Amazon Echo Driver!

[Anzir]

FYI, it looks like Amazon has discontinued the Dot, as expected. They always said it was going to be a limited run. Glad I got 2 ordered with the help of you all on this forum.

[jfh]

6 hours ago, drousso said:

Right.  I get all that.  But it seems very rudimentary.  Say, Turn the Kitchen Lights up:  all i can do is trigger a single lighting scene which will contain a predetermined level. Turn the lights up 10%, and repeat that until I get the appropriate light level, or volume level if dealing with audio.

The advanced programing examples would be great, so perhaps I have a macro and variable in play.  The macro is Increment 10%.  Then I'd like to be able to call that macro from a lighting event or audio even and have it act on the currently triggered device.  Alexa, Turn up the Backyard Music. That would call the increment 10% macro and apply it to the backyard.  Or Alexa, Turn Down the Kitchen Lights, which would call the increment 10% macro and apply is to the Kitchen Lights.  This is the type of killer programming that I'm looking for.

I can do all of this in a brute force way... Not elegent...

I don't know anything about the Echo driver or the AMazon API so I can't tell what gets passed to the driver.  So I can't know if I could tell Alexa to Set the Backyard Music to 50% in one announcement... Or tell Alexa to Set The Kitchen Lights to 10%.  

 

 

Ignore what you can do with Echo.  This driver pretends a device is a Phillips Hue light.  The only commands Alexa will understand are those specific to a Phillips Hue light.  You can't "pass" anything to the driver.

If you can implement your 10% example to work on a switch or a button press, it will work with Echo.  You've already hit on the solution - you will have to call a macro, not a lighting scene, to do what you want.  And yes, it will be brute force because you will have to track or determine existing light levels and act on them.  But it is no more "brute force" because you are using Echo to trigger it that it would be if you tied the macro to a button.  But the 10% solution you want doesn't take that much code.

[jfh]

6 hours ago, drousso said:

  So I can't know if I could tell Alexa to Set the Backyard Music to 50% in one announcement... Or tell Alexa to Set The Kitchen Lights to 10%.  

 

Renember, each defined device has 4 separate triggers ON, OFF, UP, DOWN

in my case "Kitchen" controls the kitchen lights.  ON and OFF do what you expect, UP and DOWN ramps the existing light level up or down accordingly.  ON and OFF call simple commands, UP and DOWN call macros that are logically equivalent, but with the appropriate +/- operators

[drousso]

11 hours ago, jfh said:

Renember, each defined device has 4 separate triggers ON, OFF, UP, DOWN

in my case "Kitchen" controls the kitchen lights.  ON and OFF do what you expect, UP and DOWN ramps the existing light level up or down accordingly.  ON and OFF call simple commands, UP and DOWN call macros that are logically equivalent, but with the appropriate +/- operators

Can you share examples of the UP and DOWN macros you created to turn volume up/down for audio, or lights up/down for lighting?

[drousso]

On 7/18/2016 at 9:03 AM, drousso said:

Can you share examples of the UP and DOWN macros you created to turn volume up/down for audio, or lights up/down for lighting?

okay, I guess not.

I've done the macros for up/down for lighting and audio and they work well, except that the Echo frequently confuses UP and OFF.  Shame...  Lots of training still hasn't helped her get it right...

 

 

[South Africa C4 user]

3 hours ago, drousso said:

okay, I guess not.

I've done the macros for up/down for lighting and audio and they work well, except that the Echo frequently confuses UP and OFF.  Shame...  Lots of training still hasn't helped her get it right...

 

 

Try using raise / lower or increase / decrease. She tends to like those much better than up / down.

[AP-123]

On 6/30/2016 at 11:49 PM, chopedogg88 said:

Jim is correct in that you only should have one instance of the driver in your project per Amazon account.  However, if you'd like to register each Echo/Dot device under a different Amazon account (in order for each to have its own set of trigger words for example), then you'd need to add an instance of the driver for each Amazon account.  As far as the driver licensing goes however, one license key covers all instances of the driver in your control4 project, so you don't need to make the decision based on cost.

Dot showed up today.  Plugged in, setup wi-fi and voila, all previous programming worked on dot. Wish I bought a 2nd Dot.  

[jfh]

On July 18, 2016 at 7:03 AM, drousso said:

Can you share examples of the UP and DOWN macros you created to turn volume up/down for audio, or lights up/down for lighting?

 

My macros wouldn't play well as generics, as what is done is heavily dependent on time of day, whether motion is detected and whether certain other things are going on.   But the primary logic keeps track of current light levels and adjusts levels (Set Level) +/- 20 (or in one case ramps to preset) or just calls certain AL scenes when I want more than one light involved.

 

There is no one right way for doing this, but it's not magic either - just very basic C4 programming.  You seem to be looking for a one size fits all answer - maybe you want something like this:

If Kitchen->Ceiling level <= 20%

 Set Level on the Kitchen->Ceiling to 20

If Kitchen->Ceiling level <= 40%

 Set Level on the Kitchen->Ceiling to 40

.  ... Etc.

[eddy.trochez]

On 7/21/2016 at 0:25 PM, jfh said:

 

My macros wouldn't play well as generics, as what is done is heavily dependent on time of day, whether motion is detected and whether certain other things are going on.   But the primary logic keeps track of current light levels and adjusts levels (Set Level) +/- 20 (or in one case ramps to preset) or just calls certain AL scenes when I want more than one light involved.

 

There is no one right way for doing this, but it's not magic either - just very basic C4 programming.  You seem to be looking for a one size fits all answer - maybe you want something like this:

If Kitchen->Ceiling level <= 20%

 Set Level on the Kitchen->Ceiling to 20

If Kitchen->Ceiling level <= 40%

 Set Level on the Kitchen->Ceiling to 40

.  ... Etc.

One device can give you On, Off, Lower, and Raise. Setting up lower or raise commands by a predetermined percentage (increase 30% or decrease 30%) is one simple line of code; no need to do "if/then" programming. For example, I say "Alexa, lower the kitchen lights" and the lights get lowered by 30% regardless of the current percentage. The same can be done with sound.

[jfh]

35 minutes ago, etrochez said:

One device can give you On, Off, Lower, and Raise. Setting up lower or raise commands by a predetermined percentage (increase 30% or decrease 30%) is one simple line of code; no need to do "if/then" programming. For example, I say "Alexa, lower the kitchen lights" and the lights get lowered by 30% regardless of the current percentage. The same can be done with sound.

 

My C4 dimmers don't have a programming option to change light levels by a percentage - on set to a given level - what kind of dimmers are you using?  I haven't looked, but I doubt I can change volume on an A/V device by a percentage either.

[eddy.trochez]

On 7/17/2016 at 2:40 PM, drousso said:

Right.  I get all that.  But it seems very rudimentary.  Say, Turn the Kitchen Lights up:  all i can do is trigger a single lighting scene which will contain a predetermined level. Turn the lights up 10%, and repeat that until I get the appropriate light level, or volume level if dealing with audio.

The advanced programing examples would be great, so perhaps I have a macro and variable in play.  The macro is Increment 10%.  Then I'd like to be able to call that macro from a lighting event or audio even and have it act on the currently triggered device.  Alexa, Turn up the Backyard Music. That would call the increment 10% macro and apply it to the backyard.  Or Alexa, Turn Down the Kitchen Lights, which would call the increment 10% macro and apply is to the Kitchen Lights.  This is the type of killer programming that I'm looking for.

I can do all of this in a brute force way... Not elegent...

I don't know anything about the Echo driver or the AMazon API so I can't tell what gets passed to the driver.  So I can't know if I could tell Alexa to Set the Backyard Music to 50% in one announcement... Or tell Alexa to Set The Kitchen Lights to 10%.  

 

At the moment you can't set the lights to a specific non-programmed percentage. The driver doesn't have Device Variables at the moment, so no there's no light level command coming into the Control4 system. You can, however, set a programmed percentage value to the up an down commands. I'm programming my Echo as I type this and I find 30% for lighting is a good percentage. So, by just saying "Alexa, dim the kitchen lights", the light level goes down 30%.

[Johann Stroh]

Use variables to store current light levels.. Then increase or decrease as needed

Sent from my Nexus 6P using Tapatalk

[jfh]

3 minutes ago, Johann Stroh said:

Use variables to store current light levels.. Then increase or decrease as needed

Sent from my Nexus 6P using Tapatalk

How do you set a dimmer level using a variable?  I see no such option under programming controls.

 

[martymohr]

3 minutes ago, etrochez said:

I can do all of this in a brute force way... Not elegent...

I wouldn't call it brute force - it's just a lot of tedious, but necessary, programming. Until we get true AI you're stuck with four events for each device; not to mention that your device (be it the light dimmer, TV, implementation of Pandora) may be totally different from someone else. Using a percentage is IMHO the ideal method - if the volume or light level doesn't move enough simply tell Alexa to do it again.

 

[martymohr]

10 minutes ago, jfh said:

How do you set a dimmer level using a variable?  I see no such option under programming controls.

The only way I can think of is something like:

If variable = 10 then set light level to 10

So yes, you'd have to do that 100 times - ain't worth it. Using ranges (as someone else suggested) makes much more sense.

[jfh]

5 minutes ago, martymohr said:

The only way I can think of is something like:

If variable = 10 then set light level to 10

So yes, you'd have to do that 100 times - ain't worth it. Using ranges (as someone else suggested) makes much more sense.

Thanks for the sanity check.  I don't see any benefit to using a variable over querying the current light level as I did in my example.

[eddy.trochez]

This is how you increase or decrease levels by a determined percentage, one easy line of code:

Select the up or down device in Programming (Device Events)
In Actions, find the dimmer and open the Device Variables
Select LIGHT_LEVEL
In the command section select the option with no name, select + to increase and - to decrease, add a value to the box (this represents the percentage)
Add the line to the script and that's it

[jfh]

Thanks, I should have known this.   Just found some code where I used it ...

[bigdaddyo811]

I am having problems with OPEN/CLOSE.

If I say "CLOSE 'Bedroom Drapes' " - this works fine and drapes close

If I say "OPEN 'Bedroom Drapes' " echo says - "im not sure how to help you with that". (the Turn ON 'Bedroom Drapes' works fine". I thought OPEN and ON were equivalents.

 

Thanks

[jfh]

OPEN used to be reserved for Shade control (Amazon intercepted it before Phillips Hue control).  I thought that was changed, but maybe not.

[CT-Mike]

So I bought the driver back in February, but just got it added into my system today. I have done some rudimentary programming:

- turn on home theater system and set to channel 8 (wife like to watch GMA when she comes downstairs in the morning)

- open/close the three garage doors individually

- close any garage doors that are open

- turn off the home theater system also shuts off the first floor HVAC (wife has a habit of forgetting and the AC will be on all night). 

I need to refine a few things and add more triggers but so far I am a happy customer. 

[South Africa C4 user]

3 hours ago, jfh said:

OPEN used to be reserved for Shade control (Amazon intercepted it before Phillips Hue control).  I thought that was changed, but maybe not.

Amazon released open and close for a few weeks and then re-reserved open as far as I can tell. Very irritating!

[eddy.trochez]

14 hours ago, bigdaddyo811 said:

I am having problems with OPEN/CLOSE.

If I say "CLOSE 'Bedroom Drapes' " - this works fine and drapes close

If I say "OPEN 'Bedroom Drapes' " echo says - "im not sure how to help you with that". (the Turn ON 'Bedroom Drapes' works fine". I thought OPEN and ON were equivalents.

 

Thanks

Use "raise" for shades, very appropriate. Need to program it in the "up" command.

[StroTek LLC]

On 6/21/2016 at 11:25 AM, StroTek LLC said:

This driver seems to keep losing my triggers

.. What can I do to make sure that stops happening?

 

On 6/21/2016 at 9:25 PM, chopedogg88 said:

I haven't seen this issue before.  Is it only happening with Home Edition?  I don't use that, so perhaps that is why I haven't noticed this behavior.

PS> I've added a capability to Review the driver on the product page on our website (www.epic-systems.com), so if you are enjoying the driver, please do take the time to give it a positive review!

Thanks
Ari

I finally figured it out.. any time you reboot the Director/main controller... we lose these triggers. If you then "delete" the triggers from the driver.. and re-add in them in the same order as before.. you dont lose any of your programming

[chopedogg88]

This is only happening because you are one of the first people to buy the driver and are still on version 1.0, rather than version 106.  This issue was resolved back in January.

Please go here and download/install the latest driver using the link towards the bottom of the page-

http://www.epic-systems.com/products/amazon-echo-driver-for-control4