Making Voice Control Smarter (both Alexa and Google)

[Time2Jet]

Starting to get confusing again.  From what I am reading, this is already what Alexa does via C4.  I can tell Alexa to turn on and off everything anywhere.  This grouping (which I use already for lamps, etc). in any room on any Alexa device (Turn of Master Lamps) already works fine.  (Except my Z2io Fireplace? HELP?).

What is different about this method?

[South Africa C4 user]

4 minutes ago, msgreenf said:

5 minutes ago, South Africa C4 user said:

Thanks [mention=129290]msgreenf[/mention] - a very useful summary.  I assume there is still no way in C4 to identify which device received the voice command (or which group) as that would be the holy grail and allow anything to be done (albeit with lots of programming).

Isn't that voice scenes?

Sorry, I wasn’t clear in my question, by device, I mean which echo device received the command.  If I knew which echo received the command then I could have a voice scene “lights” and turn lights on programming would be, for example (simplistically):

If echo device = dot1 then turn on bedroom lights

else if echo device = dot 2 then turn on living room lights

etc.

[Aayush Arya]

Starting to get confusing again.  From what I am reading, this is already what Alexa does via C4.  I can tell Alexa to turn on and off everything anywhere.  This grouping (which I use already for lamps, etc). in any room on any Alexa device (Turn of Master Lamps) already works fine.   What is different about this method?

 

This allows you to say "turn on master lights" or "turn off kitchen lights" to turn on all the lights in the master bedroom and off in the kitchen respectively, without having to rely on scenes.  

 

In addition, if you tell the Echo that's inside the master bedroom to "turn on the lights", it will turn on all the lights in that room, without having to specify the room, or create a scene with that name.

 

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[Aayush Arya]

 

 

Sorry, I wasn’t clear in my question, by device, I mean which echo device received the command.  If I knew which echo received the command then I could have a voice scene “lights” and turn lights on programming would be, for example (simplistically):

If echo device = dot1 then turn on bedroom lights

else if echo device = dot 2 then turn on living room lights

etc.

 

Exactly. That truly would be the holy grail, but I could easily make do if, after having grouped a bunch of lights and scenes inside a "room" in Alexa's own app, I could have it control just those lights and scenes individually, unless I specifically commanded it to do so for another room.

 

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[South Africa C4 user]

12 minutes ago, Aayush Arya said:

 

 

 

 

Exactly. That truly would be the holy grail, but I could easily make do if, after having grouped a bunch of lights and scenes inside a "room" in Alexa's own app, I could have it control just those lights and scenes individually, unless I specifically commanded it to do so for another room.

 

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Agreed...

[msgreenf]

45 minutes ago, Aayush Arya said:

I understand that Control4 has no way to do that without Amazon building in support for that, but what surprises me is that Amazon itself hasn't figured this out by now.

This should be the default behaviour for Echo devices, that they can control devices in a group without having to identify them by room. One of the biggest problems in voice commands based automation is that of nomenclature, and it seems to be like this would be an easy fix.

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hwo does Amazon know rooms without you telling it rooms?

[Time2Jet]

2 hours ago, Aayush Arya said:

This allows you to say "turn on master lights" or "turn off kitchen lights" to turn on all the lights in the master bedroom and off in the kitchen respectively, without having to rely on scenes.  

 

In addition, if you tell the Echo that's inside the master bedroom to "turn on the lights", it will turn on all the lights in that room, without having to specify the room, or create a scene with that name.

 

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This is pretty much how I've always used Alexa.  I thought there was some sort of breakthrough!

2 hours ago, Aayush Arya said:

 

 

 

 

 

 

[zaphod]

So just to be clear, let's assume that you have an Echo connected to a matrix amp.   If you are in the kitchen and you say "Alexa, play back music" Alexa will now that you want to play back music in the kitchen, so it will play back to the correct Echo device, but C4 will not know what zones to make active, so you will then need to issue a command to C4 to choose device Echo for zone "Kitchen"  Is that correct?

[ecschnei]

So just to be clear, let's assume that you have an Echo connected to a matrix amp.   If you are in the kitchen and you say "Alexa, play back music" Alexa will now that you want to play back music in the kitchen, so it will play back to the correct Echo device, but C4 will not know what zones to make active, so you will then need to issue a command to C4 to choose device Echo for zone "Kitchen"  Is that correct?

Or have your matrix programmed to detect audio and turn zone on automatically

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[tdougray]

I’m pretty sure this help breakdown was only to do with lighting. Basically Instead of having to say “Alexa turn on kitchen lights” you can just say “ Alexa turn on lights” enabling the command after the wake word to be shorter. 
 

 

[South Africa C4 user]

9 minutes ago, tdougray said:

I’m pretty sure this help breakdown was only to do with lighting. Basically Instead of having to say “Alexa turn on kitchen lights” you can just say “ Alexa turn on lights” enabling the command after the wake word to be shorter. 
 

 

Shorter and more generic...

Sadly, I think that step 3 from the OP requires the Alexa App (not available in all regions) and cannot be done on the web interface. 

[msgreenf]

11 minutes ago, tdougray said:

I’m pretty sure this help breakdown was only to do with lighting. Basically Instead of having to say “Alexa turn on kitchen lights” you can just say “ Alexa turn on lights” enabling the command after the wake word to be shorter. 
 

 

and control more then one load with one command

[msgreenf]

1 minute ago, South Africa C4 user said:

Shorter and more generic...

Sadly, I think that step 3 from the OP requires the Alexa App (not available in all regions) and cannot be done on the web interface. 

it makes no sense that the web app sucks that badly

[zaphod]

3 hours ago, ecschnei said:

Or have your matrix programmed to detect audio and turn zone on automatically

But how would the matrix know what zone to turn on?  Let's say you have an Echo connected to Input 1 on a matrix.  You want to be able to play that music on any one of 8 zones that are fed by the matrix.  How does C4 know which zone to activate when input 1goes live?  You could do this automatically with 8 Echos, one connected to each zone and use the automatic feature.

[msgreenf]

Voice scenes

[Aayush Arya]

But how would the matrix know what zone to turn on?  Let's say you have an Echo connected to Input 1 on a matrix.  You want to be able to play that music on any one of 8 zones that are fed by the matrix.  How does C4 know which zone to activate when input 1goes live?  You could do this automatically with 8 Echos, one connected to each zone and use the automatic feature.

Yes, you will need to do it in two steps: "Alexa, play some background music" and "Alexa, turn on kitchen speakers".

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[Aayush Arya]

hwo does Amazon know rooms without you telling it rooms?

By the fact that you grouped that particular Echo with all the lights in that room using the Alexa app.

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[c4toys]

13 hours ago, msgreenf said:

14 hours ago, Aayush Arya said:

Thank you so much for posting this on my request. I need to set it up and test it tomorrow.
 
But it seems it's still not going to achieve what I wanted to, which is to just be able to say "Alexa, turn on the pendant" to the Echo in the master bedroom to turn on the pendant light in that room, while there are six other lights named "pendant" in other rooms that remain unaffected.
 
We cannot do that, can we? It's either all lights in a room or nothing?
 
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You can't do that with overlapping names.

seems you should be able to make a alexa routine to do this, I would name each light with room name - pendant. then make a routine for each room/light.. I could be wrong

[c4toys]

3 hours ago, Aayush Arya said:

Yes, you will need to do it in two steps: "Alexa, play some background music" and "Alexa, turn on kitchen speakers".

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I have it setup for a customer, where he says "alexa play relax playlist on the sound system". it turns on the kitchen speakers and plays his relax playlist from his amazon unlimited account.  just one command, now I need to test grouping rooms together with voice controls..  next truck roll

[rea]

I've been playing around with this a bit this week (thanks for the post @msgreenf) and it is nice for lights, but am wondering if anyone has figured out a way to work in C4 speakers. The groups recognize my Heos and Sonos speakers as options for "preferred speaker" but my wired C4 zones don't show up. It also doesn't seem like I can either find them or change their state (like "switch" to "light" in the OP). Is this currently not possible like it seems to be after my efforts at attempting it?

[msgreenf]

The audio devices that show up to be grouped are Alexa enabled devices. Meaning they take direct audio commands. A control for amp is not an Alexa enable device even though control 4 has an Alexa skill

[sonic30101]

On 1/15/2020 at 5:58 PM, zaphod said:

But how would the matrix know what zone to turn on?  Let's say you have an Echo connected to Input 1 on a matrix.  You want to be able to play that music on any one of 8 zones that are fed by the matrix.  How does C4 know which zone to activate when input 1goes live?  You could do this automatically with 8 Echos, one connected to each zone and use the automatic feature.

I have Google home but the concept is the same. I have 4 Chromecast audios in the rack. Named inside, outside, master bath, and garage. Then in programing of the matrix amp you can trigger when audio is present to turn a desired zone on and off. It works great, biggest downfall of using a Chromecast or echo is no metadata compared to using a Sonos connect or port. But a vast improvement over native music for voice control at the moment. 

[Baubas Cat]

This question is for people who have be programming groups in the Alexa app. What is the point of adding scenes to a group? If I add a scene to a group it doesn't seem to do anything different then when it's not in the group.

[Time2Jet]

Couple of questions:

When there are multiple instances if a device (Lutron Switch, TP Link Bulb) being discovered (hub, C4, skill), which to keep?

Also, more on topic... I’m so confused as to the question. I have created rooms and have an Alexa device setup exclusively in that room. I use duplicate names in Control4 (ie, just call a fan switch “Fan” versus “Master Bedroom Fan”). Sometimes if there’s only one particular device in the room I call things “My”, simply like “My Lamp” (my Loft is an example). So when I’m in the room and say Alexa, turn on “My Lamp” it works fine. I’m sure I didn’t just get lucky. What am I missing? If I am in a different room, I just say “Alexa, turn off Loft my lamp”. This all seems to work fine. The only problem I have is in my open area (kitchen, nook, family room) where a command can be heard on multiple Alexas. In these areas I name the devices room specific.

Lastly, I’m not sure I fully understand the Voice Scene driver, but I’m probably using it everyday. (Alexa, turn on Goodnight). Reason I ask is that I’m about to add my fireplace Z2io to a voice scene. Not sure I’m confident I know how to do that.



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[msgreenf]

Use the native skills for devices that support them. Disable them in the Control4 skill.

Think of voice scenes as virtual devices.