I know Reverb can send preconfigured commands to Alexa, but that forces me to pair my AnyMote IR blaster to Reverb and not my Echo Dot. That isn’t ideal as then ALL AnyMote commands would need to go through Reverb and not the Echo.
I was hoping for a similar back door into Alexa. And yes, I know about the speaker option. Looking for alternatives.
There are always backdoors…Just this week I finally found out how to reference the Echo you are talking to. However, I am pretty sure Amazon keeps the ‘skills’ separate for a specific reason…similarly to how SmartThings keeps apps separated (but there was a backdoor for that as well).
Understood. I just knew you had a great deal of experience with Alexa. If you hear of anything useful, please store this idea in the back of your mind.
Ok…you are not the first person to ask this…playing music from the Amazon Library it the most common request.
Hey @michaels I have a use case I just came up with last night when I was in the baby’s room. I usually give a command to turn off some lights while I am putting the kid to bed. Usually the Show is set really low but for some reason my wife must have had music because Alexa was LOUD (waking the kid). Is there any way to have the commands execute but not play back? Or to auto set the volume of a device before playback. Maybe based on the time of the day?
I don’t need my baby crying (and my wife yelling) all the while Alexa is yelling at me too.
Seems everyone is spying on my development this weekend 
With the advent of me discovering how to determine what speakers are being spoken to, I am putting in some overall voice restrictions. Not only will some items (like macros and extensions ) now be ‘echo specific’, but overall commands can be restricted as well. So, for your example, if you are in the baby’s room and you want to run your command, maybe that room doesn’t respond…or it responds only during certain times of the day. Would that work?
I don’t know if I will get this into the next release (next Friday), but until then I do have a possible solution…there is the ‘whisper’ option that is time dependent…You could have the playback ‘whisper’ to you instead of playing back in her normal voice.
Not sure what that means?!?
I wasn’t talking about the specific speaker, but was referring to the time of day (or maybe mode) that the house is in.
I saw that. Have you ever really used that? The voice is downright evil! 
Oh, we were having a similar discussion in another thread and someone else had a good idea that I was working on last night 
You mean something like this:
I have not…not allowed in my house…it IS creepy sounding 
YES YES YES! When is it going to be put into your app?
Hopefully Friday…but may go in the next release after that as the Echo identification requires new Lambda code, so that is always a big upgrade for people.
Oh, and shame on me for not giving you this option. Sounds like you were using a macro or extension to turn off your lights, but there is an option to give no response to DEVICES and events…It is not global and doesn’t do anything for status, extensions, and is NOT time based:
I will be keeping this in for backwards compatibility, but it will MUTE the output when using single devices only.
This has been in the app for a few years now…sorry I didn’t think of it…I was going through the code and came across it (and fixed an issue with it in fact).
Yeah…I was running a macro and this setting is universal…I am looking for time based.
Spying is definitely one of the words to describe it…
Are you wanting this to be triggered by an action or time or by a verbal command? If you want this to happen with a verbal command, you can accomplish that in the native Alexa app under “routines”.
Alexa Routines can not activate an Alexa Skill command. Just Alexa Devices, Groups or Scenes. Unless you know a trick I don’t.
Ok, I realized that all the things that show up in my options are controlled by devices directly linked to Alexa. (Harmony hub and broadlink it control hub) So I appologize for the confusion. However, the broadlink it controller is only $22 on amazon and you can then turn your Direct TV box on/off with an Alexa routine along with the smart outlet.
Hello
got a question for you. Manage to install and setup ask alexa yesterday.
I’m able to get some command from it
Question : How can I manage a group of device with one command? I saw macro, I saw group but I doesn’t manage to make it work correctly, what is the best option?
Also, what is the best option the retrieve the weather forecast?
thanks!
Congratulations…if you were to rank your technical skill set and let me know how difficult this was with the documentation I am interested in knowing ‘how it was’.
I recommend either the rooms/groups extension: http://thingsthataresmart.wiki/index.php?title=Ask_Alexa_Rooms/Groups
The macros WILL work, but for a specific set of actions (i.e. lock doors, turn off lights, etc). Rooms and groups on the other hand work with on/off/lock/unlock, etc and will affect all items that react to those commands with in the room (i.e. Turn off the living room).
Let me know if that helps.
@MichaelS I don’t know if I am missing something, but when I was setting up a Room with two dimmers, it only allowed me to set only one dimming level for one light. Or a set level for all lights. Is there a way around this? I would like to see Example Den Dimmer at 50% and Den Lamp at 100%. Is this at all possible?
Could you use an ST virtual switch that is in an Alexa group or routine along with your smart plug, and when turned on by Alexa would trigger an action in Ifttt? Anymote has Ifttt integration.
