Jon00 Homeseer/Echo Skill Helper for Homeseer 3 & Homeseer 4

[rileydogmi]

For months I had problems and finally had time to try again - turns out my speaker app was the issue and not this plugin - speech commands were going to a dead speaker app - now doing all sorts of great things with this! Great work and just made a donation to the cause!

[jon00]

Many thanks indeed...appreciated!

[Timon]

It's been a long time since I tried to use the editor.

Since I've moved to the latest Raspbian on a RPi 3B, the latest mono along with HS3Standard so I though I'd give it a try. Well, it still doesn't run. I got the following error.

Page executed: http://hs3.local/Jon00Alexa.aspx

Application Exception
System.Web.Compilation.CompilationException
error VBNC30248: CHANGEME

Description: Error compiling a resource required to service this request. Review your source file and modify it to fix this error.
Details: error VBNC30248: CHANGEME
Error origin: Compiler
Error source file: ~/Global.asax
Exception stack trace:
  at System.Web.Compilation.AssemblyBuilder.BuildAssembly (System.Web.VirtualPath virtualPath, System.CodeDom.Compiler.CompilerParameters options) [0x00312] in <eb29f134b1b04fcaba72f0c13eebcc88>:0 
  at System.Web.Compilation.AssemblyBuilder.BuildAssembly (System.Web.VirtualPath virtualPath) [0x00008] in <eb29f134b1b04fcaba72f0c13eebcc88>:0 
  at System.Web.Compilation.BuildManager.GenerateAssembly (System.Web.Compilation.AssemblyBuilder abuilder, System.Web.Compilation.BuildProviderGroup group, System.Web.VirtualPath vp, System.Boolean debug) [0x00202] in <eb29f134b1b04fcaba72f0c13eebcc88>:0 
  at System.Web.Compilation.BuildManager.BuildInner (System.Web.VirtualPath vp, System.Boolean debug) [0x00106] in <eb29f134b1b04fcaba72f0c13eebcc88>:0 
Version Information: 5.12.0.226 (tarball Thu May 3 10:14:47 UTC 2018); ASP.NET Version: 4.0.30319.42000
Powered by Mono

I guess it could be because there isn't enough memory on the Pi in which case it will have to wait till I get the ROCK64 with 4GB of ram then try again unless you have another idea.

[jon00]

No, its the version of Mono you are running. I believe the last version that works with ASPX pages is Mono 5.0.1.1

[Timon]

No, its the version of Mono you are running. I believe the last version that works with ASPX pages is Mono 5.0.1.1

I'm on 5.12.0.226

[jon00]

I'm on 5.12.0.226

Indeed, which is why it is not working.....only that specific version of Mono works.......

[Timon]

[jon00]

I can't really answer that one. The issue relates to Mono and how it supports .ASPX

[Lee_L]

Jon,
This is an amazing feature for HS. Thank you for all the time you put in to this and your other scripts. I just sent you a PayPal donation.

I'm a little confused on how I need to go about controlling a volume level for one of my devices. I want to be able to say "Alexa, tell Homeseer to change the kitchen volume to X"

Do I have to have a script to do this? Or, do I use variables in the Alexa text to parse the desired value?

I read Page 5 of your manual related to script parameters, but am still unsure how to accomplish what I'm wanting to do.

Any help is greatly appreciated.

[jon00]

Thanks very much. Appreciated!

You should be able to do this via the 'Set Capi Value' entry.

If using the GUI for setup, select the volume device from the 'Select Device for Ref/CAPI' drop down. The device ref number will appear in the Ref text box. If CAPI is suitable, you will also see a CAPI drop down with all the possible volume levels etc for that device. Do NOT select anything from this box.

In the 'Set Capi Value' text box, just enter the reference number displayed. Now when you say 'Alexa, tell Homeseer to change the kitchen volume to X', the CAPI control will set the volume to X. Obviously you have to set the Alexa Text to something like 'Kitchen Volume' etc.

Check the docs for 'SetCapiValue' for more info.

[Lee_L]

Thanks so much for your assistance. I ended up putting the Reference value in the "Set Device Value (from parsed #):" field to get it to parse and send the command to control the volume. When I put it in the "Set CAPI Value (from parsed #):" field, it parsed it, but the command was not executed.

Now that I have this part working, is there a way to have it also parse the location? For example, "Alexa, tell HomeSeer Living Room volume 35" Where "Living Room" and "35" get parsed and passed to HomeSeer.

Additionally, does the "InvocationWord=" word replace the "tell HomeSeer" to whatever word value you change it to?

[jon00]

Good to hear!

Some devices use CAPI and others use the device value which is why both methods are provided.

The Alexa Text can be passed to a script via its parameter. You would then need to parse the necessary information via the script. This can be passed back if necessary using the Replacement Variables. You just need to put a * in the script parameter entry. A simple example:

Run Script: test.vb
Script Procedure: Main
Script Parameter: *

Script called test.vb placed in your scripts directory:

Sub Main(ByVal AlexaText As String)
  hs.writelog ("Test","Alexa heard: " & AlexaText)
End Sub

The InvocationWord entry is only telling the script what is being used from the 4 possible options in your Echo settings.

[Timon]

Indeed, which is why it is not working.....only that specific version of Mono works.......

Question, just so I understand, what did they do to mono that only that one version works? It seems very unusual, and in fact extremely rare, that only a specific version works and versions before and after don't.

[jon00]

I have no idea. You would have to ask the Mono programmers about that. It has been thanks to Mwolter and others who have discovered which versions of Mono are 100% compatible with HS3. Perhaps now Mono is under Microsoft, things will improve.....

[Timon]

I'd like to move to the older working 5.0.1.1 version of mono from the 5.12.0.226 version I'm on. I checked the mono site but it doesn't have any information on how to actually install older versions although it does show how to lock down a given version.

Has anyone put together something on how to get 5.0.1.1 loaded?

Do you have to remove the current mono first or will the install overwrite it?

Thanks