. it needs to know if it's a "light" type of object) for this Alexa room integration to work. This is documented in the new Alexa.Discovery
                              https://developer.amazon.com/docs/de...lay-categories
                              ACTIVITY_TRIGGER
                              CAMERA
                              DOOR
                              LIGHT
                              OTHER
                              SCENE_TRIGGER
                              SMARTLOCK
                              SMARTPLUG
                              SPEAKER
                              SWITCH
                              TEMPERATURE_SENSOR
                              THERMOSTAT
                              TV

                              It could also be using the discovery results of capabilities to determine if it's a light (but displayCategory more likely):
                              https://developer.amazon.com/docs/sm...e-capabilities
                              Alexa.PowerController
                              Alexa.PowerLevelController
                              Alexa.BrightnessController
                              Alexa.ColorController
                              Alexa.ColorTemperatureController


                              Hopefully I explained it well. It is quite cool new feature when Rich gets the new API sorted. I'm assuming only devices with displayCategory "light" will respond to "turn lights on/off". Maybe 'switch' too??

                              Also, there is hope to make the "Turn TV On" with a HS virtual switch (or may need more code if it needs to support on/off/volume up/volume down, etc), with the category 'TV', which should just control your specific TV in room where is its configured in the Alexa enabled group.
                              Last edited by AgileHumor; December 6, 2017, 11:52 AM.

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                                #75
                                Great explanation, I'm seeing the same thing here, it's much easier this way once its working.

                                John

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