[NO LONGER SUPPORTED] Ask Alexa

For ZXT-120, there is already a custom device handler available as below.

Okā€¦just a quick glance at the code it DOES appear to be a thermostatā€¦which make this even easier as it SHOULD work as you describe already! It should appear in Ask Alexa as a thermostat and you should be able to give it a heating or cooling setpoint, and also through macros and default values give it commands like ā€œit is cold in hereā€ or "increase the heatā€™.

Have you given this a try?

@MichaelS Not yet, but I will spend next two days to try these things out. I am quite new to Ask Alexa. And since you just mentioned macros, I will get started by reading some related topic more carefully on Ask Alexa wiki page. Hopefully, I could be able to feedback soon with more idea with correct sense.

I am here to help, and am actually rather curious on your experience, not only as a new user but with this very interesting device. Let me know!

Thanks Michael.

I have set to only report on lights and if everything is off this works great. However if for example the hallway lights are on I get something like: ā€œThe Hallway light 1 is on, the hallway light 2 is on, the hallway light 3 is on, the hallway light 4 is on, hallway light 5 is on, the hallway light 6 is on.ā€

What I would like to hear is ā€œThe hallway lights are onā€.

I have those lights grouped as group Hallway. I would like it to announce the group rather than individual lights. Is this possible and/or have I missed something?

This is a voice report? If so I donā€™t believe that I have a setting to summarize when they are all on. I can add it, or you could put these into a room/group and they WILL summarize in all on and all off conditions.

I will put on my list to add a summary for all ā€œonā€ for voice reports, but I really recommend this as a group so you can also control the lights with one command as well.

Thanks, Yes this is a voice report.

I have all my lights added to an appropriate room/group but they are still all announced individually. Have I missed a switch setting on the report or do I need to update something after creating the groups? I added the groups to the list of macros in the setup variables.

I guess I could get what I want by creating virtual switches for each room and monitoring those but it looks like the app can already do what I want and i am just doing something dumb!

I have no need for an all on response as this is an exception report to run at bedtime.

Chris

The room/group should a consolidated report. Did you name it different than your voice report? It will only consolidate if ALL the list is in the same state.

PM me a screen shot of you room/group setup and I will also add in a tweek for the voice report as well.

Iā€™m curious where you found this information? I believe many of us have been waiting for this feature for years now and Iā€™m pretty bummed to read that sentence. Hard to believe a speaker device canā€™t be used to make noise when needed.

Since notifications arenā€™t here yet for most developers, there is no 100% way to tell HOW Amazon will implement this feature. Reading this: https://developer.amazon.com/docs/alexa-voice-service/notifications-overview.html in addition to seeing how notifications are already handled (i.e. Life 360, Amazonā€™s own package delivery notification) seem to reveal how other skills will implement this: with some sort of ā€˜toneā€™ along with a yellow pulsating ring to alert you to a waiting message.

Again, that is not to say the speaker canā€™t simply wake up on its own and start speaking, but for whatever reason, Amazon (and to some extent, Google) refuse to even address this rather basic need (from developers).

Ironically, I meet with Amazon on Wednesday in Seattle. I did this before as someone at Amazon saw Ask Alexa and wanted me to come work for them. The job wasnā€™t right, but they recently called again as they keep hearing good things about Ask Alexa and now want me to consult with them on the pain points developers are facing when doing apps. This might give me an opportunity to sign another NDA and get MORE information about what is coming and why certain things are done as they are.

Wish me luckā€¦hopefully I will have more information, but I hope this explains WHY I feel it will be no more than a tone and light. That is the advantages of having external speakers hooked up which DO allow for real time VOICE alerts.

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Best of Luck with the meeting!!!

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Honestly, a stored message with a notification alert is EXACTLY what I want for my applications.

Iā€™d have to be near the speaker to hear what my house had to say when it wanted to say it. And if I wasnā€™t, well thereā€™s no repeating. I think what you have now combined with the visual notification indicator is what Iā€™d vote for.

Edit: after a quick scan of that developer link, it appears that you could implement the message indicator now?

ā€“glen

Noā€¦there are going to be two pieces to thisā€¦one in the developer area to allow the skill to request permissions from the user to enable notifications, then pieces within the Lambda code that turn on the notification when there is a message. While I can code it all day long, the developer piece is still not public. And even if it was for me (:slight_smile:) it would not be available for the community without an NDA from Amazon.

If you have a Sonos or some other Smartthings connected speakers you can do this today with Ask Alexa.

I suppose the fact that a tone (or noise of some sort) gets closer to the solution Iā€™d like to see - basically as long as it grabs my attention. I think the eventual problem I can see with this approach is that there are notifications which I occasionally want to catch up (news, scores, emails, ā€¦) on and others that I absolutely need to respond to immediately (garage door left open, reminders). If these are lumped together I suppose Iā€™ll forgo the first category.

The Echo-as-bluetooth-speaker-sink solution (in my case, via Raspberry Pi) worked well with periodic repeating notifications (15 mins) but bluetooth is notoriously flakey and Iā€™ve had nothing but trouble keeping the connection stable and working in Raspbian.

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Sorry ā€“ I didnā€™t see what about that link wasnā€™t public or not released. I even tried to navigate to it from the developer documentation, under AVS. It looked like it was in production.

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Ohā€¦sorry for a confusing set of terminology. The AVS is NOT a skill like Ask Alexaā€¦it is the service Amazon markets to other device developers to allow Alexa integration to those devices.

Regarding the custom skill, which Ask Alexa is, THAT interface would have to have a switch allowing the app to ask permissions from the user to allow notifications. Then, in the AWS/Lambda code you could then send a push to that API to get the device to flash/tone. Unfortunately, the Developer/Custom Skill piece is not yet active to the majority of developersā€¦yet.

Welcome to another Friday! For those Seahawks fans, letā€™s wish them luck this Sunday against the Texans! I was in Seattle earlier this week to meet with Amazon (more on that below), and I am going to go back on Sunday for the game. Go Hawks!

Regarding my Amazon visit, that has an interesting history. Back in February 2016 I got a call from Amazon based on they hearing about Ask Alexa. I interviewed for a Alexa Evangelist position. It became readily apparent part way through the interview they wanted me to travel extensively in this position. That was a killer for me. In addition, while it wasnā€™t the major point of me declining to work for them, I felt if I took the job I would have to abandon Ask Alexa and the community. Anyway, fast forward to last week and I got another call from the Alexa Evangelist for the Smart Home division. Once again, the conversation started with ā€œHey, we have heard some wonderful things about your Ask Alexa skill andā€¦.ā€ so I went to Seattle to talk to them!
IMG_20171025_105201!

Anyway, the meeting went well (I love the fact you can bring your dogs to work with you!).

IMG_20171025_110257

They asked me a LOT of questions about my app, including the user experience I have created (they seemed REALLY interested in my macros/extensions conceptā€¦particularly the Rooms/Groups extension). The good news, and I have to be vague, is that skills like mine and others may not be needed in a yearā€¦Much of the functionality will be built in! While most people think I would be upset about this, I am more about the end user experienceā€¦if Amazon can bake some of the functionality into the native functions, then that allows me to focus on the items that are NOT in there. Compound commands, for example, are not yet supported and may not be in the short term as Amazon is focusing on ā€˜macrosā€™ of things that happen when one command is given (similar to how Ask Alexa has been since the beginning). Another area where no other app can match is the reporting abilitiesā€¦While the main Alexa app is (or will be) polling the devices natively you can get status, but it will be difficult to get anything like the custom reporting available in Ask Alexa.

Bottom line, this visit to my old stomping grounds of Seattle was fun. Amazon may continue to consult with me as, and I quote ā€œYou have done things with your skill and integration that we didnā€™t even know was possible or neededā€. High praise indeed.

Finally, regarding the next version, I have the compound commands working rather nice, along with some nice little updates to a number of the extensions. One item I DID reconsider was removing the speaker control functionality. I am going to keep that in, simply removing the Sonos specific memory slots that never worked well to begin with. I estimate I will be releasing the app in November and then step back and look at the landscape before I make the next major changeā€¦bringing up the Ask-Alexa.com web site! While it will NOT be like WebCoRE (yet), it will allow me to host custom scripts that will make setup of Ask Alexa MUCH easier for a new user (and those that upgrade). Since this is an external site that I control, it will give a more custom experience that only SmartThings setups canā€™t give you. More to comeā€¦.

Update Well that was quickā€¦Amazon just enabled Routines within its app (I was told it was going to happen, just not this soon. See here: Alexa Routines - Live at last (two years in the making)). Anyway, I can now reveal that Ask Alexa will support this functionality in the next release as well. It will have similar functionality to my Alexa Helper App from yesteryear (see http://thingsthataresmart.wiki/index.php?title=Alexa_Helper). This app is still valid and was one of the most downloaded apps before Ask Alexa. Ask Alexa will have similar functionality allowing you to create a virtual switch that will then kick off Ask Alexa macros. Because of the way this works, voice reports can NOT be utilized; however, complex functions CAN be usedā€¦for example, I use this functionality to simply tell Alexa ā€œGood Nightā€ and she locks the doors, turns off the lights, and depending on the day of the week sets a specific home mode so they alarms work properly (Weekday or weekend).

Good work Amazon! And thanks for letting me know when we talked :blush: This app can also be used to FINALLY utilize Alexa as a taking alarm clock, replacing the talking alarm clock in my home as well (http://thingsthataresmart.wiki/index.php?title=Talking_Alarm_Clock)

Enjoy!

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As usual I will be looking forward to you next version. I am glad you received the recognition you deserve from Amazon. It is people like you that make these companies better. Just adding functions isnā€™t good enough, but adding a great user experience is what you did. As always i am ready to help, just let me know.

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For those using the Alexa routines please check this out.

Ask Alexa will support switch activation of macros/extensions in the next next release.

Canā€™t wait more toys.

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