Groups paradigm now supported
EvoControl now supports the concept of Groups to complement the Activities paradigm. You can define up to 12 of them. In a visual editor, you tap the zones you want to include in a group, click 'Create' and assign a name. Subsequently, you can refer to the group name in commands that support zone names.
For example, suppose you have 3 bedroom zones called Master Bedroom, Guestroom, plus Junior's Room, and you include all 3 of them in a group called 'Bedrooms'. You can say things like:
Alexa, set the Bedrooms group to 20° for 30 mins
Alexa, increase the Bedrooms by 0.5° until 11PM
Alexa, list my groups
Alexa, show the group creator
The Activity concept assigns predetermined, static, individual, absolute temperatures to what is effectively a group of target zones. With the Groups concept, your targeted zones all receive the same dynamically-assigned setpoint or the same (relative) increment/decrement as part of the actual command. So if Master Bedroom was set to 18° and Guestroom was set to 20°, saying "Alexa, increase the Bedrooms by 1°" would assign 19° to Master Bedroom and 21° to Guestroom. But saying "Alexa, set the Bedrooms to 15°" sets the whole group all to 15°. With an Activity e.g. "Alexa, activate Bedtime" all the addressed zones get their own setpoints (determined when the Activity was created) regardless of the current state. In 'Bedtime' you'd likely include turning down the downstairs zones for the night and not just upping the bedrooms. That's the difference.
A few more changes:
This code is live so all the current beta-testers have it automatically.
EvoControl now supports the concept of Groups to complement the Activities paradigm. You can define up to 12 of them. In a visual editor, you tap the zones you want to include in a group, click 'Create' and assign a name. Subsequently, you can refer to the group name in commands that support zone names.
For example, suppose you have 3 bedroom zones called Master Bedroom, Guestroom, plus Junior's Room, and you include all 3 of them in a group called 'Bedrooms'. You can say things like:
Alexa, set the Bedrooms group to 20° for 30 mins
Alexa, increase the Bedrooms by 0.5° until 11PM
Alexa, list my groups
Alexa, show the group creator
The Activity concept assigns predetermined, static, individual, absolute temperatures to what is effectively a group of target zones. With the Groups concept, your targeted zones all receive the same dynamically-assigned setpoint or the same (relative) increment/decrement as part of the actual command. So if Master Bedroom was set to 18° and Guestroom was set to 20°, saying "Alexa, increase the Bedrooms by 1°" would assign 19° to Master Bedroom and 21° to Guestroom. But saying "Alexa, set the Bedrooms to 15°" sets the whole group all to 15°. With an Activity e.g. "Alexa, activate Bedtime" all the addressed zones get their own setpoints (determined when the Activity was created) regardless of the current state. In 'Bedtime' you'd likely include turning down the downstairs zones for the night and not just upping the bedrooms. That's the difference.
A few more changes:
- The new API key is live in the beta and there's a whole new account-linking flow. EvoControl can be installed from my website without going near the Alexa app at all.
- The Activity-creation screen now uses tap-to-include rather than tap-to-exclude as its basic concept
- While creating an Activity, the subheader rotates through different texts to provide help/hints
This code is live so all the current beta-testers have it automatically.
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