Welcome to another Friday! It is strange not having any football on TV until the Super Bowl…What will I do?!? Guess I will continue to update the apps! Actually, that is exactly what I have been doing…
First, for those of you that are fans of the FooBot device @storageanarchy send me a pull request that improves the calculation accuracy along with formatting a little bit better on iOS devices. Thanks again to Barry for his work in keeping me ‘precise’ (inside joke). Files and other information can be found here: http://thingsthataresmart.wiki/index.php?title=Foobot_Air_Quality_Monitor
For Ask Alexa, I have been working with @bangali to integrate his up-and-coming Room Occupancy concept. You will not only be able to query the status of a room’s occupancy but also change the status based on occupancy (like sleep or enabled). Think of it like the concept of the ‘check in’ that I put into Ask Alexa last year, but on a more ‘micro’ or room level. Until the release, I recommend checking out the app here: Rooms Manager smartapps and Rooms Occupancy DTH (Smarter Lighting with automated rules driven lighting)
In other Ask Alexa news, I have not yet been able to figure out who sent me the bitcoins I mentioned a couple weeks ago. I ended up cashing them out, and thank goodness as they have dropped in price. The link I put into my release notes is only for donations for Ask Alexa, so I know they came from someone here. Again, all I want to do is thank you…if you are reading this, I DO appreciate the donation!
While I thought the Christmas rush was the reason for the increased number of Ask Alexa installs, I have been actually rather pleased to see from my statistics that the rate of 5 to 10 installs per week is being maintained. I don’t track this to the granular level to see if a single person may be attempting multiple installs, but I can tell there is a consistent number of installs happening. I REALLY appreciate everyone who installs and uses the app! And, my installation questions have been reduced due to the new process of installation where the custom code is given to you and you don’t have to constantly copy/paste information.
Finally, thanks to @Michael_Deffendall for helping me improve the documentation even further. Amazon is constantly updating their web sites, so I need to keep on the documentation to match it. In a rare set of events, Amazon has actually made the AWS process even easier now. Again, thanks to Michael for the great suggestions on how to improve the installation and the documentation!