I expect these folks are getting cratered by the increase in account volume. It happens. 
I believe Eric Inovelli said their customer support requests went up like 1000% because of the migration.
I expect these folks are getting cratered by the increase in account volume. It happens. 
I believe Eric Inovelli said their customer support requests went up like 1000% because of the migration.
Same here.
They will definitely have to charge a fee for this I reckon.
This is what Christian said to me:
Unfortunately itās been happening to a few people and trying to get to the bottom of it.
For now Iām afraid youāll have to reset:
- (steps removed)
Apologies for any inconvenience. This product is very much still in Beta so Iām still fixing a few bugs here and there.
Well, at least the developer of this skill is far more responsive and helpful than Smarthings support
So what are the steps to get it working. Or is there way?
Alexa doesnāt seem to be picking up the new monkeys.
When smartthings was in startup mode, they had fantastic support. And it continued I would say all the way into 2016 or 2017 when the support got transferred over to Samsung. But it was definitely great for the first few years.
On top of that, there are still employees who participate in this forum by their own choice and are also really good. ![]()
But yes, thereās no question that the Frontline support has become people who are just reading off of scripts and it can be really frustrating.
Forgive my newbie question but I have never used the make a web request function before and I have a few questions.
When I add the voicemonkey url to the piston do I need to add quotes before and after?
Do i have to free text urlEncode or should it autopopulate?
Do i need to add urlEncode if I am having alexa make a custom announcement when monkey is fired?
This is my current piston
And then I have an Alexa routine as follows, When gargedoorleftopen is pressed, Then announce āgarage door was left openā
For yours, you are just triggering an announcement on the Alexa side and leaving the āannouncementā in the URL request off. You wonāt need urlEncode or an expression. To trigger the announcement routine, for URL, do āvalueā instead of āexpressionā. Then put in your value as - https://api-use-voicemonkey?access_token=YOURTOKEN&secret_token=YOURSECRETTOKEN&monkey=garagedoorleftopen Then stop, and donāt use any quotes.
Otherwise, thereās really a few ways to code the URL. If you code it as an āexpressionā, what you are doing is actually using Webcoreās functions to format the URL for you. If you are doing that, you will need a quote right off the bat, all the way up until equal sign after announcement. Then urlEncode(āYour announcementā).
Or, you can actually use the āURL Generatorā feature in Voicemonkey to format the URL for you, and then just put that in as a value with no quotes needed. Basically, a URL needs %20 instead of spaces. urlEncode is doing that for you.
Multiple outputs
For those wondering how to send one web request and get several (or all) echos to respond, the answers is fairly straightforward.
create a new monkey - weāll call it everywheremonkey
for each echo you want in the āeverywhereā announcements, create a separate routine, triggered by everywheremonkey, where the ārespond fromā at the bottom of the routine is set to that echo.
Oh, and also in webcore I have created a global variable for each monkey with the whole URL in it apart from the custom speech
Due to this, my overheads to speak are an absolute minimum:
Make a web request to (concat(@monkeyname, āmy message to speakā))
Since those are globals, theyāre available from any piston. Speaking becomes a one line command again.
I had this working fine yesterday, today I added a new Monkey and called it a new webCoRE script, and now when the Routine runs (when the monkey āis pressedā instead of the variable message, I get Alexa saying: Welcome to VoiceMonkey, visit voicemonkey.io to get started.
I also noticed when I created a URL for the new Monkey, the secretkey had changed.
Ideas?
Same thing happened to me. Just try to disable and re-enable the skill.
Thanks!! Unlinking and relinking solved it.
I am quite pleased with the integration and would probably consider paying for it, but not if this happens very often
Yeah I feel the same. Itās happened to me once and Christian gave me steps to fix it, which it did but Iād hate for this to keep happening as Iāve set up quite a few now and would be a headache to have to start all over again. Iād also be willing to pay for a more robust skill but Iām not even sure if and how/when itāll do it again.
I also had to relink shortly after i first set it up. So far thatās been the only time Iāve had to, so Iām hoping that it stays that way.
After the relink I have not had a single issue. Itās only been about 10 days, but so far, it has proven 1000 times more reliable then the Samsung Alexa skill, which is now up to a 74 percent 1 star rating
strange, when i look at it thereās only 110 global ratings and 1.9 out of 5 stars
I wonder if the ratings system is different in the U.S. versus outside the U.S. Are you outside the U.S., or at least does Alexa āthinkā you are?
UK - I thought about that after posting. Still, 1.9 is not exactly world beating.