Breakiing news: UK Amazon Echo works with Evohome!

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  • DBMandrake
    Automated Home Legend
    • Sep 2014
    • 2361

    Originally posted by dty View Post
    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? )
    With my end user hat on instead of my techie hat it doesn't really matter to me why I can't do it - the point is controlling Evohome via Echo has these limitations, regardless of whether it's Honeywell or Amazon to blame.

    It's early days so hopefully things will improve, but at the moment I find it more inconvenient and limited to use than just using my iPhone, which is normally never far away, or the controller which is a short distance from any downstairs room due to its central location.

    Comment

    • dty
      Automated Home Ninja
      • Aug 2016
      • 489

      Originally posted by paulockenden View Post
      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".
      Very true. And I think that would be a good compromise given the current state of the Alexa API. It would mean installing two skills though, because I don't believe a single skill can do both.

      Comment

      • philchillbill
        Automated Home Legend
        • Jan 2017
        • 591

        "Raise Livingroom temperature by zero degrees" results in "Setting Livingroom heat to twentythree" (or whatever) so it's a shorter way than first raising by one degree and then lowering again. Still klunky though.

        Comment

        • paulockenden
          Automated Home Legend
          • Apr 2015
          • 1719

          Brilliant! Thanks.

          Comment

          • MrB
            Automated Home Sr Member
            • Oct 2015
            • 80

            @philchillbill

            Oh I do love good lateral thinking

            Comment

            • DBMandrake
              Automated Home Legend
              • Sep 2014
              • 2361

              Originally posted by DBMandrake View Post
              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!
              Originally posted by philchillbill View Post
              "Raise Livingroom temperature by zero degrees" results in "Setting Livingroom heat to twentythree" (or whatever) so it's a shorter way than first raising by one degree and then lowering again. Still klunky though.
              Drat! Spoke too soon. Went to try the zero degree hack to find the Echo's Honeywell skill has lost its connection to Honeywell...I guess I have to remove and re-add it and set up my zone groups again ?

              Comment

              • g6ejd
                Automated Home Guru
                • Oct 2016
                • 153

                When I say Alexa turn the Living Room temperature up, it always responds by adding 0.5deg and vice-versa, so is my setup different?

                Comment

                • DBMandrake
                  Automated Home Legend
                  • Sep 2014
                  • 2361

                  Is your Echo's preferences set to Celsius not Farenheight ? The default for the Echo is Farenheight.

                  Comment

                  • g6ejd
                    Automated Home Guru
                    • Oct 2016
                    • 153

                    Celsius English UK but I note the Living Room temperature is programmed to be 20.5 and it goes to 21 when I ask for the temperature to be turned up, so is it rounding up, I think so because it does not go to 21.5.

                    Comment

                    • DBMandrake
                      Automated Home Legend
                      • Sep 2014
                      • 2361

                      Ah. Sounds more like it is rounding the current figure down to 20 and thus increasing it by 1 to 21 when you ask it to increase. If you start at 20.5 and ask it to reduce the temperature by 1 degree what do you end up with ?

                      Comment

                      • g6ejd
                        Automated Home Guru
                        • Oct 2016
                        • 153

                        Living Room set to 20.5°
                        Alexa turn the Living Room temperature down, she says 'setting the Living Room temperature to 20', but the Evohome display shows 19.5° so she's failed...
                        Living Room set to 20.5°
                        Alexa turn the Living Room temperature down by 1°, she says 'setting the Living Room temperature to 20', but the Evohome display shows 19.5° so she's failed...
                        Living Room set to 21.0°
                        Alexa turn the Living Room temperature down by 1°, she says 'setting the Living Room temperature to 20', and the Evohome display shows 20.0° so she's passed...

                        Alexa, your not very good at setting the temperature are you, she says 'Sorry, thanks for letting me know'

                        Comment

                        • Rameses
                          Industry Expert
                          • Nov 2014
                          • 446

                          Ok - couple of things

                          Ref: Those skills & commands. We never scripted increments or at least that was what I was told. We only support the syntax I posted originally. Eg set to specific temp & enabling modes
                          More commands and skills will come - like "Alexa what is the temp in the living room" - but these are being worked. The Alexa platform is a fast evolving space right now
                          Last edited by Rameses; 6 February 2017, 02:49 PM.
                          getconnected.honeywell.com | I work for Honeywell. Any posts I make are purely to help if I can. Any personal views expressed are my own

                          Comment

                          • philchillbill
                            Automated Home Legend
                            • Jan 2017
                            • 591

                            If I say "Alexa, cancel Office override" after e.g. having increased the heat by 2 deg for a while, she says "Cancelling" as if she understood I want to go back to the regular set-point for Office heat, but nothing actually changes in Evohome. Anybody played with this syntax yet?

                            Comment

                            • Gairloch
                              Automated Home Lurker
                              • Jun 2016
                              • 4

                              Problem with multiple locations

                              Originally posted by paulockenden View Post
                              Like you say, groups make it easy to solve this. I expect the number of people with >1 controllers is very small.
                              P.
                              Maybe so, but the system needs to deal with it more gracefully. When I tried to set up Evohome on my Dot I was surprised to see it said it discovered over 30 devices, but it turned out to be because I have three different premises (two houses and office) on my Evohome account. This makes it useless, particularly as it offers no clue as to which scene is which (eg I have three 'Away's, three 'Economy's etc).

                              Ideally there would be an option to specify a property name or set a default property for Alexa to use, but at the very least I need to know which are in which property in order to forget the others. Until it can do that, it's pretty useless for anyone with more than one controller attached.

                              The same goes for using groups - I need to know which is in which property to add them to groups.

                              Given that a particularly useful application of the evohome is for people who have a second home or perhaps one they let as a self-catering property, which needs remote control, this is an area that needs to be addressed.

                              Comment

                              • gcpeters
                                Automated Home Lurker
                                • Oct 2016
                                • 5

                                Hello, got this all working today!

                                couple of quick questions.

                                1) is there a list of all the commands that alexa can do?
                                2) How can you stop an override, and default back to schedule. Eg I set lounge to 25, but after 2 hours I want to cancel this. What do I have to say?

                                thanks

                                GP

                                Comment

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