Whats the official Alexa skill..?

[smargi]

Hi.

What is the official homeseer Alexa skill I see 3 different skills form homeseer on amazon Alexa site what should I install and does anyone know that is the difference between them...?

Thanks.

[aj84]

Interesting question - I just checked mine and at the time when I installed mine last year, only one showed up.
The one I have installed is the one with the feedback of 5
But in my case only 2 come up - the one I have installed and the another one with no feedback

[BigBadBuzz]

Folks:


I just went through this, so I hope I can explain it sufficiently. One of the skills is more "integrated" with Echo/Alexa so all you have to say to turn on the Kitchen light would be "Alexa, turn on Kitchen light"; however, you can't get status of devices from that skill. The other skill can (or supposedly does - I don't use it) provide status, but in order to issue a command, you have to say "Alexa, tell HomeSeer to turn on the Kitchen light" (or something like that). I know the humans in my household would not put up with having to speak a longer command string... : )


BBB

[chrisfraser05]

so installing both skills would allow you to say "alexa turn on kitchen light" and "alexa ask homeseer what temperature the livingroom is"?

[rmiles7721]

"HomeSeer"
"HomeSeer Smarthome"
"HomeSeer Home Automation Skill"

"Homeseer" is the oldest one. Allows you to to control lights, switches from Alexa using "Alexa, turn on..." etc. It has been replaced by "Homeseer Smarthome" but you have to be using a newer beta version of HS in order to use this one. Which version I can't tell you off the top of my head, search here in the forums for that answer. You can use one of these two skills or the other, not both.

"HomeSeer Home Automation Skill" allows you to control anything in Homeseer by saying "Alexa, TELL HOMESEER to..." This skill can be used in conjunction with one of the other two skills. It's also the one you'll need if you plan on using Jon00's Alexa plugin.

[MarkHargrove]

One thing of note: if you enable the newer "Homeseer Smarthome' skill you will lose all of your existing Alexa groups when you discover devices with the new skill -- as I just learned the hard way. :-(

-M.

[Fellhahn]

Another word of warning, I think you should delete all your existing devices out of Alexa BEFORE disabling the old skill.

I recently migrated from the "old" Alexa skill to the new one. Now I'm often getting this response from Alexa when giving on/off commands:

"A few things share that name, which one would you like?"

I'm convinced it's because I didn't delete and rediscover until after the old skill was disabled. Now there's some duplicate entries stick in database somewhere in cloud land.