South Africa C4 user Posted April 9, 2016 Share Posted April 9, 2016 3 hours ago, chopedogg88 said: Maybe the SA accent hah Sent from my SM-N920V using Tapatalk Sad but probably true! Either Alexa or I need some voice training! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
South Africa C4 user Posted April 9, 2016 Share Posted April 9, 2016 Glad to say that, after investigation, it is not my accent. I can close other devices (e.g. Lights). My problem was that I could not close a device called blinds. Changing the name of blinds to bedroom blinds works. Not ideal as I am trying to keep things generic (as I type this, my thought is that I will try window blinds) so that I can change rooms separately and then give commands. What is weird is that open blinds works perfectly but close blinds fails. Fortunately open bedroom blinds and close bedroom blinds both work! Great to have open and close to use also! Thanks @chopedogg88 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
South Africa C4 user Posted April 10, 2016 Share Posted April 10, 2016 So I have been looking at what the easiest way is to exceed the 30 device limit using this driver and have come up with something that I think will increase the limit to 1,000 (actually a lot more - probably 1,000,000 plus although it becomes less intuitive then). While I have tested this, I have only tested this on small numbers so far and it working for large numbers depends on there being no limit on groups within the Alexa app. Create a variable (EchoIndex) and set it to zero. The method is as follows: 1. Create 9 Philips devices using the driver in C4 named: One, Two, Three... Nine 2. Create 9 devices in C4 named: Ten, Twenty, Thirty... Ninety 3. Create 9 devices in C4 named: One Hndred, Two hundred, Three hundred... Nine hundred In C4, your 4 events (on, off, up and down) for each of the above is to add the relevant number to EchoIndex (e.g. For One add 1, for Thirty add 30 etc.) and start a timer EchoChoiceOn (similarly for EchoChoiceOff, EchoChoiceUp and EchoChoiceDown). I have only used a 5 second timer but suspect it can be reduced to 2 seconds and maybe 1 second. When any of the 4 timers expires the code is of the form: if EchoIndex = 1 then... Stop if EchoIndex = 2 then... Stop all the way up to if EchoIndex = 1000 (or 1 million - see below) then... Stop (or however many echo commands you have created). As C4 does not support a case command, there are clever ways to speed up the sequence of ifs if one really has 1,000 (or 1 million) possible events but that is the subject of a separate post. Finally, you need an event on EchoIndexChange which sets EchoIndex to 0 after, say, 10 seconds if EchoIndex is not already zero. You now have access to 1,000 plus command options. For instance, to get EchoChoiceOn 326 to run when you give the command turn Blinds on you create a group in the Alexa App where the group is called Blinds and contains (Three hundred, Twenty and Six). Hopefully the above makes sense. This can be extended to 1,000,000 by realising you can drop three, five, six, eight and nine, thirty, fifty, sixty, eighty, ninety, three hundred, five hundred, six hundred, eight hundred and nine hundred. For instance now to get EchoChoiceOn to be 326, you now need the following group to be created (Three hundred, Twenty, Four and Two). You now have enough devices left in the 30 limit to create 999,999 unique command sets - always assuming there is no limit on how many groups you can create in the Alexa App. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
South Africa C4 user Posted April 17, 2016 Share Posted April 17, 2016 @chopedogg88 - as has been reported by others, the Alexa app indicates that it can now handle up to 50 devices via a Phillips Hue bridge. However, your driver still limits adding devices to 30... Please can you update this to 50 :-) Thanks! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chopedogg88 Posted April 17, 2016 Author Share Posted April 17, 2016 Where are you seeing that in the Alexa app? I don't see it listed anywhere. Last time I tested a couple weeks ago it maxed our driver at 30 still. Sent from my SM-N920V using Tapatalk Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Baubas Cat Posted April 17, 2016 Share Posted April 17, 2016 Does this driver work with the Echo Dot? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheaterExtreme Posted April 17, 2016 Share Posted April 17, 2016 yes sir it does!!!!!!!!!! and well too! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ptome Posted April 18, 2016 Share Posted April 18, 2016 4 hours ago, chopedogg88 said: Where are you seeing that in the Alexa app? I don't see it listed anywhere. Last time I tested a couple weeks ago it maxed our driver at 30 still. Sent from my SM-N920V using Tapatalk Here is a screen shot from my phone, presently I have 145 discovered devices, 30 of which are for the driver. I have deleted and added new triggers to the driver from within HE. The old 'Devices' stay in the Alexa until I 'Forget' them, but obviously they do not work since they were deleted in HE. When I look at: https://developer.amazon.com/public/binaries/content/assets/html/alexa-lighting-api.html it lists a limit of 300, I may not know what I am reading but thought I would throw it out there. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
South Africa C4 user Posted April 18, 2016 Share Posted April 18, 2016 9 hours ago, chopedogg88 said: Where are you seeing that in the Alexa app? I don't see it listed anywhere. Last time I tested a couple weeks ago it maxed our driver at 30 still. Sent from my SM-N920V using Tapatalk I saw the 50 in the documentation on the web version of the app (I think) or it may have been one of these Alexa weekly update emails... I will search for it and post it later. I thought I'd give it a try and got round to it yesterday only to find the driver limited me to creating 30 devices so I could not try discovering more and have it work or fail based on Alexa's capabilities... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
prabeau Posted April 19, 2016 Share Posted April 19, 2016 Is this really still in the news ? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cvithlani Posted April 25, 2016 Share Posted April 25, 2016 Wouldn't it make more sense to have the driver emulate a Nest Thermostat rather than a Philips Hue bulb? This way we wouldn't be tied to single variable (triggers) with only Up/Down/Raise/Lower. The phrasing for the Nest control in the Amazon Echo is "Alexa, set the <room name> to <temperature>. I'm assuming both of these variables, room name and temp, are then passed to the Nest for processing. This way, we would be able to set audio sources to specific rooms in the case of an audio matrix. In my system, I have an audio matrix set up with Sonos ZP90's as the sources, along with several Sonos Play devices throughout the house. This functionality would allow me to say "Alexa, set the Kitchen to Blues" and inside of C4, the driver would be passed both variables, and I'd have to set up the Room names as well as the Source names. Is this possible? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
prabeau Posted April 25, 2016 Share Posted April 25, 2016 old news Posted 18 Dec 2015 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dman000000 Posted May 2, 2016 Share Posted May 2, 2016 Really like the driver and the echo integration - really good WAF and the kids love it. Since I am building out the triggers little by little, I find that having Alexa forget all devices and then rediscover whenever I make adds/ deletes helps enure that everything works right. Had a few instances where new ones were acknowledged but not executed and this seemed to do the trick. A couple or other thoughts: Any followup on the potential device limit increase to 50? Also, the suggestion from cvithlani is a really interesting one. It would be amazing if the driver emulated both Nest and Hue so we could make "Turn X On" AND "Set Y to Z" commands through the Echo. Game changer. Thanks again for the great work on the driver! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cvithlani Posted May 3, 2016 Share Posted May 3, 2016 On Ari's request, I checked the API for Nest and the temperature is a number, not a string, so emulating a Nest wouldn't help get two string variables passed into C4. Until the Echo can support an additional device that would support multi-string variables, the Hue bulbs are the best bet. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Solrise Solutions Posted May 22, 2016 Share Posted May 22, 2016 Great Driver! Thanks for creating a simple and effective Echo/Dot Control4 integration. Some Feedback: 1) Minor Observation: Amazon must have changed app the driver instructions refer to Device Discovery under "Settings->Connected Home->Devices->Discover Devices link" However it is now "Settings->Smart Home->Your Devices->Discover Devices link" 2) Feature Enhancement: Have you considered utilizing the echo group feature so you can simply device trigger use / standardize them across rooms. For example Create a group "Bedroom" with a trigger called "Lights". This way you can also have a trigger called "Lights" in other rooms. Thanks a great for a great product. I would recommend it to others. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dutsnekcirf Posted May 28, 2016 Share Posted May 28, 2016 I just found this article about being able to use Alexa in the browser. See here: http://techcrunch.com/2016/05/27/amazon-puts-alexa-in-the-browser-with-echoism-io/ So could it be possible to integrate this without having to purchase an echo? Yes, this is me just being extremely cheap. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
turls Posted June 2, 2016 Share Posted June 2, 2016 On 5/28/2016 at 1:39 PM, dutsnekcirf said: I just found this article about being able to use Alexa in the browser. See here: http://techcrunch.com/2016/05/27/amazon-puts-alexa-in-the-browser-with-echoism-io/ So could it be possible to integrate this without having to purchase an echo? Yes, this is me just being extremely cheap. You can already add Alexa to a Raspberry Pi, but you have to press a button to give a command. I would think you would go Pi before browser, and cost is comparable... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
StroTek LLC Posted June 7, 2016 Share Posted June 7, 2016 I have a feature request @chopedogg88 I want the discover devices option to be available under programming events Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
South Africa C4 user Posted June 7, 2016 Share Posted June 7, 2016 57 minutes ago, StroTek LLC said: I have a feature request @chopedogg88 I want the discover devices option to be available under programming events That would be nice... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
StroTek LLC Posted June 7, 2016 Share Posted June 7, 2016 My thought process is that I can then trigger a anouncement telling alexa to discover devices.. AND tell control4 to send the discovery Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
South Africa C4 user Posted June 7, 2016 Share Posted June 7, 2016 2 minutes ago, StroTek LLC said: My thought process is that I can then trigger a anouncement telling alexa to discover devices.. AND tell control4 to send the discovery I never even thought of that. That is cool. I simply saw the advantage of linking the discovery to a custom button removing the need to open composer... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
StroTek LLC Posted June 7, 2016 Share Posted June 7, 2016 Every now and then I have a brain cell that works Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
StroTek LLC Posted June 21, 2016 Share Posted June 21, 2016 This driver seems to keep losing my triggers .. What can I do to make sure that stops happening? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
martymohr Posted June 21, 2016 Share Posted June 21, 2016 I found exiting ComposerHE then re-starting seems to resolve any problem with the Amazon Echo driver. I should mention that my wife and I absolutely love the voice automation it provides. Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chopedogg88 Posted June 22, 2016 Author Share Posted June 22, 2016 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 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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