Amazon Echo

Devices & Integrations
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#234

I had the same setup experience with my Hue Bulbs (I have three) and Echo. Not to look a gift horse in the mouth, but I have 2 issues with using Echo (aka, Alexa) to control my Hue lighting:

  1. When Echo turns the bulb on via voice command, neither Hue nor ST detects the state change, and therefore neither realizes the bulb was lit. Same with turning it off….if I turn the bulb on with ST or Hue, then turn it off with Alexa, ST/Hue still thinks it’s on. Kind of a big deal for people who rely on the apps to let them know if they left a light on at home; they could have and not even realize it. I lump this in with the other problem I have with Hue: when I had a power outage at my house, all my Hue lamps came on when power was restored, and ST/Hue hubs didn’t reflect the state change.

  2. Echo inherently has proximity limitations. You basically have to be in the same room with it for full interaction (talking to and listening). In the context of voice controlled lights, this is mitigated somewhat by the fact that the Echo remote is also a microphone. So I can be in a different room than Echo, speak into the microphone, and issue the verbal command to turn lights on/off. But I have to have the remote with me, and I only have one. I’m not even sure you can connect multiple remotes to one Echo so you can at least keep one on different floors of the house, if not different rooms. Hmmm…I wonder if an intercom system would work?

Even with those limitations, that new feature is still pretty cool. I have to change the names of my bulbs, because it sounds pretty strange to say, “Echo, turn on ‘Hue MBR Lamp 1’”.

Would love to see Echo control other things besides lights eventually.

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#235

Hi,

I’m having an issue trying to get Echo to discover my Hue bridge/bulbs. Echo discovers my WeMo connected device but not the Hue? They all reside on the same network. I have 21 Hue bulbs, which are supported by Echo, and 7 GE Connected lights. I have tried both through the Echo app and through the echo device itself, no go. I am pressing the Button on the hue bridge when asked by Alexa, but she doesn’t discover the Hue.

I am on the latest Hue app and Bridge firmware. I called Amazon support and they had me try a few things and then passed my issue along to the developers. They came back with, “maybe you have too many bulbs”? I guess they want me to try removing some bulbs, but anyone with a Hue knows, they are linked to scenes and this would be a big pain to re-add them, especially with all the scenes i have.

I was under the impression Echo had no connected device limitations, in terms of the amount of bulbs?

I am thinking about factory resetting the bridge but I’ll be pretty upset if it still doesn’t work.

I have also tried cleaning out the rules and alarms from the Bridge, but no go there either.

Is there anyway to backup the Hue bridge and restore if necessary?

Anyone have any ideas that I could potentially try?

#236

I finally got my Echo to discover the Hue bridge. I had to remove 3 lights from the bridge. That got me down from 28 bulbs to 25. Echo discovered Hue right away, although some bulbs say offline. It seems like the Echo can only have a total of 18 bulbs “active” at one time. Something the developers originally asked me to try was get the light count down to 18. I was hesitant because setting up the bulbs isnt fun, especially when you have numerous scenes they are attached to. Echo is working with the Hue, but it needs to be cleaned up. I understand it just went live and will get much better. By the way, Echo will use the last scene you had on when she turns on your lights.

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#237

Seems this thread isn’t about ST integration anymore :frowning:

2 Likes
#238

I think it is about ST integration but waiting on ST development to confirm the roadmap. Somewhere above, someone said Amazon responded that they have lots of request for ST integration and were waiting to hear back from ST development team on that. Then again, didn’t someone at ST say they were waiting for access to the Echo API?

So until Echo is supported, the thread seems to be about what you can control with Echo in the meantime. I hope Echo can control every ST device and Hello Home phrase. That would be cool!

#239
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#240

Check out this tweak to Echo:

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#241

My Echo’s standard integration with Philips Hue is not even working…

The unit says that it has discovered 6 devices (I have 6 bulbs on my Hue Bridge), but none of these show up in the Android App.

Voice attempts to turn on or off bulbs pretty much fail with duplicate device name errors … but there is no detailed error log to help debug … ? :confused:

#242

Bummer. What did Amazon support say? I haven’t seen other reports of the Phillips integration failing.

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#243

I have 17 hue bulbs and one WEMO switch and though the discovery took a couple times once it discovered everything it works great. I would love to get the Nest and ST integration as well. Adding those would get me a lot closer to ‘Star Trek’ control.

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#244

Bummer…I held off on buying the Echo when I had the invite, because I just can’t afford it right now when it’s still so experimental. Now that it sounds like they are making great strides toward ST integration, I suppose I wish I had just gone for it. Oh well, I will get one someday if it really does become truly integrated.

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#245

The prices are creeping up too:

December @ $99

April @ $149

#246

Its sad to see that Developer makes Amazon’s Echo control Wink and Nest devices not smart things. Did any ST developer apply for developer API or are they too damn busy messing with samsung. SmartThings has went down hill hub always having issues lack of any updates to support new IoT.

#247

I’m sure plenty of ST developers or would-be developers applied… I applied… but didn’t get selected yet. I haven’t any real issues with my ST hub or service besides some minor issues with some frequent internet connection issues at times when scheduled events were supposed to happen (lights automatically turn on/off)… but that was my internet connection’s fault. Would be nice if, on failure to get a response, the system would try again in a brief period of time but that’s not a failure, really, just something that hasn’t been set up yet.

#248

Staff have said in the forums that smartthings did apply for the echo developers program.

Amazon selected only a couple of companies for the initial rollout, both, not coincidentally, companies that sell a lot of the integrated items through Amazon.

Since the echo isn’t even available for general purchase yet, I’m sure there will be many more integrations created as Amazon widens the developers program.

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#249

I applied and got access but have not had time to look at it a whole lot. If they gave me access I don’t think they are being overly picky :slight_smile:

#250

I applied and they never contacted me…now I am sad :frowning: LOL

I asked Alexa a question today and she said "I don’t understand the question"
So I asked “Alexa, why are you so stupid” expecting “I don’t understand the question” but no she replied…“You can always send your feedback to Amazon Support”…LOL

Well played Alexa, well played…

3 Likes
#251

I have echo developer access. I am working on integration, it will take some time to get the app out as it was only last week that Amazon released the preliminary guidelines on how echo apps will be published. The SmartApp side is actually the easiest point of configuration. You need to meet several criteria before Amazon will let you allow others to use an app you have created, and that is going to be the bottleneck for most developers.

  1. You must be prepared to upload an icon for your application of the
    size 108 pixels x 108 pixels.
  2. You must use an SSL certificate from an Amazon-approved certificate authority.
  3. You must provide 3 ‘example phrases’ in the Alexa AppKit portion of our developer portal that a user can say when interacting with your app. If you intend to allow users of your Alexa app to create an account or link to an existing account, you will need to host the privacy policy at a URL, and supply that URL via the Alexa AppKit portion of our developer portal.
  4. Highly Recommended: You should host your application in a load-balanced, monitored environment that is
    resilient to failure and that can auto scale based on demand.
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#252

@jodyalbritton Bummer, so you’re saying that you need to write an echo app as well?
Does the current HUE integration work that way?

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#253

At the minimum you have to create a schema of intents and sample utterances. This step is fairly straightforward and is done in the Alexa Appkit portal. Once an intent is recognized, it then makes a call to the smartapp and the smartapp is responsible for returning data in a format that the echo can understand.

I think so. The hue functionality appears in the settings menu under connected home. It is just a simple interface for connecting to your hue bridge and selecting the bulbs you wish to control. It also has grouping functionality so you can group all of the hue bulbs in your living room together and simply address them as living room. “Dim the living room lights to twenty percent” is an example of that. Still very early days. I have add access to the SDK for over a week, but I got the invite while I was in the middle of moving. I also don’t know how much I can reveal about the inner workings of the SDK, but I will find that out too.

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