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Thread: EvoControl - custom Alexa skill for Evohome

  1. #791
    Automated Home Legend philchillbill's Avatar
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    In the past week I've had 3 people ask me offline if a 'Cancel Activity' command can be added. So that I don't have to keep repeating the same answers via email/whatsapp, I'll post some thoughts here.

    Evohome is multi-controller, meaning that every Echo, mobile phone, tablet, PC/Mac and Evotouch in your house can change the system state. Most households are also multi-person, implying the current heating state may not have been set (entirely) by you. A request by any household member to cancel an Activity could not fully know what cancelling actually means in the context of such a multi-device/multi-user system several hours after that person's last command. That's why there is no such feature — it would probably more often disappoint than delight.

    There are currently 2 options to 'cancel' activities in a manner with an always-predictable outcome:

    • "Set all zones to follow schedule". Be aware this will not cancel any permanent overrides, only the temporary ones. So if you activated Standby permanently, this will do nothing.
    • "Reset the System Mode". This triggers the AutoWithReset system mode via the API, which has the effect of cancelling all overrides, temporary and permanent.


    Note that "Revert to Baseline" just changes the underlying schedule(s) for zone(s) and doesn't touch any overrides so it will not help with 'cancelling' Activities.

    Activities don't ever change the System Mode but instead set zone-overrides. That's why saying e.g. "Set the System Mode to Auto" won't help cancel an Activity. It's a coincidence that AutoWithReset is a system mode that cancels all overrides for you — none of the system modes you can call up via your Evotouch can do that.

    Hope that clarifies things

  2. #792
    Automated Home Legend philchillbill's Avatar
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    Default Widget Shortcuts

    This morning I unexpectedly saw that Amazon's new widget shortcut paradigm was live on my Echo Show 8 Gen II.

    Screenshot 2023-11-18 105922.jpg

    https://developer.amazon.com/en-US/a...dget-shortcuts

    It means no longer swiping to access widgets but directly tapping an icon top-right on the Echo's home screen. EvoControl's 2 widgets have their own individual icons that can be tapped directly to show the widget mid-screen. For now, the icons default to a smart-home icon (EvoControl's 'category') because Amazon has not yet tacked on the forthcoming add-custom-icon capability to the developer portal, but that's coming. Then I'll add a custom icon like the one you see when the System Mode is follow schedule.

    Screenshot 2023-11-18 105737.png

    Anybody else seeing this change on their Echo(s)? Amazon didn't announce it as live yet so it may be a phased rollout.


    EDIT: Sigh. It seems that the widget now no longer talks to the skill when it is tapped into view, so the little dashboard cannot update...
    EDIT2: I found a workaround which uses a different event to tell the skill that the widget is active. However, that will need a recertification to go live so will take a day or 2.
    Last edited by philchillbill; 18th November 2023 at 12:19 PM.

  3. #793
    Automated Home Legend philchillbill's Avatar
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    Amazon certified my changes to the widgets to allow them to correctly update with the new widgets-shortcut launching method. You'll notice that the background image on the widgets is now replaced by a dark blue background as that's less distracting and provides better contrast against the new background Amazon automatically places behind widgets (used to be a mid-blue colour, now almost black).

    Upside of the change is that each widget now updates noticeably faster when tapped into view.
    Last edited by philchillbill; 20th November 2023 at 02:35 PM.

  4. #794
    Automated Home Legend philchillbill's Avatar
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    I see quite a lot of errors in the logs related to fetching the weather so it would appear that the service is experiencing some issues at the moment. The main TCC service seems fine. Hopefully it will be resolved soon.
    Last edited by philchillbill; 26th November 2023 at 03:56 PM.

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