EvoControl - custom Alexa skill for Evohome

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  • philchillbill
    Automated Home Legend
    • Jan 2017
    • 591

    #46
    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:
    • 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.
    Last edited by philchillbill; 19 October 2022, 09:54 AM.

    Comment

    • nealroberts20
      Automated Home Jr Member
      • Nov 2015
      • 17

      #47
      I’m willing to have a go at this Phil - I have hgi80 alternative connected up to a pi zero running domoticz in the house. (Just seen your video regarding it and you’ve tempted me to try it out&#129315
      You’ve got my email details - Nealjane..
      Last edited by nealroberts20; 5 October 2022, 09:04 PM.

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      • jb80
        Automated Home Jr Member
        • Aug 2018
        • 11

        #48
        Originally posted by philchillbill View Post

        EvoControl can now make use of a HGI-80 (or equivalent, e.g. SSM(R) or nanoCUL) connected via Domoticz
        Any plans to support Home Assistant?

        Comment

        • philchillbill
          Automated Home Legend
          • Jan 2017
          • 591

          #49
          Originally posted by jb80;
          Any plans to support Home Assistant?
          Not currently. TBH I have no idea how much work it would be as I've never looked at the API for it.

          Comment

          • bruce_miranda
            Automated Home Legend
            • Jul 2014
            • 2307

            #50
            Schedules are also possible via RF, this is how the V2 controller and the RFG100 used to work. The RFG100 used to pull the Schedule from the TCC and then send that to the controller via RF and vise versa.

            Comment

            • philchillbill
              Automated Home Legend
              • Jan 2017
              • 591

              #51
              Originally posted by bruce_miranda View Post
              Schedules are also possible via RF, this is how the V2 controller and the RFG100 used to work. The RFG100 used to pull the Schedule from the TCC and then send that to the controller via RF and vise versa.
              I take it you mean in Home Assistant (because that's not the case for Domoticz)?

              Comment

              • bruce_miranda
                Automated Home Legend
                • Jul 2014
                • 2307

                #52
                Yup, I never got around to coding schedules into Domoticz because by then I was convinced to make the move to HA myself and never looked back.

                Comment

                • philchillbill
                  Automated Home Legend
                  • Jan 2017
                  • 591

                  #53
                  Eco/Boost offset compensation implemented



                  There's a new settings page that allows you to specify some values that cannot be retrieved using the API. This includes the Eco/Boost Offset which you normally set on your EvoTouch from -3° to +3°.

                  If you move the slider on this page to ON, the skill will pre-apply the mathematical inverse of this offset to setpoints above a user-specifiable threshold so that when the EvoTouch applies the offset, the nett result will be zero offset for TemporaryOverrides. This means that when you ask the skill to set Zone xxx to e.g. 20° it will be set to 20° and not (annoyingly) 17°. When the slider is set to OFF, the THRESHOLD setting disappears as it is then irrelevant.
                  Last edited by philchillbill; 21 October 2022, 07:13 PM.

                  Comment

                  • bruce_miranda
                    Automated Home Legend
                    • Jul 2014
                    • 2307

                    #54
                    A quick reminder to how to enable the skill?

                    Comment

                    • philchillbill
                      Automated Home Legend
                      • Jan 2017
                      • 591

                      #55
                      Originally posted by bruce_miranda View Post
                      A quick reminder to how to enable the skill?
                      You can't as there is no active Beta at the moment...

                      However, the fantastic news is that Amazon certified 'EvoControl Smart Heat' yesterday for global public distribution so it's officially out of beta and released. I'm just creating a completely new website for it and when that's done I'll publish the skill which means it will appear in everybody's Alexa app for installation without an invite or email-whitelisting.

                      The new install procedure will then also be live and facilitate installing directly from the browser in under a minute. No need to search for the skill in the skill-store.

                      I'll definitely publish it before Nov 1st, likely sooner. Watch this space!

                      Comment

                      • bruce_miranda
                        Automated Home Legend
                        • Jul 2014
                        • 2307

                        #56
                        I was part of the beta and have been struggling to even invoke the skill now. Can't wait for the published skill.

                        Comment

                        • philchillbill
                          Automated Home Legend
                          • Jan 2017
                          • 591

                          #57
                          EvoControl Smart Heat is published!

                          The skill is now published and available worldwide for all Alexa users in 3 languages: en-GB, en-US and de-DE.

                          There is a completely new website with screenshots, slideshows and detailed descriptions at https://smartskills.tech/evocontrol. There's a link on that page for setting up the account that you will need in order to enable and link the skill.

                          The invocation name has changed at Amazon's recommendation because Alexa had too much trouble understanding people say 'Evo Control' correctly. So the name of the skill in English is 'EvoControl Smart Heat' and you invoke it with 'Alexa, open Smart Heat' without the word EvoControl. In German, the skill is called 'EvoControl Wärmesteuerung' and you invoke it with 'Alexa, öffne Wärmesteuerung'.

                          In the UK store, it's at https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0BL1CN6WS. In Germany it's https://www.amazon.de/dp/B0BL1CN6WS. The only reason it's also published in en-US is so that European users with their Echos set to en-US can enable the skill. Of course Evohome itself is a European product line.

                          Again, many thanks to the Beta testers! I hope people enjoy this baby because a year's worth of development has gone into it
                          Last edited by philchillbill; 31 October 2022, 04:39 PM.

                          Comment

                          • nealroberts20
                            Automated Home Jr Member
                            • Nov 2015
                            • 17

                            #58
                            👏👏 Going to take me a while to get used to the new name…😬

                            I’ve also ocr the main help page for printing/saving on my phone - as it’s such a long list of options that I never remember …!
                            Last edited by nealroberts20; 31 October 2022, 08:26 PM.

                            Comment

                            • philchillbill
                              Automated Home Legend
                              • Jan 2017
                              • 591

                              #59
                              Originally posted by nealroberts20 View Post
                              ...as it’s such a long list of options that I never remember …?
                              Just make a bookmark to https://smartskills.tech/evocontrol/index.html#examples and it will load the modal with the examples directly

                              Comment

                              • philchillbill
                                Automated Home Legend
                                • Jan 2017
                                • 591

                                #60
                                I added a reminder on the manual-linking page (the one that shows up inside the Alexa app) that you should enter credentials from your dedicated EvoControl account and not your TCC account. Looks like some people were wondering why they could not login correctly and my guess is they thought they should enter their TCC details.

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