[NO LONGER SUPPORTED] Ask Alexa

Do you have routines selected in your app…Instead of it being universal you have to select which routines you want to be able to control (some people use this as a mechanism to prevent kids from running certain routines). From there you must populate the developer slots from the Settings>>Setup Variables. It sounds like you may have done one of these but not the other.

Let me know if that helps.

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I may have misunderstood what @Cody_Farmer was looking for. If he wants to get rid of “Alexa”, that isn’t quite possibles as a name (or to be more correct, you can’t select your own but must use Amazon, Computer, Echo, etc). However, you are correct that another skill (with a different name) can still use the same Lamba which means the same ARN number can be used. For whatever reason I thought she also wanted to control her own devices and the two shall never meet…While Ask Alexa can do multi room (think isolated guest room) with multiple apps, I was making this more difficult than it needed to be. Thank you for the suggestion. I am going to add it to my wiki documentation as another use case as it doesn’t require additional coding!

As for the structure of the apps, yeah…design philosophy differences.

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I’ve bee trying to run a routine for hours and I finally changed all the names so they are all spelled out and with not added characters. for example, I had a “I’m back” routine and not I had to change it to “I am back”.

I find that I had the same issue with macro names…I had a macro called “I’m going to bed”, which worked for months, then one day it stopped working and I had to change it to “I am going to bed” for it to work again.

I guess no shortcuts for me.

I love this app BTW, and thank you for making Alexa useful again.

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Thank you! I appreciate the comments and support. Abbreviations, and how you speak, really affect the speech to text recognition, which in turn affects Ask Alexa. While I compensate for this in removing the punctuation, it still requires a bit of tuning of the name that you use to address your devices, macros, and routines.

Either way, I am glad you got this working and were able to share your results. You are not the only one (and won’t be) that encounters this issue. Scrolling up to about a year ago we talked about this as a limitation. Amazon has gotten better, but is not yet perfect.

I recommend if you are new user to waiting until 2.2.4 is announced before installing. This will be out tomorrow.

And we are up:

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Hi @MichaelS.

I’m stuck at Interaction Model. I don’t see the option at add more slot. Help

Is this a first time installation? If so, the process is a bit different than an upgrade. From a high level it is:

Install the Main App
Install the Extension
Install Lambda
Configure your environment (using the smart app)
Print/view the setup variables
Configure the development area (using the data from the above step).

Again, if it is a totally fresh install I recommend going here and going through the instructions. The first time is a pain, but there is nothing more cool than having Alexa tell you about your environment.

http://thingsthataresmart.wiki/index.php?title=Ask_Alexa

If I am misunderstanding, please let me know…

@MichaelS

I followed the link every steps and got stuck at the interaction model. Wiki instruction and image show

I don’t have that option to add slot type.

Again, is this a fresh install or an upgrade? The screen shot you showed has the slot open. If this is a new install you have to put information in there and then close it. You can only do one slot at a time.

Does that help?

oh no. that’s the image from wiki. My was on top of that

Right…I edited my post as soon as I saw that…you do appear to be doing a fresh install…You have the first slot open…you need to fill it out per the Setup Variables, then save it, then go to the next one.

Paul,
Please type the name of the slot in the “Enter Type” box… DEVICE_TYPE_LIST
Then in the “Enter Values” box copy and paste the appropriate information for that list.

Once you click on that box, the "ADD’ button will appear down below. click on the ADD button and then repeat the process until you have all of the slots built.

Then, add your intent file at the top and add the utterance file in the bottom box.

Then AND ONLY THEN click on the SAVE button.

What he said… :slight_smile:

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Great. Thank You both. I will try later and let you guys know.

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Perfect…as you can see this is a rather popular application and many folks have gone through the installation. So either I or someone else will be able to help out.

I look forward to hearing back and your thoughts!

Is there a way to adjust the color of lights by specifying the color temperature in Kelvins? Also, please consider adding the ability to adjust the color temperature of the standard white colors (soft white, warm white, daylight white and cool white).

This feature was added a couple versions ago. To be clear, actual RGB lights are ONLY controlled by hue/saturation (via a large color pallet of 150 color names), but the newly added Kelvin lights can be controlled by 4 color names: “Soft White”, “Warm White”, “Cool White” and “Daylight White”, setting the lights to 2700K, 3500K, 4500K and 6700K. Based on user feedback, this was a lot better than sending numbers to your white lights.

There is more information here: http://thingsthataresmart.wiki/index.php?title=Ask_Alexa#Interface_Items

Good question, but sorry I didn’t make it more clear on the release a month ago.

Paul,

I had a look at the developer site and realized Amazon moved the add button. Not sure if that was the issue in your case, but thanks for motivating me to look. I have updated the documentation.

Let me know if you need help getting through the installation.

Is it possible to add to the Voice Marco Temperature section options to determine the current thermostat mode, setpoint, and/or operating state so that one can determine if the thermostat is on/off/heating/cooling/idle.