Alexa mishears Homey as Harmony

Questions & Help
1

90% of the times I say Alexa, ask Homey, I get a response that is about Harmony.

I have two Homeys and have converted one to version 2, but the other one uses lots of voice input - and is pretty good at correctly interpreting commands spoken by me or my wife directly to the Homey through its microphone, so we are clear enough.

The Harmony skill was installed on the Alexas (two separate accounts, one for each Homey) but has now been removed. Still the problem persists whether with version 1.5 or 2.x.

I have tried lots of accents and emphases in the word “Homey” but with inconsistent success. the Alexas both interpret most other speech perfectly well.

Amazon’s reponse has so far been to suggest reinstallation, but that has not helped. While I will continue to pursue the matter with them, I thought I should ALSO ask here

  1. Am I alone in having this problem, and if not has anyone else found a solution
  2. Is there any way of changing the invocation name for the Homey skill to a word that is distinct from Harmony, so that I will be able to upgrade without losing functionality.

PS I am not yet using any Harmony skills but will probably want to in the future.

All suggestions welcome

2

Look here

3

I have the same. Work completely in English and others tell me my English is pretty good. I have tried all kinds of accents and emphasises too. No good result. Even considered to get rid of all because it is super irritating. Can I change the way you trigger Homey through Alexa? Different name that has less similarity then ‘homey and harmony’ ?

4

Glad to have some support - and disappointed that no-one else responds.

I have also tried unnatural emphases; hoeMEY, HOE…MIE with completely unpredictable results. Training Alexa with my voice also does not help.

The suggestion that the Homey skill could be equipped with an alias facility, just like there are multiple invocation options for Alexa itself, is very good. Perhaps difficult with the skill as it is, but could there be a duplicate skill which uses a different invocation word.?

5

And when using Alexa, why the “ask Homey” part?
Add the devices to Alexa and just say “Alexa, turn off the lights in the bar” will do aye?

1 Like
6

Thanks for the reply. That will not work because it is not about the lights (hue skill). It is about asking homey to close curtains. Or Can I also skip the ‘ask homey’ part then?

8

Yes, superbusy with work and finally a little bit of time.

9

With the Alexa Smart home skill I can only activate devices. Not Homey flows as far as I understand. So the only way to activate the flows on Homey is to use the Homey Alexa Voice Skill. And like said for some reason most of the time Alexa thinks I am asking for the Harmony skill. And also like said I do not feel I pronounce my English in a strange way.

10

Creat a virtual device on homey link it to the curtains - and it will be picked up natively by homey. I have never used “ask homey” but I also don’t have smart curtains. Temperature does however work with out “ask homey”.

Alexa does work natively with a lot of smart devices, contact sensors / doors / motion sensors etc. but it hasn’t been implemented with homey. If you would like more native support best to ask athom.

11

Glad you are keeping this topic alive.

It is simply impossible to change to 2.0 if Alexa mishears Homey as Harmony. Almost all my uses are flows which need to be triggered by a voice command and are not simple references to devices that Alexa knows directly like lamps and plugs.

Either Alexa needs to be trained to distinguish the words or a more different invocation word is needed.

I certainly cannot recommend switching to 2.0 or buying a Pro until this is solved.