What are you typing? With the receipt changes the simulator is testing you account not just the skill… so you be able to type “Alexa, what time is it” and get it to work… But this is a true simulator in that you have to type exactly what you would say.
No matter what I type, it just does that. It also doesnt show the JSON it shows “Skill I/O is available only for speech requests to skills you have created.”
Actually sounds like something is funky with your account… Does your Alexa device work properly?
I actually opened a second account, and it still did it. Good thing is when I try it from the device it is working as expected. I am going to try on a different network/PC later.
Thanks for your replies!
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Can’t wait for the day when Amazon allows Alexa to provide real time notifications. I want her to tell me when my doors open, or if the garage door is open (followed by the question if I want to close it).
@MichaelS - there is an option to configure a speaker in the app, but I am unable to select anything. I don’t have Sonos or Bose or Samsung speakers, so is there a way to setup a bluetoooth speaker or something?
For Bluetooth there is nothing I have control over in the app. I recommend searching the forums, however, as I believe there are some ‘hacks’ that allow you to push the output to Bluetooth which would then announce on the speaker.
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Hi @MichaelS,
Long time no speak, hope all is well!
Just a quick heads up to let you know that I’ve run into a funky issue whereby when I ask the system to unlock or lock a door with the password included in one single command, I get “There was a problem with the requested skills response”, but when I leave off the password in the initial command, causing Ask Alexa to ask me to follow up with the password, it works successfully.
I’m running 2.3.9f with Lambda code 1.3.1a.
Thanks as always.
Hmmm… That specific area is what the “f” version focused on… However can you give me at percise set of commands you are saying and the results. I can’t reproduce it with my system. I would actually type them each into the simulator and then see if it works… so something like:
Condition 1: error
Condition 2: works
Condition 3: works
Thanks
Welcome to another Friday. As I mentioned, I will be a bit distracted now that football season is in play! While not much on the Ask Alexa front, I do have some Alexa related items. If you have been holding off buying your next Alexa, I have a couple of my old units for sale. They work great, I just get the newest versions when they come out so I have a few for sale. Please see the auctions here:
And
There are already active bids so I can’t just sell them to folks, but if you win and are an Ask Alexa user I can figure out some sort of ‘incentive’ for you.
Have a great weekend!
Hi @MichaelS,
I was getting ready to post a screenshot of my simulator results, but I quickly realized that the simulator results are completely different from the actual results of interacting with my Echo device — totally whacky.
The good news is that things seemed to have improved — I no longer get the “There was a problem with the requested skills response” error. Instead, I get “I had some problems finding the device you specified.” I solved that problem as well by dropping the article “the” in front of the device name when issuing the command, which seems to indicate that this is an Utterance issue.
Command: “Computer, tell my home to unlock the front door password ####.”
Response: “I had some problems finding the device you specified.”
Command: “Computer, tell my home to unlock front door password ####.”
Result: Front door unlocks.
Definitely an utterance issue or how it understand you. You should look in the Amazon app to see if it is hearing exactly what you are saying.
The utterance you are saying SHOULD be in there. Gve this a try…
So, go into your developer’s area, go to Device Operation on the left side then add this to the utterance:
to {Operator} the {Device} password {Num}
If a small red text comes up saying it has to be unique, it is already in there. That again means it is not hearing you correctly.
Turns out the utterance was there all along. But that said, it still didn’t work (same device not found error) — and I’ve confirmed she heard me correctly:
The part I cut off was the password, which is spelled out into words (e.g. “one two three four”)
And “front door” is in your configuration? Reply to my PM from this morning and include the live logging info. You may also want to send me the link to your setup variables so I can look at your config.
Problem resolved! Somehow—after the last update from the git repo into my SmartThings IDE—the invocation name setting in the Ask Alexa section of the Classic SmartThings mobile app had reverted to “alexa”, causing the build to fail in the JSON editor of the Alexa Developer Console since you’re not allowed to have any of the official wake words as your invocation name. I fixed the invocation name back to “my home”, pulled the JSON code again from the Ask Alexa variables page, and pushed it to the Alexa Developer Console and re-ran the build, and now the app works as expected!
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Found this post after a while of trying to make NotifyMe working per the documentation, I’m glad it wasn’t me… The functionality as you describe it is great as is, I for one would be a happy camper if it were in a future release, thanks!!
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Hi I have just installed AskAlexa which was easy to do following your guide. Thanks.
I am not sure what I have do with the Weather report as when I ask it tells me “you only have one weather report called weather”. When I follow this up it will then read the weather report. How do I set it up so as it just reads the weather report?
Thanks
I would recommend you NOT call the report ‘weather’. This is the internal noun used for when you ask “What are my weather reports”. Instead, I would choose something like “outdoor weather”, or “local forecast”, etc…This prevents internal confusion with the inability of a computer device to distinguish the context of nouns.
Alexa or the Lenovo Smart Display?
I mean the built in screen just gives so much more features to the Google Assistant than ever. Awesome device!
But I still use my Alexa in the bathroom from time to time and use the display as a main console in the living room, does so much more work.
Testing the Skill just gives me “There was a problem with the requested skill’s response”, with anything that involves Ask Alexa. The card on the Alex app shows
(for “alexa ask smart things for help”)
Skill response was marked as failure
Ask Alexa - SmartThings Integration
Request Identifier: amzn1.echo-api.request.xxx
The target Lambda application returned a failure response
(where xxx is presumably a unique identifier)
or (for “alexa ask smart things the coffee status”, which should be “Off”):
Invalid SSML Output Speech
Ask Alexa - SmartThings Integration
Request Identifier: amzn1.echo-api.request.xxx
Value ‘undefined’ invalid on attribute rate for element prosody
The Ask Alexa skill is in my skills in Alexa, and in the Smart Things app. The latter shows e.g. “Lighting/Switches” as “Status: CONFIGURED”.
The Test Skills works when I ask for “What time is it?” and so on.
Any suggestions for troubleshooting?
Thanks,
Ian
Almost there…if you simply say “Alexa, open Smart Things” what does she say?
If that works, what about “Alexa, ask Smart Things for Help”
Let me know and I can help guide you. Please note, however, that the stuff on the screen will be little to no help. I recommend going to the IDE page and watch the live logging.
In your case it appears things are working but you have an issue with one piece of the code. The steps above will help me identify where.