[Deprecated] Ask Alexa 2.1.0

I got it. I thought I still had to tell smartthings to turn the thermostat
on before I can set it. It is working. What ever you did to speed it up
worked very well. That was something my wife before was how long it would
take to process a command.

Yeah
from a programmers point of view I was calling variables sometimes 12 times with one call, and for those I reduced those down to once per call. Then, for anything macro related (specifically voice reports), I moved the ‘translation’ matrix to the Lambda code. I get the impression the Lambda code, function for function, runs faster than the same code in SmartThings. There are swings in timing based on internet latency and load, but I believe all the ‘little things’ add up after a while.

Anyway, glad it is working for you.

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Is there a way to use Amazon Echo as a remote speaker like Sonos to make announcements such as “Door was left open”?

Unfortunately no
this is probably one of the more generally asked questions, and the answer is:

“The Echo, as it is designed currently, cannot react to switches opening or other actions within SmartThings. She will do things for you, but only at your direction and at the time of the request
”

So she will NOT ever speak up unless she is spoken to


@MichaelS got it thanks for the clarity!

Good suggestions that I put this in the documentation: http://thingsthataresmart.wiki/index.php?title=Ask_Alexa#Limitations

This would be great if we could route Ask Alexa general Sonos HTTP uPnP commands to Sonos through SmartThings HTTP. I have followed the instructions with rgraciano’s echo-sonos which integrates the Amazon Echo with Sonos. All I have to say is “Alexa Ask Sonos
” but I would love to be able to say “Alexa Ask SmartThings to play|group|turn up|down volume
”

How Echo-Sonos works

  1. When you say the command to Alexa, it triggers the Alexa skill with invocation name Sonos.
  2. The Alexa skill calls a web service running on AWS Lambda, passing it the preset name (“rock” in the example).
  3. Lambda then fires an HTTP request to a node.js server running node-sonos-http-api on your local network.
  4. node-sonos-http-api interprets the command and relays to Sonos over your local network (designated open port on Firewall).
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Ask Alexa has the ability (through the ST integration) to do the whole play, up, down, etc commands now. Coming soon is the ability to set up memory slots to allow you to choose the music you want to play


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Hi MichaelS, thanks for the awesome update! Is the ability to add a password requirement in there for voice macro’s as well? I can’t seem to find it for voice macros.

Thanks again!

Not yet
from a technical perspective I was struggling with this as I use the numeric component (which is also used with any delays you may put in) so you would have to choose between one or another. However, I think I worked around this issue and am going to attempt to get it working in probably the version after next.

Awesome, thank you again very much MichaelS!

No problem
was the right thing to do to give this option universally instead of just on certain items. However, in doing this I think I came up with some rather creative ways to implement this.

One other question. Is there a way to trigger a beep during a delay? For example, on my “I am leaving” macro I have it set to a one minute delay. What would be nice is to be able to tell it to send a ‘beep’ command to my zipato multi-sound siren to let me wife know the delay is going and then it stop beeping once it arms. Is there a way to do that now?

@MichaelS just wanted to say great implementation of the personalities :slight_smile: Tried out Courtesy mode last night, can’t wait to try out the others. Do you think we would be able to control the personality based on the current mode? Maybe something we can do via CoRE?

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[Bug Report]
A status setting under Power Voice Reports is not updated even though it has already been configured:

That is an interesting request
so, HOME mode might be Normal, but Party mode might be ‘Snarky’? Hmmmm
Let me get all of the major personality types in there and then see if it would make sense. I know from a technical perspective it would certainly be possible.

Ironically, I was working on Snarky today
the monotone voice doesn’t lend itself well to snarky
which is interesting just from a language perspective
it isn’t just the words and tone
like a terminator saying ‘hahahah’
without the inflection it isn’t much but just words then. However, I did do some interesting things
like have her change your name to knucklehead or Silly randomly, or say ‘Fine
I will just go work on the Skynet project then’

Fun stuff, and your suggestions keep it interesting.

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Good Catch
I should have caught this when you suggested the other, similar, issue before. I corrected this and it is now going to be in 2.1.1.

Let me know if you find any others.

Right now there is no feedback that comes from the Alexa or an other device
I like your suggestion about the siren
are there other apps that can get it to ‘beep’ as I could copy that functionality. I did see the need to notification about scheduled tasks, so there is an option in the current version to put a notification into the Events log you see on your SmartThings mobile app.

Also, I was successful in allowing a password on Core, Control, Group and Device Group (door and lock) macros. It would now be easy to set this up as well on voice reporting macros or device groups for thermostats, but see no real advantage to that
Thoughts?

I don’t see any advantage to requiring a password on reports, but that said just because I don’t see a use case doesn’t mean no one else does :slight_smile: If it’s not hard to do and doesn’t have a negative impact I wouldn’t see any reason why not to allow the option there.

If possible we could maybe have a core piston handle the beep? Have it run independent and just set it for the same amount of time as the delay? Of course I would have to somehow trigger that piston in the macro, then add delay, then execute a second action which I don’t think is possible currently.

What would be REALLY cool for people (but I’m guessing is probably not possible) is to have an option to have Alexa produce a sound during the delay period. This would let people have a delay audio notification even if they don’t have a device like I do that would support it. Just let the echo/dot handle the audio feedback.

If you have connected speakers you could create a piston and do tts, having your speaker countdown.

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