Breakiing news: UK Amazon Echo works with Evohome!

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  • Seljon
    Automated Home Lurker
    • Jan 2017
    • 4

    Originally posted by orange View Post
    you will need the internet gateway if you have the older version of evohome - the newer wifi version won't need it. You'll also need to have an account on TCC

    Honeywell’s Total Connect Comfort delivers comfort, peace of mind and energy efficiency to both homeowners around the world and business owners alike.


    as a general rule ALL alexa smart home skills require the device you need to control to be connected to the internet (apart from bluetooth audio, but that's not really a smart home skill)
    Thanks for your swift response. Do you think I would be better getting the newer wifi version of the controller or just the gateway?

    Comment

    • DBMandrake
      Automated Home Legend
      • Sep 2014
      • 2361

      Originally posted by G4RHL View Post
      I have suspended using mine for the present as it just does not do what is asked of it, tells me it can't find rooms which clearly exist and gets confused about what to do. The only part that works well is if I ask it to play the radio.
      I'm with you there.

      I've basically stopped using the Echo Dot and don't use the Honeywell integration anymore either - ironically I must be the only one on this forum who didn't have problems with the Alexa skill dropping the connection - when I checked it yesterday it was still linked and working!

      As much of a tech lover that I am, I've come to the conclusion that the Echo Dot (and Echo in general) in its current form is just a gimmick.

      "Thousands" of skills available but 99% of them are rubbish that don't work, are too hard to use or don't do anything useful. The Skill store is full of the echo equivalent of "flashlight" apps. I tried a lot and I was not impressed. One of the skills that we were looking forward to trying (All Recipes, which is apparently very good) is not available in the UK! Why not ? Pfft...

      Another one I thought might be useful was the network rail skill so I can check if the trains are running each morning - nope! Useless and unusable for that purpose.

      Voice recognition seemed good at first but after more use I've come to the conclusion its worse than Siri, I frequently have to re-speak requests and certain things that Siri hears fine it doesn't get.

      Even when the words are correctly recognised, comprehension of the question or request that is being made of it is also surprisingly poor outside of a few niche areas - a lot of questions that I thought it should be able to answer it cannot, while the exact same question posed to Siri gives exactly what I want. One example: "How many days are there between March 21st 2016 and November 15th 2016" - Alexa says it can't understand the question but Siri gets it right first time! And yet it can answer "how many days until November 15th 2016". Lots of other examples of failed comprehension I can think of, and Siri must have improved a lot in the last couple of years because it got nearly every general question I asked it right while Alexa was batting about 50% at most.

      Some things that it can do are quite limited compared to Siri - for example weather. With Alexa it doesn't really matter how I phrase the question, I get the same general weather report. "What's the temperature", "Is it raining today", "Do I need a jacket today", "What's the weather today" all give the same full weather report for the day. With Siri you can pose it questions about the weather and it will answer the questions specifically rather than just giving you the exact same full weather report in response to every weather related question.

      False activation's is a major issue that happens frequently for me - it sits in the living room near the TV/Stereo so of course can hear the sound from those, so you'd expect it to occasionally fire by mistake if someone said something that sounded like "Alexa" on a TV program.

      However we get false activation's (where it wakes up and the blue ring appears to show it thought it heard Alexa, and sometimes tries to respond or say it didn't understand the question) a couple of times a night at least, and in the vast majority of cases there was nothing said that was anything REMOTELY like the word Alexa. In fact it has sometimes happened when the room is quiet! You can play back the sound clips via the Alexa app that it heard when it woke and they sound nothing like the word Alexa.

      Siri went through a phase about a year ago where it would wake up and start answering "questions" in the middle of the night when we were sleeping or talking quietly... but that hasn't happened in a long time so must have been fixed. More work needed on the recognition of the activation word Amazon, too many false positives...

      Here's a list of Echo features that ARE useful to me, and the only reason it stays on the shelf:

      Spotify integration - voice commands can be frustrating but you can always fall back to remote controlling it with the spotify app on your phone for tricky to pronounce song or artist names, which is nice.
      Bluetooth speaker support - it can be a bluetooth speaker for your phone and pipe this to your stereo. (Although only being able to auto-reconnect the most recent phone via voice command is an annoying limitation)
      Tune in Radio support is nice.
      Timers

      That's it. If I had "smart home devices" for it to control (other than just Evohome) it might be marginally more useful.

      I'm really glad I didn't waste £149 for the full Echo to find the software just isn't there yet. With the exception of not being able to get voice responses out of the built in speaker when a 3.5mm headphone jack is plugged in to your stereo, (a major and unforgivable shortcoming in the echo dot, since you can't hear the response if your AV receiver is switched elsewhere without unplugging the cable manually) the hardware is nice enough, so maybe the software will catch up eventually.
      Last edited by DBMandrake; 31 January 2017, 12:23 PM.

      Comment

      • orange
        Automated Home Guru
        • Dec 2014
        • 149

        Originally posted by Seljon View Post
        Thanks for your swift response. Do you think I would be better getting the newer wifi version of the controller or just the gateway?
        just get the gateway - as long as you have a spare ethernet port to plug it into, it's not wifi

        I wouldn't do it just to use Alexa though - the skill bit klunky and drops it's connection (IMO) - but it is worth it to use the remote iphone/android app. This means you can control/monitor your heating from anywhere you have a phone signal

        Comment

        • Seljon
          Automated Home Lurker
          • Jan 2017
          • 4

          Originally posted by orange View Post
          just get the gateway - as long as you have a spare ethernet port to plug it into, it's not wifi

          I wouldn't do it just to use Alexa though - the skill bit klunky and drops it's connection (IMO) - but it is worth it to use the remote iphone/android app. This means you can control/monitor your heating from anywhere you have a phone signal
          Having read DBMandrake's really useful summary above, I think I agree with you that it is only worth having for the remote control/monitoring! Bit of a problem though as I am using my only two ethernet ports on the sky Q router - Philips Hue and Homeplug - so bit of a dilemma. Its typical, I must have had home wifi for 20 years and never used one of the ethernet ports on my previous BT router which had 4. Now I have upgraded to sky Q I suddenly don't have enough!

          Comment

          • orange
            Automated Home Guru
            • Dec 2014
            • 149

            if you get something like this:



            you can plug it into your sky router and expand the amount of ports....or buy another homeplug, you can use multiple

            Comment

            • dty
              Automated Home Ninja
              • Aug 2016
              • 489

              Originally posted by DBMandrake View Post
              ...loads of stuff...
              ...all of which I completely agree with. I'm a techy, a geek, an early adopter of many things, but at the moment I hang my hat on Apple and Echo integration with Apple calendar, task list, etc. is exactly zero, so I get no benefit from that. And I don't tend to listen to all that much music, so I get very little benefit out of that aspect. And I just don't get people who want to be able to voice control their lights. I turn the lounge lights on when I walk into the room and turn them off when I leave. It seems to me that actually having to walk in and then speak a command which might get misheard is actually MORE work! And, considering something like Philips Hue, what happens when the kids and wife decided to turn them off at the switch (which I've been trying to drill into the kids for years)? Suddenly they don't work because they have no power, so voice controlling them is useless.

              It's all a bit of a miss for me, I'm afraid.

              Comment

              • orange
                Automated Home Guru
                • Dec 2014
                • 149

                just to give the opposite view - I use it as an internet radio and bluetooth speaker. Also controlling my lights (lutron grafik eye) so I can set scenes etc when sitting on my sofa. If I wander over to the kitchen I can get the kitchen lights or under cab lights on. Set timers whilst cooking. I've linked it to yonomi/ifttt so I can trigger multiple events with one command. Turn of lights when I'm in bed or just turn of the bedside lamps. It's linked through to harmony hubs so I have control via IR of audio/tv. The bluetooth is quick to connect to the phone so I find myself listening to podcasts etc on it, haven't used my bose bluetooth speaker in months.

                Is it vital ?, is it pefect ?... no...but it was worth it for the internet radio alone and it's changed the way I interact with my house....walking across the room to switch lights on and off is so 20th century.

                Comment

                • dty
                  Automated Home Ninja
                  • Aug 2016
                  • 489

                  Originally posted by orange View Post
                  walking across the room to switch lights on and off is so 20th century.
                  I generally find that I don't want to turn off the lights in a room I'm already in, or turn on the lights in a room I'm not in. So making a simple hand gesture as I enter or exit the room is just fine and never comes with any kind of AI failure or lag, or require a working internet connection.

                  And, as I said, my wife and kids will do the same hand gesture thing, thereby immediately rendering all home automation useless.

                  Comment

                  • orange
                    Automated Home Guru
                    • Dec 2014
                    • 149

                    Originally posted by dty View Post
                    I generally find that I don't want to turn off the lights in a room I'm already in, or turn on the lights in a room I'm not in.
                    on and off I kinda agree - but mine is all controlled via scenes - including specific ones for cooking/tv/bright/mellow etc etc

                    Comment

                    • Seljon
                      Automated Home Lurker
                      • Jan 2017
                      • 4

                      As a (relatively) early adopter, I can see both sides. I am just using it for Spotify and Philips Hue at the moment and it is fun but does feel quite gimmicky. As I also use Apple Music, I have to unplug the Dot when I want to do use it as it doesn't seem to want to let me use it for that which is a pain! I do like being able to dim the lights without installing a dimmer switch though. I'm sure it will grow in functionality rapidly and when it starts to interact with my solar, smart meter and Nissan Leaf I imagine it will start becoming indispensable.

                      Comment

                      • G4RHL
                        Automated Home Legend
                        • Jan 2015
                        • 1580

                        Originally posted by dty View Post
                        .. And, considering something like Philips Hue, what happens when the kids and wife decided to turn them off at the switch (which I've been trying to drill into the kids for years)? Suddenly they don't work because they have no power, so voice controlling them is useless.

                        It's all a bit of a miss for me, I'm afraid.
                        I am thinking of a blanking plate to blank off the light switch in my study to stop people switching off the light. But it's me that does it, decades and decades of habit! Other than that, there is nowt wrong with a switch but for the lights we use more frequently than any other - in the lounge - they come on and go off automatically and if we need to override that the switch is a small hand set by the chair which covers each or all. Evohome of course is also operated sitting down using my iPhone!

                        However, I have no disabilities (some may differ in their opinion on that!) and I can see that being able to talk to a device to operate lights, heating, the radio and so forth is of great advantage. Those with arthritis in their fingers for example.

                        Comment

                        • paulockenden
                          Automated Home Legend
                          • Apr 2015
                          • 1719

                          Back to the Evohome skill, I couldn't find a way to ask Alexa what the current setpoint of a zone is. But the data is obviously available because if I say "Lower kitchen by one degree" it tells me what the new setpoint is. So I /can/ find the current setpoint if I do a lower followed by an equivalent increase! That seems like a bit of a hack, though.

                          Comment

                          • DBMandrake
                            Automated Home Legend
                            • Sep 2014
                            • 2361

                            Originally posted by paulockenden View Post
                            Back to the Evohome skill, I couldn't find a way to ask Alexa what the current setpoint of a zone is. But the data is obviously available because if I say "Lower kitchen by one degree" it tells me what the new setpoint is. So I /can/ find the current setpoint if I do a lower followed by an equivalent increase! That seems like a bit of a hack, though.
                            That's a major reason why I gave up on using the Evohome Echo skill - before I make an adjustment I'd like to know what the current set point and/or measured temperature is, but there is no direct way to find out. So it's easier to just use the iPhone app...

                            Also lack of 0.5 degree increments and difficulty recognising some zone names.

                            Comment

                            • dty
                              Automated Home Ninja
                              • Aug 2016
                              • 489

                              Some of this is a restriction of the Alexa API. Home Automation skills (as distinct from other skills, like weather, recipes), have a lot of their language pre-defined by Amazon. I suspect the lack of half-degree support is the same (who needs half degrees when you're working in Fahrenheit, anyway? )

                              Comment

                              • paulockenden
                                Automated Home Legend
                                • Apr 2015
                                • 1719

                                If you're using the low level API then yes, I agree. But there's no reason we couldn't ALSO have "Alexa, ask Evohome what temperature Kitchen set to". or indeed "Alexa, ask Evohome what the current Kitchen temperature is".

                                Comment

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