An old bug send to have come back.
I just created a device group macro. When I say, set the living room to the color blue, she turns off the lights.
Edit: never mind, Alexa is a just a bitch.
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That āsendā to be the case sometimesā¦Just give her some love and sheāll treat you well.
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Announcing version 2.0.1 of Ask Alexa
Lambda code remain the same (1.1.2)
Utterances have been updated as of yesterday
This is a minor version number change. Please note that this is a single program; this no longer has a parent/child code base.
The only issue encountered so far with this unified code is on Android mobile apps. If you are editing a macro, clicking āDoneā will take you back to the mobile app and NOT the main Ask Alexa menu. This is NOT Ask Alexa related, but the mobile app itself; iOS does NOT appear to be affected by this. Either way, a ticket has been opened with SmartThing to address this. If you find this issue annoying, please open a ticket with SmartThings as well to increase visibility.
Other additions to this new version include:
- Bug Fixes-The usual suspects ranging from mispronunciations of key words to rounding (math) issues with thermostats and interface improvements.
- More CoRE Compatibility - More variables are being passed to CoRE from the macros, including Macro Groups that are run (in addition to the individual macros that are within the group also can be triggered off of).
- Additional options for custom messages within Macro Groups Allows you to append the custom acknowledgement message to the output of the child macros, or replace the messages completely. Also, an option with the Control/CoRE/Voice reports to suppress the ārestrictionsā message. Extremely useful for creating very context aware responses within a Macro Group
- The ability to have an empty voice report This may seem strange, but when used within a Macro Group it is very powerful. For example, imagine a good night routine that changes based on the day of the week, and the output of a voice message being dependent on what is open/closed/unlocked. Sometimes the conditions would give an empty report, which Alexa would normally say āthe report was emptyā. When used in a macro group, this error message is suppressed.
Installation
If you are using 2.0.0+, you simply need to update the SmartApp. You can also update the utterances and the Lambda code, but they only resolve a mispronunciation add 2 new utterances, so it is not 100% required right now.
If you are coming from 1.x.x code, you WILL need to uninstall both the parent and child smart apps and reload the new code. See posting: [RELEASE] Ask Alexa
For those wishing to re-install, the instructions on the wiki have been updated:
The wiki for this app is here: http://thingsthataresmart.wiki/index.php?title=Ask_Alexa
As always, you should also update your custom slots on the Amazon developer site when you have the app running. Nothing SHOULD change but it never hurts to refresh these every once in a while.
Support
All of you have been great in asking very relevant questions and making suggestions that I end up using. Here are some helpful tips on usage and support:
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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. The delay timer mentioned in the control macro happens at the SmartThings hub, not within the Amazon Alexa control.
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When evaluating new features I will typically ask for a valid use case. If it can be used by others to bring them value I will put it on my list of future revisions. Not all suggestions will be used and many times I add aspects of the request.
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There are no dumb questions, but many of the questions you may have were probably answered in the past couple months since the initial release. Please take some time to go through the forum and the wiki if you have issues. And donāt be offended if I give you the specific area of the manual that answers your question. I have spent almost as much time on the documentation as I have on the app. Finally, there are some big fans of Ask Alexa that know almost as much as I do. They can also help.
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Feel free to send me forks of utterances or even code revisions. As mentioned above, if it adds value to the overall program I will try to include it. This also goes for the wiki documentationā¦while I have spent about 80+ hours creating that document, I am open to it being improved; I know there are grammatical errors or syntax issuesā¦If you find them, fix themā¦I will include your name (if I can) in any fixes submitted.
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If you find a bug or a consistent crash please help me track it down by giving me repeatable steps to reproduce it. A non-reproducible bug, many times, indicates other areas that may be at fault besides the app. If you watch the live logging and see a red error with a line number, that is very helpful to me! However, I will need a full screenshot and not a copy/paste of the text. But be careful about revealing your Ouath and token in your public posts. People can control you house with that information. May want to blur that out.
Revisions are getting less and less as I mature this product. And with the code base now unified, I expect less and less additionsā¦especially as we integrate CoRE more to do some of the heavy lifting of larger condition-base automationsā¦ Any and all suggestions are still on the table for addition.
As always, I appreciate any public accolades or even donation to my PayPal account: https://www.paypal.me/mstruck
Enjoy.
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The android app Alexa Listens works with android wearā¦you can now officially control your world by talking to your watch. Yippee!
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I am starting to greatly dislike my Gear 2. Working with SmartThings was a determining factor. Well, no SmartThings no Alexa #feelingcheated 
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You MUST be just Tizen. 
I got an LG Urbane. I never get tired of folks asking me if itās an apple watchā¦because I get to say Apple doesnāt know how to make round watches.
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Ha, yeahā¦My line is, no itās smarter than Appleā¦Andoid Listens is the last straw. I am benching the Gear 2 and bring back my ancient Gear Live, which runs Android not Tizen
Hello everyone,
I have Core and Ask Alexa installed, they are working great. But in ask Alexa, it says Core is not installed and the same thing in Core, it says Ask Alexa is not installed.
Any ideas?
LJ
Save a macro in Alexa and save a piston in CoRE. They will show after that, they need to refresh each other.
Thanks but I have 10 macro in Alexa and 8 pistons alreadyā¦
You donāt need to recreate themā¦just go into each app, go into one of the macros, then click done and then done to exit the program. That will refresh the list. Do the same for CoRE.
Thanks to both of you, itās working great !
Edit : This might be useful to others. I was not able to trigger a piston without condition from AskAlexa. I was thinking it could execute like actions only rule we had in RM. What I did was make a voice report in askAlexa and add a condition for this report in CoRE.
The usecase is : When I say ādinner timeā to alexa, a piston is executed to setup everything to get at the table, like pause the Kodi the children are using!! It works great!
LJ
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It almost sounds like you just overwrote the smart app code instead of actually removing it and installing it, essentially, from scratch. I really recommend that.
āThatā = removing and installing from scratch? Just making sure I understood that correctly. I am going to try and do that now that you taught me where āuninstallā is located.
UPDATE: It makes all the difference in the world if you are in the right place at the right time. Soā¦ for those of us (me) that are dumb, there almost needs to be a convention that tells whether we are talking about the smartthings IDE or the smartthings APP on our phone. Because I went to the IDE to delete, and it said I could not - since it was in use. So I searched the IDE high and low for a way to uninstall the app. Never occurred to me that I had to do that from the PHONE SIDE of things.
I can kind of see how that makes sense now, but I also can still see my perspective of āthe computer should be able to do anythingā way of thinking. It never dawned on me that there was anything that couldnāt be done from the IDE area on the computer.
EDIT: Which I still havenāt found. Where is āabout?ā
Ok, just to share my level of stupid. I have opened my smart apps. I see three apps. MYQ garage door app. I see Ask Alexa and Ask Alexa Macro.
There are two icons, an eyeball and a pencil/paper icon I think.
I click on the eyeball and it tells me about the app, I can click edit from there. I click on edit and I get a lot of options, none of which is uninstall. Iāve always considered myself an intelligent person. Iām clearly mistaken because I cannot find the gd uninstall for this app. I would prefer to think that it is the unintuitive smartthings design.
Could someone please help me with a step by step of what in the world to click to get to uninstall. Iām hoping I wonāt consider my IQ below 100 when it is over. But heck, Iāll settle for getting it done rather than worrying about my intelligence at this point.
Ok, maybe Iām looking in the wrong placeā¦ let me guess. Do I need to uninstall from the PHONE APP part of this, and not the computer side? Iām gonna try that now. Cause there isnāt an uninstall that I can find here in IDE land.
Thanks,
-TS
Keith @N8XD I havenāt used tasker in ages, do you know how can I open Alexa Listens from a task?
Update. Nevermind I got it.
Alexa Listens + Android Wear = Must Have Combo!!! My Gear S2 just got retiredā¦
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Letās start from scratchā¦I look at every post here and so I have lost the context of what you originally askedā¦So, first question: Does everything work right now for you? Sounds like you are using the 1.x.x version so we want to get you to 2.0.0 + with minimal disruption. As such, let me know what you are trying to get to and myself or someone else can assist. Longer postings in the forum tend to a lot to take in, but individual efforts can easily be handled!
For anyone that has had issues with controlling the dimmer levels (individual devices or device groups) I have updated the sample utterances that seems to make the most obvious and basic commands now recognizable.
Enjoy!
Hi! First, thanks for creating this App! Iām certain once I get it working, itāll be exactly what I was hoping for.
Iāve gone thru pretty much this whole thread and while the one problem was listed here, that personās resolution didnāt apply to me.
First problem:
The ST logs are showing: "warn
There was an issue parsing the device labels. Be sure
all of the devices are uniquley named/labeled and that none of them are
blank (null). "
Here is my Device List:
Amazon ASK Custom Slot Information:
CANCEL_CMDS
cancel
stop
unschedule
DEVICE_TYPE_LIST
reports
report
switches
switch
dimmers
dimmer
colored lights
color
colors
speakers
speaker
water sensor
water sensors
water
lock
locks
thermostats
thermostat
temperature sensors
modes
routines
smart home monitor
SHM
security
temperature
door
doors
humidity
humidity sensor
humidity sensors
presence
presence sensors
motion
motion sensor
motion sensors
door sensor
door sensors
window sensor
window sensors
open close sensors
colored light
events
macro
macros
group
groups
voice reports
voice report
device group
device groups
control macro
control macros
control
controls
macro group
macro groups
device macros
device macro
device group macro
device group macros
core
core trigger
core macro
core macros
core triggers
LIST_OF_DEVICES
LIST_OF_OPERATORS
on
off
toggle
up
down
increase
decrease
lower
raise
status
events
event
low
medium
high
LIST_OF_PARAMS
heat
cool
heating
cooling
auto
automatic
LIST_OF_SHPARAM
arm
disarm
stay
armed stay
armed away
off
good morning
goodbye
bedtime
im back
good night
home
night
away
LIST_OF_SHCMD
routine
security
smart home
SHM
smart home monitor
mode
LIST_OF_MACROS
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
2nd problem.
When I try to see if Alexa is working with Ask Alexa and say, āAlexa ask smartthings version helpā she responds with āThere was an error accessing the SmartThings cloud environment. Please check your security token and application ID and try againā.
I went thru resetting both my OAuth tokens, and resetting the security token within the Ask Alexa app, saved and published in IDE and then updated them in the AskAlexa code in Lambda. Saved and published AskAlexa code in Lambda.
Any suggestions/help would be greatly appreciated!
For your first issue probably has to do with a device that has a blank (or null) label. I recommend going through the apps and systematically until that error goes away. The other issue is you may have the same device listed twice. For example, a dimmer can show up in the switch area (because it is actually a switch as well). Be sure each device is listed once throughout the whole app.
Your second issues appears to be either your Oauth is not turned on (unlikely since you were able to reset it), or like you already did, the codes are not in the Lambda code. The other issue, however, could be that you didnāt copy the ARN properly from the Lambda code to the the developer site. Does that sound familiar?
Let me know if either of these work outā¦you are closeā¦just need to get the final pieces taken care ofā¦
I posted this last week and dont see anything related so sorry if I missed it. When I try to get status of a macro group of devices the default seems to be turning off device.
alexa, ask status of Kitchen Lights
ācardā: {
ācontentā: āI am turning off the dimmers in the group named āKitchen Lightsā. Anything else?ā,
ātitleā: āSmartThings Voice Macroā,
ātypeā: āSimpleā
}
I have tried it with different utterances with the same response.
Because of the way the app is designed, you can not get a status of a groupā¦Not that it is impossible. but the macros are really for one use only (control OR reporting)ā¦not both. However, I am re-thinking that to give it more of a āreportsā summary view. Might not be in the next version, but possibly in the version after that.