It is Friday, and it is time for another Ask Alexa update. It has been an exciting week in the world of home automation, including Alexa…A few weeks ago Amazon released the ‘color’ selection on the native integration. While it doesn’t give you the 150+ colors of Ask Alexa, it is a step in the right direction for the native integration. It will be a great day when the integration even gets to 50% of the abilities on my application. However, I don’t anticipate you will ever get the detailed reporting of your home as it is now in Ask Alexa. In addition, Amazon has released some new tools this week (beta). While really targeted at non-programmers, I recommend NOT going into the beta as I have not updated the instructions yet and if you are a newbie, the difference in screenshots and processes WILL be confused (I even got confused until I opted-out of the beta interface). Finally, Google Home now has the ability to distinguish users in the household. I actually don’t anticipate this to come over to the Alexa, and it doesn’t appear developers can access this feature yet within the Goggle developer interface. However, Ask Alexa has a form of this with personalized message queues that can allow for messages for each member of the family.
Right now, the next version (2.2.5) of Ask Alexa is being beta tested and so far so good! I have heard your comments about the upgrade cycles of apps and I will be slowing these releases down, focusing on ensuring clean instructions and few bugs upon release.
There ARE a couple updates that are out there since my last update that you can update now. First, the message queue extension has been updated to version 1.0.1. This is really just a small update and is NOT required right now for proper operation. It simply updates partner apps that use the new message queues when a queue name has change.
In addition, the Lambda code has been updated to 1.2.5. Again, this is NON CRITICAL and simple changes the wording of ‘macros’ to the new ‘extension’ wording. If you DO choose to upgrade, please do it in the following order:
- Open your Lambda session and copy the 3 lines for your Token and App ID. Place in a text notepad.
- Copy the RAW code from GitHub for Lambda, and paste into the AWS Lambda site
- Copy/Paste the 3 lines back into the code that you copied is Step 1
- Save the code
Both of the links in the documentation have been updated so you can get the new versions. http://thingsthataresmart.wiki/index.php?title=Ask_Alexa#Latest_Version Please note these updates WILL be required when I release 2.2.5, so please update within the next few weeks.
Regarding 2.2.5, as mentioned in my roadmap ([RELEASE] Ask Alexa), this will break out the voice and weather reports into separate code. In my testing, this has reduced the code size by 25%, and I am seeing consistent speed improvements in response of 10-20%! However, this WILL require you to document your old voice reports, delete them, and recreate them in the new extension. There is no automated way to do this in SmartThings, but some beta tester are validating a process I created that will document this. I will publish this 1 week before the release of 2.2.5.
Since 2.2.5 is locked and being tested, I have already started work on 2.2.6 and the scheduler app. I have received a LOT of mail regarding this with suggestions on what to include for scheduling, and I am building it so it can be easily expanded as new ideas come along… Ironically, it is not the schedules that are so difficult, it is how to filter for invalid dates (i.e. Feb 30th, April 31st, etc). I have that worked out now and operational.
One question that I do get asked is whether you can create a schedule with your voice. Right now, the answer is no….Native Alexa can already schedule simple alarms by voice, so I decided to focus on using the power of the message queues to do something cool with the scheduler extension. A really good use case is a reminder of birthdays…Simply create a new schedule with someone’s birthday and annually it will put a message into your message queue (or notify you with lights or even voice to an ST connected speaker) to remind you of the event….IN REAL TIME (which you then have the option of seeing in the mobile app, or being pushed/texted to your phone). Basically, you should never have an excuse for missing a birthday or anniversary again! Right now you can set up one-time events, simple reoccurring events, and complex reoccurring events…Any of these CAN be turned on or off via a voice command, but creating them will be all in-app.
I will be out of town next week, which will allow me to actually code even MORE than I can at home. If you need anything, please reach out.