Breakiing news: UK Amazon Echo works with Evohome!

[forza11]

P.S. I would think the Alexa - Honeywell 'Skill' is in the US version as well.
http://yourhome.honeywell.com/amazon-echo

P.P.S. I noticed you can change the Language now between English (UK), English (US) and German in the Settings | Language option of the Alexa App...
Perhaps this the 'Skill' and the voice are all you really wanted?

From what I read this is not the same as changing the devices registered Locale. Changing the local had to be done 'manually', at least for the moment.
Of course that could change, due to data protection and other legal framework influences. 'Caveat emptor' though....

thanks for your reply, sadly the US version of the honeywell skill is tied to the US total connect site, which differs from the EU site. I made a new account on the US total connect site but i can't register the evohome, probably because they dont sell the evohome in the US. If Honeywell would have 1 international database it could've worked that way! I read that IFTTT will come to the UK early '17, so i'll hold off a bit longer before switching to the uk version.

Do you have echo's in multiple rooms? Or does your family give commands in a central room? Also, specifically for honeywell, do you also have separate control units in each rooms or do you just have the HR92's?

[Conseils]

We currently have an Echo and 4 Echo Dot's
We have two Adult Amazon accounts in an 'Amazon Household' (the maximum I understand possible with Amazon, query raised with them by the way).
We give commands to any Echo device from any room against any Zone / Room, at any time by anyone.

I added the Honeywell Skill to both accounts in the Amazon Household with the same Room / Zone names. As otherwise it would be inconsistent and probably very confusing.
The two Amazon accounts in the Amazon Household are using 1 Honeywell account.

We have 1 Honeywell Evohome Connected Thermostat Pack ATP921R3100 and 10 valves (HR80's) with some Honeywell Homecomfort timer valves on additional radiators in bathrooms. Some Zones use multiple valves. No it's not a mansion (maybe an Englishman's castle ), it's just well insulated rooms in a modern house, in a cold wet part of England.

The two Amazon Household accounts are used as ordering, play lists, favourites and music are seen by Amazon as for individuals. My wife 'pays' for Amazon Prime, so to access Amazon music I have to 'Switch to her account' or pay multiple times. Whilst I buy things like Echo's and Dot's, run the heating system accounts and other similar stuff I am interested in.

You can perhaps see the number of possible combinations of options is significant.

An alternate to the above scenario, the use of one account or very separate accounts against each Echo device would of course work nicely. I guess it depends if it really is a Household or not. So I could have had all devices on separate every things and thus isolated operation. Then we could not share the Amazon music with the children (they are over 16 now)... And my nice Alexa help page on our Intranet would get very complicated....And it would be a pain to administer, as no one else would do it and we would loose the flexibility of how we are using the house as the children make forays into the wild (well University at least). The kids could still run into another room and tell Alexa to turn off the heating! Thus probably immediately defeating the object of trying to run things independently! (If they can remember the 4 digit purchase pass code, they can order anything they want while they are at it. As both have IQ's well over 150, they probably already know it and I have forgotten).


I think my main observation is that Amazon don't really cope well with my concept of a 'Household', I tend to think their interpretation more as 'An association by two individuals'.

thanks for your reply, sadly the US version of the honeywell skill is tied to the US total connect site, which differs from the EU site. I made a new account on the US total connect site but i can't register the evohome, probably because they dont sell the evohome in the US. If Honeywell would have 1 international database it could've worked that way! I read that IFTTT will come to the UK early '17, so i'll hold off a bit longer before switching to the uk version.

Do you have echo's in multiple rooms? Or does your family give commands in a central room? Also, specifically for honeywell, do you also have separate control units in each rooms or do you just have the HR92's?

[jzwack-honeywell]

I have been attempting to get Alexa to recognise temperatures with decimal points...
I have a small study and the overshoot is significant if I can't get decimal temperatures.
Alexa 'card' has correctly understood, which points to logic in the Alexa skill on the Honeywell side.

Last I checked with Amazon they didn't support half degrees in the skill "set temperature" API, only whole numbers. Even for C units. If they updated that, I'll fix it. Let me check again tomorrow my time!

[Conseils]

It seems odd that I never noticed the full behaviour so here goes following 10 minutes of investigation to make sure I have some facts at least.

The Honeywell API (Probably 1.0) accepts 0.5 degrees, and reflects it back to you. Then over writes it to the nearest integer degree C!

The Android and Apple Apps accept 0.5°C (probably API 2.X)
So my guess at the moment is that the Honeywell version 2 API does indeed take 0.5C, as does the Evohome controller.

So the Skill would seem either to be on version 1.0 API or not exposing full functionality.

Hope this helps.

Last I checked with Amazon they didn't support half degrees in the skill "set temperature" API, only whole numbers. Even for C units. If they updated that, I'll fix it. Let me check again tomorrow my time!

[paulockenden]

So the Skill would seem either to be on version 1.0 API or not exposing full functionality.

Perhaps you didn't spot the '-honeywell' at the end of Joe's username. He knows exactly what's happening in the Skill!!!!

Having said that, the (Alexa) API docs do suggest that decimal values are acceptable - it's in some of the example code.

Joe is based in the US, so don't expect him to reply until a bit later!

P.

[jzwack-honeywell]

Sorry,

What I mean to say was, in our initial development we could RETURN half degrees (e.g., make it say "25.5") but you couldn't tell it to set to 25.5 via voice.

It's entirely possible they updated it and I'm not aware, so I'll double check today while I'm trying to track down the other mentioned problem (thanks to those who have sent me examples by the way!).

[Conseils]

Hi Paul,
Cool, hope my digging a little deeper into the API and the various references provided assist in supporting the issue.

I look forward to Alexa supporting 0.5°C increments, especially now I have 0.1°C room temperature resolution courtesy of the API update earlier this year ;-).

If a hand is needed debugging or testing etc. let me know.

Compliments of the season to all.

Perhaps you didn't spot the '-honeywell' at the end of Joe's username. He knows exactly what's happening in the Skill!!!!

Having said that, the (Alexa) API docs do suggest that decimal values are acceptable - it's in some of the example code.

Joe is based in the US, so don't expect him to reply until a bit later!

P.

[jzwack-honeywell]

I double checked this, and it's working as I thought.

For instance if I ask it to change "Kitchen" zone to 22.5 degrees, Alexa sends me this:
targetTemperature: { value: 1 } and obviously responds that's out of range.

If I ask to change "Kitchen" zone to 22, Alexa sends me this:
targetTemperature: { value: 22 }

I'll double check with Amazon to make sure I'm not missing something again, but when I asked a month or two ago (right around the time we launched the skill) they didn't support .5 degrees.

[jzwack-honeywell]

As a follow-up, they don't support setting half degrees by voice at the moment. So from my perspective it's working as it should.

If it wasn't I would have fixed it today! Haha.

[Conseils]

Hi, thanks for looking into this.

When you say "they don't support setting half degrees by voice", is this Alexa that can't parse the sentence received into a floating point number?
or the Skill that can't cope with the received text instruction?

As a follow-up, they don't support setting half degrees by voice at the moment. So from my perspective it's working as it should.

If it wasn't I would have fixed it today! Haha.