[NO LONGER SUPPORTED] Ask Alexa

It is already online…if you link your IDE to GitHub you should be able to update it from there. Otherwise it is just the SmartApp code and you can get it here: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/MichaelStruck/SmartThingsPublic/master/smartapps/michaelstruck/ask-alexa.src/ask-alexa.groovy

i still use this now and then even though its limited. I vote to keep it.

getting this error now in AWS after update…

{
“errorMessage”: “RequestId: 2d6b3aad-6ed9-11e7-bc2c-7b2619cd9080 Process exited before completing request”
}

START RequestId: 2d6b3aad-6ed9-11e7-bc2c-7b2619cd9080 Version: $LATEST
2017-07-22T12:27:52.684Z 2d6b3aad-6ed9-11e7-bc2c-7b2619cd9080 TypeError: Cannot read property ‘type’ of undefined
at IncomingMessage. (/var/task/index.js:75:30)
at emitOne (events.js:96:13)
at IncomingMessage.emit (events.js:188:7)
at IncomingMessage.Readable.read (_stream_readable.js:381:10)
at flow (stream_readable.js:761:34)
at resume
(_stream_readable.js:743:3)
at _combinedTickCallback (internal/process/next_tick.js:80:11)
at process._tickDomainCallback (internal/process/next_tick.js:128:9)
END RequestId: 2d6b3aad-6ed9-11e7-bc2c-7b2619cd9080
REPORT RequestId: 2d6b3aad-6ed9-11e7-bc2c-7b2619cd9080 Duration: 1117.51 ms Billed Duration: 1200 ms Memory Size: 128 MB Max Memory Used: 20 MB
RequestId: 2d6b3aad-6ed9-11e7-bc2c-7b2619cd9080 Process exited before completing request

@MichaelS, I’m having a bit of an issue with the battery report that I set up in Ask Alexa.

One of my multisensors (Zooz 4-in-1) is not reporting in as part of the battery report.

The sensor does report battery when I “ask ST about the kids room sensor,” so I know the device is reporting battery and that Ask Alexa can query the value.

I can also confirm that the sensor is selected in the Ask Alexa SmartApp to be included in the battery report. Any ideas?

How is this error presented to you? When you save the code? Or when you press “test”? If it is the latter (pressing test), that is not a valid error as even operational code will throw errors from that button because it doesn’t have proper input variables defined. The proper way to test it is to use the developer site or the Alexa device itself.

Let me know the context and we can work through it as the code does work.

Hmmm…That is interesting…do all of the batteries report EXCEPT that one? Did it ever work? Can you copy/paste the output of the Living Logging response here? I would be interested if there is any errors you see in Live Logging as well. Finally, are you using a custom DTH with this device? Or simply the standard one?

Let me know as this SHOULD be an easy one to fix. My bet is that the DTH isn’t sending a properly formatted battery report out. That DOESN’T explain the fact you can query the device manually…but it also means that this should be easily fixable.

What speaker model do you use? Do you use the memory slots or just the play/pause/mute, etc commands?

Thanks for the reply. All of the batteries do report except the one in the multisensor. I messaged you directly with two live logging files - one for what I see when asking for the battery report, and another for what is generated when I simply as for the status of the sensor.

The ZooZ sensor doesn’t have a “standard” DTH, but the manufacturer was involved with and recommends the community one. The one I’m using is this one:

Feel free to let me know what you think once you get a chance to poke around a bit. Thanks.

2 Likes

I just use the play pause mute stop functions. Not sure how to set up the memory slots.

I have 5 of these throughout the house. https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B01E3MXHKA/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1500759825&sr=8-1&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_FMwebp_QL65&keywords=ggmm+e3&dpPl=1&dpID=51f6RXVGgsL&ref=plSrch
I got them on sale and the sound quality is great. They sync together really well.

I am not sure the memory slot thing would work…how do you connect these to SmartThings…is there a custom DTH?

I’m using the MediaRenderer Player v2.2.1 DTH by Mujica

It usually works if I already had a song previously queued up on the player. Right now only play pause and stop work. It can be a bit of a tongue twister at first but its entertaining and fun when we have company over. That’s usually when we evoke her to play.
The speakers native app is so easy to use that we mostly just lean on that but being able to tell her to stop or pause when our hands are full is always a plus.

Ok…Cool…Glad it is working for you. Thank you for the feedback.

Michael,

Love the app and functionality. Thank you for your hard work on it. I wanted to see if there was way to do the following with ask alexa to automatically alert ST

  1. ring doorbell (pro) chime or motion sends notification to ST.
  2. Ask alexa receives notification/Alert
  3. Alert/notification get sent to specific Echo Dot.
  4. Ask alexa/ Echo dot provides voice message that someone is at the door.

Thanks for the kind word! It is truly a labor of love for the past couple years!

Regarding your question…Alexa CAN NOT wake up on its own and speak. This is a limitation of how Alexa was designed. There is going to be some sort of push notification (i.e. the ring at the top will turn yellow, but you will still need to ask the device to play your messages). This is the most common question and the unfortunately answer right now is: No…you can not do it EXACTLY like that…However, there are ways to accomplish this same goal.

For the Ring, you must integrate the device into SmartThings and it will be viewed as any other device. Then use a program like Big Talker or even WebCoRE to send the alerts/messages to the Ask Alexa Message queue, which will either play when asked on the Alexa or in real time through connected speakers.

Does that help at all?

ok, you were right, this was displayed when pressing test in AWS…running test from the Alexa skills kit developer site, produced the correct resulting action.

Good news! Thanks for confirming. Let me know if you need any assistance with any of the other things in this app. There is a lot it can do!

Well, that was a whole lot of work to be able to ask alexa about my garage door. Its up and running so now I’ll have to try some more things with it. Thanks for an awesome program.

One comment I got errors buitding the Alexa model on the developer site, I had to build out the custom slots first then drop in the intent schema and sample utterances in order to get it to work and I had to do that from a newly created skill. I’m not sure what went wrong with the first one but I thought you might want to know.

Thanks again for all of what you put into this.

1 Like

Here is another Friday update. Not much has been going on in the world of Amazon. Everyday I love my Show just a little bit more. I actually added pictures to the background to personalize it a bit more, so it is now part of the family. Still waiting on push, but this week I focused on the little things in Ask Alexa to make the experience better.

For those that are watching, the documentation has been slowly updating along with the app. Again, 30+ pages are not easy to get through, but with the number of people (even novices) that go through this with NO help from the forums and just using the documentation is fantastic, so I have to balance quality and quantity.

Eagle eyed viewers of the documentation will also notice I am adding a new device into Ask Alexa’s repertuar: The Foobot Air Quality monitor. This little device will check your air quality and using functions like WebCoRE, you can do fancy stuff like scheduled home ventilation and such. A big thanks to @Matthew_Freestone for letting me use his device API to design and test this. The integration was spotty with SmartThings, so I also modified the DTH to better work with Ask Alexa and with SmartThings in general. I also feel I need one of these devices now in my household. Matt outlined his experience here: Automating Home Air Quality

With this new addition, I renamed some of the main menu items in Ask Alexa to better categorize the devices that can be used. Switches/Dimmers/Colored lights are now “Lights/Switches). Thermostats/Temperature/Humidity are now simple “Environmentals”. Again, this will help the novice users get up and running without feeling they are day one of flight school :slight_smile:

The update should be out next Friday.

Enjoy

2 Likes

Thank you very much for Ask Alexa, it’s continual upgrades and feature integrations!

This is so amazing… I did an initial install about 4 months ago and got it working. So much has happened since then. I don’t even know where to start to update to the latest. Probably best just to start over. Any advice? I have my AWS accounts all set up and the groovy code is tied into the main GitHub. Hopefully that will help.