Wanted: beta testers for new visual/custom Alexa skill 'EvoControl'

[philchillbill]

Beta testers should note a few changes:

• Activities now retain their numbering/order whenever new activities are defined
• There are new buttons for Show Activities (Film-roll icon) and Help (? icon) on the main dashboard
• The settings button has been moved down from the top right corner to join this button-row
• All of these buttons have low opacity but are not greyed-out. They're just intended to not be too obtrusive.

[gordonb3]

I'm in the process of adding support for multiple locations in EvoControl, whereby you can say the likes of 'List my locations' and 'Select location N' (only if you have >1 location).

Does anybody know if the result of the API call to "/WebApi/emea/api/v1/userAccount" always only lists the primary address of the account-holder or does it change format to somehow include multiple addresses?

There is no array element in the response, so I'm pretty sure this call only supports returning a single address

I presume the call to "/WebApi/emea/api/v1/location/installationInfo?userId=${userId}&includeTemperatu reControlSystems=True" will return an array with multiple similarly-populated 'locationInfo' entries when somebody has multiple locations?

Correct. As you probably found the return from the API is crippled and starts with an array bracket. This array needs to be named, e.g. `locations` so then locationInfo can be accessed as `jsonObject["locations"][0]["locationInfo"]`. The next one then becomes `jsonObject["locations"][1]["locationInfo"]`

[philchillbill]

Sorry if this is a dumb question, but I don't have DHW as I have a combi.

It can only be turned on/off, right? You can retrieve what its current actual temperature is but not set a particular setpoint, i.e. the temperature is read-only?

On/off is normally scheduled. Does the concept of TemporaryOverride-until apply to DHW too?

IS there any value in being able to include DHW in actitivies? I'm going to take a shower so I'd like the radiator zone to get warm but also the DHW to kick-in for a while. That type of thing.

[bruce_miranda]

DHW set point can be changed but not via the API. You can only do that via the radio.
Temporary Override Until is actually the exact way how Resideo implemented the HW Boost. So when you select Boost, what is actually happening is the DHW is switched On as a Temporary Override for an hour.
Having the option of including the HW in a scene sounds like a good thing.

[DerekWilliamsUK]

Having the option of including the HW in a scene sounds like a good thing.

+1. I would welcome this additional functionality.

[philchillbill]

DHW set point can be changed but not via the API. You can only do that via the radio.
Temporary Override Until is actually the exact way how Resideo implemented the HW Boost. So when you select Boost, what is actually happening is the DHW is switched On as a Temporary Override for an hour.
Having the option of including the HW in a scene sounds like a good thing.

When an until is set for dhw, it is { "dhw": "stateStatus": { "state": "On|Off", "mode": "TemporaryOverride", "until": "2022-04-16T16:00:00Z" } or does it use timeUntil like the system mode does for overrides?

[philchillbill]

There's now full support for DHW in EvoControl Some example commands:

Turn off Hot Water
Turn on Hot Water for 20 mins
Turn on Hot Water at 5PM for 45mins [adds a switchpoint]
Turn on Hot Water at 10PM until 11:30PM [adds 2 switchpoints]
Show the Hot Water schedule
Upload schedule B for Hot Water
What's the Hot Water state?

Hot Water can fully participate in Activities/Scenes and also be scheduled as part of a scene. When DHW is installed, the DHW tile is always shown first on your dashboard in the skill.

New account-linkings of the skill will discover DHW automatically. Existing Beta testers can say "Alexa, update my configuration" when in-session to pick up DHW if they have it.

Some other improvements:

• In schedule view, the most recent active switchpoint for a zone is highlighted, even if it was late yesterday rather than earlier today
• There's a 4th button bottom left of the dashboard, to open the setpoint-editor view
• Zones reporting a fault condition will show an orange triangle in their tile
• Tiles for TRVs not reporting temperature (e.g. bound but sitting in a drawer as a spare without batteries) will have lower opacity on the dashboard and be sorted at the end
• Unusual TCC setups with ghost devices from e.g. a replaced Evotouch will now be more gracefully handled (thanks Jim for being the Guinea Pig on that)

The in-skill Help has been updated with the new commands. Enjoy!

[philchillbill]

Fixed a bug introduced a week or so ago that was causing regular 429 rate limit exceeded errors with TCC Should be back to normal now.

[philchillbill]

EvoControl uses the Fuse.js fuzzy-matching library to match your zone names as spelled for TCC against Alexa's expected spelling thereof.

Not unexpectedly, Alexa can't get around homophones — words that sound the same but are spelled differently. Think of ate/eight, flour/flower, bare/bear, cellar/seller. Luckily, misinterpretations are unlikely to occur with zone names because EvoControl uses the AMAZON.Room slot type for zoning which clues up Alexa to expect something akin to a room name when she's in doubt.

Then there's abbreviations. If you have a TCC zone called 'Master Bedrm' or 'Mstr Bedrm', Alexa will hear 'Master Bedroom' when you wish to address it by voice. Thanks to EvoControl's fuzzy matching, the correct zone will be addressed (it does depend to some extent on how 'close' your other zone names are).

There should therefore be no need to rename your TCC zones to work with EvoControl. If you have any issues with names, it's more likely down to how Alexa is interpreting you rather than how the skill is handling Alexa. But if any beta testers have specific examples of room names that are proving problematic, please drop me a line so I can look at implementing a special-cases list.

[philchillbill]

I've rewritten the code around configuration-updating and scenes/activities so if you rename zones your scenes will not be messed up.