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A float value as well would be useful! There are a number of drivers that do this. While you are at it, a string would be nice too :-)

There is also a Chowmain driver that converts numbers to floats and so on... I wish I'd had that years ago as I wrote a macro that does this for numbers between 1 and 100 (200 lines of code... Lots of if statements) and for channels I need to go above 100!

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I have created a couple short videos which show how to 1)Setup the Echo driver and create & sync triggers with the Echo and 2)Program the triggers.  The videos can be viewed on the Home page of our website (www.epic-systems.com)

Feedback welcomed, as always!

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I have been using the now abandoned Voicepod driver. I want too understand how I might set-up programming if I switch to your driver...

I have 3 Echos in the Bedroom, Kitchen and Theater. Currently they are all under the same Amazon account.

In the other driver I was able to say "Alexa, tell Voicepod to WATCH TV in the bedroom" or "...WATCH TV in the Theatre." The WATCH command would trigger programming based on the "room variable".

With YOUR driver, as I understand it, I would have to create a trigger called "Bedroom TV" and another called "Theater TV" . I would then say "Alexa, turn on the Bedroom TV" or " turn on the Theater TV" Correct?  I would have to create a separate trigger for each "thing" I want to control in each room. Fair enough. But would the following work...? 

If I were to register each of the Echos under separate accounts and install 3 instances of your driver, it seems I would save a lot of trigger words and simplify the words I have to remember.  I could just say "Alexa, turn on the TV" or "Alexa, raise the drapes" and whatever room that echo is in would have its driver coded to control the TV or drapes for that room. Aside from having 3 different Amazon shopping lists, is there a downside to this idea that I'm not seeing?

I love that with your driver I'll no longer have to say "tell voice pod to..."

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Yes, your understanding is absolutely correct.  No there is really no major downside to having the Echos on separate Amazon accounts other than what you've already mentioned, and especially if you are really just using the Echo's for voice control.

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On September 1, 2016 at 3:40 AM, Billiam said:

I have been using the now abandoned Voicepod driver. I want too understand how I might set-up programming if I switch to your driver...

I have 3 Echos in the Bedroom, Kitchen and Theater. Currently they are all under the same Amazon account.

In the other driver I was able to say "Alexa, tell Voicepod to WATCH TV in the bedroom" or "...WATCH TV in the Theatre." The WATCH command would trigger programming based on the "room variable".

With YOUR driver, as I understand it, I would have to create a trigger called "Bedroom TV" and another called "Theater TV" . I would then say "Alexa, turn on the Bedroom TV" or " turn on the Theater TV" Correct?  I would have to create a separate trigger for each "thing" I want to control in each room. Fair enough. But would the following work...? 

If I were to register each of the Echos under separate accounts and install 3 instances of your driver, it seems I would save a lot of trigger words and simplify the words I have to remember.  I could just say "Alexa, turn on the TV" or "Alexa, raise the drapes" and whatever room that echo is in would have its driver coded to control the TV or drapes for that room. Aside from having 3 different Amazon shopping lists, is there a downside to this idea that I'm not seeing?

I love that with your driver I'll no longer have to say "tell voice pod to..."

Another option which used is "Turn on Bedroom" and set a variable which tells C4 that all future commands relate to the bedroom be they TV or Blinds or whatever.  "turn on Living Room" would change the variable and all future commands would relate to the Livingroom.

If we could only have Simon Says type feedback you could also get the sort of responses that came from the VoicePod Beta (like "turning on TV in the bedroom" which would be useful if Alexa happens to think you are in a different room from what you really are...

I have my room variable default back to the main bedroom after a period of inactivity.

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I'm trying to program a trigger to set the channel on my DirecTV box.  I noticed a few pages back some people discussing this and I'm wondering if anybody was successful?  Right now I have the "Satellite Set" command to "Set the DirecTV->CHANNEL_NUM to the value of Amazon Echo -> SET_VALUE_STRING

This doesn't seem to do anything for me though.  Any pointers?

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Yea, that's what I currently have setup.  It doesn't seem to like "Satellite" as it keeps trying to set an alarm with that trigger.  I changed it to Living Room just for testing and that seems to work but I'm getting the following error from the DirecTV IP Driver.

10/16/16 23:00:52 : Invalid channel number request - please see manual and Lua tab for more info
10/16/16 23:01:03 : DIRECTV Current Information:  () -

I tried running test where I set the channel to 206 in the programming for instance and it threw the same error.  

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11 hours ago, StroTek LLC said:

Call your trigger SATELLITE. then use the phrase "Alexa set satellite to 249"

 

That should work

The problem, as far as I can see (perhaps @chopedogg88 can comment) is that one can not use the set command outside of the range 0 to 100. Our satellite TV is called "Explora" and I have set up all the programming. If I say "Set Explora to 55" it tries to set the channel to 55... if I say "set Explora to 101" it tries to set the channel to 100. Similarly for any other number above 100.  

I have checked the integer value and the string value and both get stuck at 100. Am I missing something? I'd love to be ale tonuse higher numbers like 249! 

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ahh.. well the way I have it that definitely works.. Is U have names for my favorite channels programmed.. 

 

like Comedy central, or HGTV, ESPN

so my phrases are: "Alexa Set satellite to HGTV" and then I have code to set it to the right channel number

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40 minutes ago, StroTek LLC said:

ahh.. well the way I have it that definitely works.. Is U have names for my favorite channels programmed.. 

 

like Comedy central, or HGTV, ESPN

so my phrases are: "Alexa Set satellite to HGTV" and then I have code to set it to the right channel number

Will definitely give this a try later. I always assumed the string value was numeric only although I have seen a few posts that this can be done, I have not tried it. Will do now! Would be better than remembering channel numbers. 

So you can say set Sattelite to ESPN and the trigger is Sattellite and the String value is ESPN? Sounds really cool. I thought I'd have to use ESPN as the trigger and use turn on ESPN?

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