Echo Naming Quirks

[JDRoberts]

@Todd_Whitehead

I have echo controlling harmony through if, but that can only start activities. Not tell it to tune to a channel.

We’re getting sort of off topic for this thread, so please direct follow-ups to my projects thread. That discusses in detail choosing a channel. But basically you just set up a Harmony activity and you use a step in the starting sequence of that activity to set the starting channel for the activity. Works very well.

Alexa + SmartThings + IFTTT + Harmony to turn TV on and off by voice (2015 version)

Updated 12 November 2015 after Amazon added “Triggers” to their IFTTT Channel for Alexa As valuable as I personally found this project, and as much as I learned in doing it, as of 12 November 2015 it’s now no longer necessary. Amazon has added verbal triggers to their IFTTT channel. So you can say anything you want to as a trigger to Alexa and use that as the “if” for an IFTTT recipe, and have that trigger anything that has an IFTTT “that” channel. So SmartThings, Philips Hue, Harmony activities, etc. No virtual switches needed, no synch issues. It really is that easy. If you’re new to IFTTT, here’s a good overview: You may still want to use the direct Harmony/SmartThings integration to control certain aspects of TV watching, like limiting your kids to 30 minutes of Net…