Ok, if you two have finished arguing, let’s get back to Amazon’s recent releases, because I still think it’s revolutionary in many ways. Now we have all cards on the table. They have pushed the routines, they have pushed the device location. Let’s talk about what lacks and how we all use what they have given us. It’s a great weekend for Amazon. Let’s celebrate the new platform abilities and share how we use them
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Yeah, it’s a great weekend for Alexa users!
Using ST, I use CoRE and WebCore for my non-local and complex automations. I use SmartLighting for all of my local automations. I use EchoSistant for complex room controls and detailed feedback.
My family can walk into any room and give whatever command they want and my system is able to understand what they are wanting.
With the updates from Amazon voice control has taken a huge leap forward and I’m loving it. I am so glad that they pushed the device location so we can just say, Alexa, turn on the lights. I am positive that Amazon will expand on this and allow custom groups within those groups.
I foresee being able to create an Amazon group “Living Room” and then sub groups… “Lights”, “fans”, “vents” and be able to control them individually. That will make all of our apps truly a feedback only type of system.
The shortcuts are amazing as well. I’m looking forward to Amazon processing their initial response data and expanding on them.
Alexa is finally growing up!
Congratulations Amazon!
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Seems to be lacking a bit of polish to me…
I have a SmartThings Good Night routine which turns off all the lights, the tv and sets the mode to Bedtime.
At the time of writing, although Alexa has picked that up as a ‘scene’, it won’t allow me to use it within it’s ‘routine’ section. Therefore I am unable to say “Alexa, good night” and for it to run my SmartThings routine… Bummer.
Correct…not directly…but using an app like Alexa Helper or WebCore you can associate a virtual switch with a task, routine(ST) or a piston and get exactly what you are looking for. Just in the past weeks (when I found out this was coming) I modified my setups to allow NON INVOCATION word, complex things to happen in my household. This is what I have been waiting for since Alexa came out,
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The “GoodNight” has been something long wanted by the users of Alexa and ST.
Now that Amazon has allowed for their Routines this does play in perfectly with Michael’s App, Alexa Helper. You can also just create a virtual momentary switch in the ST IDE. Then create a WebCore piston that performs all of your actions when that momentary switch is activated.
You can then say, Alexa, goodnight.
Or, if you’re a user of EchoSistant you can create a profile that changes the mode to sleep. Your automations then take over triggered by a mode change. You simply say, Alexa, tell the house goodnight.
I believe you can do something very similar using Ask Alexa.
What they have done is give us the option of doing it however we want to do it.
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Where are the Alexa Routines? I can’t find them on my phone or computer. Under scenes, I have ST routines that Alexa says it can’t control due to unsupported device.
Look on the main menu, right above “Smart Home” in the mobile app. The browser apps have not been updated yet.
It’s not on my app. I checked for updates and it shows it’s current
.
Where are you located?
Central time zone, USA.
My client version is actually a higher number indicating it should be current. Mine is 1.24.2962, the one in the link you sent is 1.24.2949.
Yup, I am on 62, too… That was a screenshot from yesterday. Clear the cache or reinstall the app…
it didnt show up on the side bar for me until I added a routine. go into alexa settings in the app and there should be routines there
Those are current and nothing will change. I asked Bobby about it yesterday. I exited out of Alexa, rebooted my phone several times. Still didn’t show up. Then all of a sudden it was just there when I opened Alexa. No client or app update.
I talked to Amazon support about why it hasn’t shown up on one of our accounts and they said there’s a back end piece. You won’t need to update your app or force reload or anything like that. It will just appear at some point. Which it did for us about an hour after that call. 
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So it’s just a matter of waiting for it to mysteriously show up when it feels like it.
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They are probably flipping the switch in stages…
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Most of my rooms have Fans. I love the group feature but I don’t understand why I can have Bedroom Light and Bedroom Fan in the Bedroom group and she understands Light but not Fan…
Actually just realized that she turns on both the Fan and Light when I tell her to turn on the Light…
Baby Steps I guess.
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I don’t believe echo has a device class for fan yet. It’s probably identified in their structure as just another switch.
What does the icon look like?
It took EchoSistant team 6 months to figure this one out. But with an army of developers, will be no time before Amazon catches up… Wait a minute, what am I talking about. It took them 2 years to even release routines as they did yesterday.
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True… We’ve been using tagged devices and multi custom groups for a while now… What? A couple of months?
Come on Amazon, is it really that hard to decipher our code?