Breakiing news: UK Amazon Echo works with Evohome!

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  • Rameses
    Industry Expert
    • Nov 2014
    • 446

    #31
    Originally posted by chris_j_hunter View Post
    think we expected more enthusiasm for Echo - impression is there's some way to go ... or maybe the added benefit is not yet all that clear ?
    More enthusiasm from who?
    getconnected.honeywell.com | I work for Honeywell. Any posts I make are purely to help if I can. Any personal views expressed are my own

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    • G4RHL
      Automated Home Legend
      • Jan 2015
      • 1580

      #32
      Originally posted by paulockenden View Post
      My system is as confused as yours, Mavis!

      One useful feature is that the groups facility in Alexa also works with single devices, so you can use it to set up alternative names, without having to rename your stuff in the various connected systems.
      Presumably then you are giving a group a different name to any device or room and then sticking in it the device you want. But if its single devices that could be an awful lot of groups. I am struggling at present for Evohome works fine but once I add something else like Hue lights poor Alexa starts getting confused. No doubt I'll resolve it all eventually. Certainly on its own Evohome works fine and what is nice you can have a group being like an additional Custom Menu, so if you want downstairs heating on at a certain temperature the relevant group does it for you.

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      • nieldm
        Automated Home Jr Member
        • Jun 2016
        • 12

        #33
        Originally posted by Rameses View Post
        All the modes apart from day off are supported.
        Would it be possible to list the precise commands Alexa understands for the modes? I have been talking to her like a lunatic for 20 minutes in the hope that I would discover the magic phrase, but all I have done is to annoy the dogs....

        Thanks!

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        • Mavis
          Automated Home Ninja
          • Oct 2014
          • 322

          #34
          Originally posted by G4RHL View Post
          Presumably then you are giving a group a different name to any device or room and then sticking in it the device you want. But if its single devices that could be an awful lot of groups. I am struggling at present for Evohome works fine but once I add something else like Hue lights poor Alexa starts getting confused. No doubt I'll resolve it all eventually. Certainly on its own Evohome works fine and what is nice you can have a group being like an additional Custom Menu, so if you want downstairs heating on at a certain temperature the relevant group does it for you.
          Same here. Evohome networks fine on its own but once I start adding things she gets confused.

          Just turned the living room up with the following command 'Alexa, Living Room 20 degrees'

          Comment

          • radar2016
            Automated Home Jr Member
            • Mar 2016
            • 43

            #35
            Originally posted by Mavis View Post
            Same here. Evohome networks fine on its own but once I start adding things she gets confused.

            Just turned the living room up with the following command 'Alexa, Living Room 20 degrees'
            Mine has been working in fashion until today and it looks like I am going to redo the binding again. After 4 weeks of recognising the individual rooms she is now saying "Do not recognise devices "

            Although mine has worked by turning up the temperature or turning down it never released that room back to the Evohome controller, even though all other rooms reacted to schedule, it seemed as if it was setting permanent. Yet it was not showing permanent on the panel, I am sure that it should follow the scheduled program, I would have thought it would work exactly like the iPhone app.

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            • G4RHL
              Automated Home Legend
              • Jan 2015
              • 1580

              #36
              Originally posted by radar2016 View Post
              Mine has been working in fashion until today and it looks like I am going to redo the binding again. After 4 weeks of recognising the individual rooms she is now saying "Do not recognise devices "

              Although mine has worked by turning up the temperature or turning down it never released that room back to the Evohome controller, even though all other rooms reacted to schedule, it seemed as if it was setting permanent. Yet it was not showing permanent on the panel, I am sure that it should follow the scheduled program, I would have thought it would work exactly like the iPhone app.
              My Echo is working like the app or manual override. If I tell it Living Room 22 it changes the setting but only to the next set point. Utter confusion when I add other functions such as Hue or LightwaveRF. It works fine with Bose SoundTouch switching it on to the last station listened to when asked but SoundTouch is probably an easy name for the lady to differentiate. Although I have changed room names in other devices so there is no conflict I hit problems asking for temperature changes. Perseverance and no doubt I will get there. Certainly to use as a device to change the heating or switch on the hot water it is great. It is also useful as a simple device to listen on for the news and other spoken word programmes. Ultimately I supppose I will get another one so one is permanently connected to the sound system in the lounge and the other in my study where the radio gear and other devices adorn.

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              • radar2016
                Automated Home Jr Member
                • Mar 2016
                • 43

                #37
                Originally posted by G4RHL View Post
                My Echo is working like the app or manual override. If I tell it Living Room 22 it changes the setting but only to the next set point. Utter confusion when I add other functions such as Hue or LightwaveRF. It works fine with Bose SoundTouch switching it on to the last station listened to when asked but SoundTouch is probably an easy name for the lady to differentiate. Although I have changed room names in other devices so there is no conflict I hit problems asking for temperature changes. Perseverance and no doubt I will get there. Certainly to use as a device to change the heating or switch on the hot water it is great. It is also useful as a simple device to listen on for the news and other spoken word programmes. Ultimately I supppose I will get another one so one is permanently connected to the sound system in the lounge and the other in my study where the radio gear and other devices adorn.
                In my search for answer to my "Alexa " problem I see there is a Alexa simulator "swift for Alexa" which works with Iphone, Ipad similar to SIRI.

                It works on the original AVS and requires an Amazon account and has all the same answers as Alexa.

                Getting back to my problem I notice all my devices are listed as "OFFLINE" is this correct, but then why would they be "ONLINE" unless they were being called.

                How do you totally reset this device. perhaps I can just delete evohome devices as every thing else appears to be working.

                One other thing I have noticed every thing I have ever said to Alexa is on my Iphone or is it in the cloud

                Comment

                • Mavis
                  Automated Home Ninja
                  • Oct 2014
                  • 322

                  #38
                  I have just looked in my History for yesterday when I turned the heating up. As I said yesterday I used the following command 'Alexa, Living Room 20 degrees'.

                  Alexa heard 'living room light living room to twenty degrees' and then issued the command 'Setting Living room heat to 20'

                  Comment

                  • radar2016
                    Automated Home Jr Member
                    • Mar 2016
                    • 43

                    #39
                    Originally posted by Mavis View Post
                    I have just looked in my History for yesterday when I turned the heating up. As I said yesterday I used the following command 'Alexa, Living Room 20 degrees'.

                    Alexa heard 'living room light living room to twenty degrees' and then issued the command 'Setting Living room heat to 20'
                    Well I reloaded the Alexa App, then asked ALEXA "Living room 20 degrees" then to my surprise replied "there is no device living room" paused and then said" ask me to discover devices" to which I obliged and she found all 12 devices. So I repeated my request then came a surprise answer "can only set temperature between 41 and 90 degrees" I then asked "Alexa living room 70" with in seconds the Evohome panel now reads 21.1c.
                    Also the Evohome schedule is now working as everyone's.

                    Comment

                    • nieldm
                      Automated Home Jr Member
                      • Jun 2016
                      • 12

                      #40
                      Echo & two Evohome locations

                      Unless I am missing something, there is a significant issue with the skill when there is more than one location involved, as there is in my case where I have two installations. Whilst I handle this for the zones by giving them individual names, there seems to be no way to do this for the mode settings. Thus I end up with two "Away", "Custom" devices in the Alexa app and when I ask Alexa to turn on Away mode, she tells me there is more than one....fix it.

                      I have worked around it by creating a group with a specific name and that works, but that means creating a group for each mode for each location, doable but a royal pain in the a$$. The other way, of course, would be to create separate accounts with Honeywell for each location, but then I would need to log in to each individually in the app.....a similar pain.

                      If there is a way to handle the above that I am missing, it would be good to know.....otherwise I think Honeywell have some work to do.

                      Comment

                      • radar2016
                        Automated Home Jr Member
                        • Mar 2016
                        • 43

                        #41
                        Originally posted by nieldm View Post

                        If there is a way to handle the above that I am missing, it would be good to know.....otherwise I think Honeywell have some work to do.
                        I think it is amazon that has the problem. Every thing about evohome works well with IFTTT and LIVE360 also with IPhone app

                        The Alexa app I reloaded yesterday was different than the one I loaded 4 weeks ago so they are working on it just not the right bit for everyone

                        Comment

                        • paulockenden
                          Automated Home Legend
                          • Apr 2015
                          • 1719

                          #42
                          Like you say, groups make it easy to solve this. I expect the number of people with >1 controllers is very small.

                          P.

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                          • nieldm
                            Automated Home Jr Member
                            • Jun 2016
                            • 12

                            #43
                            Originally posted by paulockenden View Post
                            groups make it easy to solve this.
                            Groups make it work, but I don't call a kludge like that a solution. Duplicating every mode with a group is more than a little bit Mickey Mouse....in my humble opinion. It is, to what I think is your broader point, very much a first world problem and not one I am going to get high blood pressure over.

                            Ok, we are lucky enough to have two locations with Evohome, but that was one of the reasons Evohome was so attractive given the ease of changing modes and controlling individual rooms remotely. You may be correct that the number of people with more than one installation isn't enormous but to me that doesn't constitute an excuse for lazy programming.

                            Comment

                            • MrB
                              Automated Home Sr Member
                              • Oct 2015
                              • 80

                              #44
                              Have to say the Amazon Echo (Big or Dot) and Evohome show the way to the future.

                              Have just been playing with the Echo Groups.
                              Now have "Upstairs Heating" with all up rads in it.
                              And "Downstairs Heating" down rads.
                              And, the best one "Bedrooms" so can say "Alexa, set Bedrooms to 21 degrees"

                              For all of you with country mansions - you could even have "East Wing" and "West Wing".

                              Permutations are endless and any single Rad (aka Device) can belong to multiple groups.

                              {tap} {tap} {tap} to be able to ask what an individual device temp is... Great to argue with the ladies when they say it's too cold :-)

                              Comment

                              • paulockenden
                                Automated Home Legend
                                • Apr 2015
                                • 1719

                                #45
                                I'm not sure it is lazy programming. Ultimately the guys are having to work within the Alexa SmartHome Skill API. If during the device discovery phase it returned the location prepended to the zone name in the 'friendlyName' field it would mean that every user of the skill would see that behaviour.

                                If you had to spell out the location as well as the zone name for every Evohome update via Alexa I expect it would annoy more people than it pleases.

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