[APP][Pro] Amazon - Alexa

Jamie · January 31, 2019, 8:04am

Amazon Alexa

This is NOT the Athom Alexa Skill which allows Alexa to talk to Homey

With this app you can allow Homey to talk to Alexa, literally and figuratively.

Alexa Text to Speech, (60 other voices to do text to speech with), Alexa Announcements, Alexa Whisper Weather, News, Traffic, Good Morning/Night reports, Trigger Alexa routines, play music, play sounds, add alexa smart home devices to homey

Donate

Help me buy a homey to create this and other apps on.

Version 5

The app has been re-written to work on the new SDK in version 5, this means that many fundamentals have changed, however you should see a “the same or better” experience.

Features

Servers

Amazon US server
Amazon EU server
Amazon Far East server

Devices

Echo

Echo Gen1
Echo Gen2
Echo Gen3
Echo Dot Gen1
Echo Dot Gen2
Echo Dot Gen3
Echo Plus Gen1
Echo Plus Gen2
Echo Spot Gen1
Echo Show Gen1
Echo Show Gen2

Fire

~~Fire Tablet HD10.7~~

Third Party

Ecobee
Sonos One
Sonos Beam
Netgear Orbi Voice

Smart Home

See FAQ for known issue

Add Alexa smart home plugs as devices to Homey
Add Alexa smart home lights as devices to Homey

Capabilities

Reports

Weather
Traffic
News
Stop

Media

Volume
Play
Pause
Previous/Next
Track
Artist
Album
Playing
Random
duration
repeat

Flows

Triggers

Account

When Account Connects
When Account Authorized
When Account Disconnects
When Account Unauthorized

Actions

Reports

Good Morning
Good Night
Weather
Traffic
News
Good News

Voice

Alexa Says {something}
Alexa Announces {something}
Alexa Whispers {something}
Simon Says {something} on Alexa Device * Homeys voice is “Brian”
~~Simon Announces {something} on Alexa Device~~
Simon Whispers {something} on Alexa Device * *Echo devices only
Choose from 60 other voices to say or whisper {something} *** Not all voices can whisper

Calendar

Alexa says todays calendar
Alexa says tomorrows calendar
Alexa say the next calendar entry

Fun

Alexa tell a story
Alexa sing a song
Alexa give a fun fact
Alexa say a joke
Alexa help clean up

Phrases

Alexa Confirm
Alexa Compliment
Alexa I’m Home
Alexa Goodbye
Alexa Birthday

Sounds

Play one of inbuilt sounds on an alexa device

Music

Play music from spotify based upon text sentence to an alexa device
Play music from amazon music based upon text sentence to an alexa device
Play music from I Heart Radio based upon text sentence to an alexa device
Play music from TuneIn based upon text sentence to an alexa device

DND

Turn on/off do not disturb mode

App Languages

English (AU)

You can create a flow which can send ‘text’ to any Alexa enabled device and ‘she’ will then repeat that text, including any tags then there is a quite bit more that can be done.

Status

Latest State

Testing whether the app stays connected the alexa and TTS continues working with out app/homey restarts.

Supports

Notes

Please note that this app now only supports v7.

Currently only limited testing has been done upon ‘alexa mutli room music groups’ ie “everywhere” this may or may not be supported.

Using

After installing, to add a new Device, click + (add) upon the devices tab select “Amazon Alexa Device”.
Likely a popup will open asking for you to log into your amazon alexa account.
You will receive a message stating its now ok to close the popup, and a loading screen will show.
The loading screen may stay for up to a minute, but once completed your alexa devices will be shown.
Click on which devices you would like to add to Homey.

Possible Uses

Possible Uses is hard as there is so much you could do with it. It is all about integrating Alexa into your smart home. (Rather than your smart home into alexa).

Anything from Create a flow so that any time homey speaks - it also gets said upon all echo devices, so the entire house can hear it.
Through to if it s a weekday before midday and your presence is detected in the bathroom, turn on the light and exhaust fan and play today weather on alexa.
After which if when the vibration sensor is triggered on the stairs, play todays news flash briefing.
When the contact sensor on the mail box is triggered create a reminder at 7pm that night to all devices “Please check the mail box”.
When owntracks presence tracks me leaving the office and its after 5pm and alexa Text to speech say ‘Jamie has left the office, with current traffic he will be home in 50 minutes’ , then play ride of the Valkyries on all devices.
When the bedroom light is turned off and everyone is in bed , if a perimeter window is not closed have Alexa announce through the spot alarm clock that the ‘house is not secure’.
When ever homey speaks, have the same voice repeated across all your amazon enabled devices
Control/Add devices to homey which may have an alexa skill but not a Homey app.

For me personally, I have only one Homey where has I have half a dozen alexa devices in most rooms and they can speak, let me know the traffic, weather, news, etc alarms or reminders, announcements or notices, whats on my calendar. And now I can have any of these features with in a flow.

Other

Otherwise everything else is as advertised in the post, hit me up on Slack (@jamie) if you have any questions or issues. Items show in this post (and only this post) are confirmed to work.

Bugs

When adding multiple Dot (gen3) the app errors ‘unable to add as device already exists’
Clicking stop when weather is being reported will not stop the weather on all devices. ie. Dot (gen2) - works for Echo Plus (gen1)
Smart devices are not currently working

Known Issues

Smart devices added to homey will not sync there state, ie. they not show whether they are on/off correctly. - Likely involves polling once every 5 minutes to sync
Media/Speaker capabilities will not work if a music group has been used with the speaker.
If you don’t select the correct server to connect to, many features will not work or will be delayed.
IF you have MFA turned on, and your connecting the app may show a ‘page not found’ error page.
Solution: you must go into your Amazon account via web browser and enable 2 factor authentication. Then use an authenticator such as Google Authenticator, problem solved. Use the code that comes through the authenticator app, not the one that Amazon texts to you. Hope this helps.

Images

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Jamie · January 31, 2019, 8:05am

Frequently asked questions (FAQ)

Why doesn’t alexa voice work?

You are connected to the wrong ‘server’, you can go to the settings, disconnect and try one of the other servers (US,EU,AU). Just because you live in a geo location, doesn’t mean that where you first signed up your devices. (Originally only the US server existed).

Can I add a new alexa device?

Yes I can add new devices, but I will require first the assets and device information in order to add it.

SVG of the new device in the same aesthetic as the other icons I have.
An image of the device ideally 2000x2000px in the same aesthetic as the other images I have (white background etc).
The name of the device, and its average power usage.
The unique identifier of the device, I can normally find these out with some help and a diagnostic report.
Someone to test each and every feature of the app upon new device and report back if any features do not work.

Will there be support for X?

See above

Whats next?

Support for newer amazon alexa devices. (Flex/Studio/etc).
More smart home device types, perhaps thermostat.
Poll Alexa for changes to a smart home device and Sync the ‘state’ with Homey.
Add a new condition for DND to the flows
Ability to trigger alexa scenes from with in a flow.
Investigate homey reset causing loss of TTS
Add Flow trigger, when alexa hears a specific set of words.
Arm/Disarm alexa guard.
Update the app to fully support other languages.
Make a better ’ you can close the browser’ page after sign in.
Maybe nothing.

Can you add feature X or Y

Long Answer : If you cant do it through the alexa website alexa.amazon.com or worse case the alexa phone app. Then no I can not add it. If you can do it through the app, check out whether its in “whats next” list above. If its not, the I doubt it, but you can ask.

Short Answer : I Doubt it.

Why don’t my routines show in the flow action

For a routine to show, it must be given a name with in the alexa app.

Why does the app stop working?

There could be a couple of reasons for this, the most common is that you have set homey to restart nightly/weekly and this is causing the app to not reconnect.

autolycos · January 19, 2019, 1:44pm

Interesting to say the least.

Conny_Svitzer · January 19, 2019, 7:35pm

Are we there yet?

JB2K · January 19, 2019, 10:44pm

Haha oh wow, that must have been creepy

Jamie · January 21, 2019, 12:57am

No so much for me, as I understood the message immediately and what was going on, my wife no so much

Im still trying to figure out what caused the delay, (delay makes it a pretty useless app). Ill let you know.

autolycos · January 21, 2019, 2:58pm

If you need any help with testing/TS or similar, I’m game.
I don’t mind getting the random/delayed response while getting things right.

JB2K · January 21, 2019, 10:20pm

By the way,

This skill is maybe a better option ?

It’s a bridge between the notification api and user input

Jamie · January 21, 2019, 11:43pm

I think what I am doing at the moment is a better solution, but thank you for the link - it also said this

And there’s one more thing you should know. Regardless of what smart home device you use as a trigger event, Amazon limits the Notification API: Trigger events can only create notifications up to five times in a five minute period. After that, Amazon puts you in a bit of a time-out.

Which explains some things.

HarriedeGroot · January 21, 2019, 11:44pm

Or use Node RED: https://flows.nodered.org/node/node-red-contrib-alexa-local?

Jamie · January 21, 2019, 11:46pm

That (node RED) app only replicates the current behavior we already have …

HarriedeGroot · January 21, 2019, 11:50pm

To be honest, I didn’t looked at it thoroughly. But thought I read somewhere you could use your own texts & of course trigger Homey flows via mqtt (i.s.o devices known by Alexa). But maybe I’m wrong or it was another Node red extension.

autolycos · January 24, 2019, 7:03am

How’s it going Jamie?
Extremely eager to hear.

Jamie · January 24, 2019, 4:02pm

I pushed at an update to the beta channel of “group” which took a little longer than anticipated, back on this project now.

Jamie · January 26, 2019, 6:21am

Cookie, Device, Text to speech all working, below you can see the work in progress… Ill update with some more images later - but right now It Australia day and I need to get my Aussie On.

Thanks

autolycos · January 26, 2019, 6:32am

FANTASTIC!
Where do I donate?!

PhilS · January 26, 2019, 8:34am

Wow @Jamie!!!

Can you give me examples how this app would work?

Can I use then my dots for speech output? And what else can we do?

I will donate as soon as possible!
Thank you

Jamie · January 26, 2019, 2:37pm

Hmm Examples, it a hard one because there is so much you could do with it. It is all about integrating Alexa into your smart home. (Rather than your smart home into alexa).

Anything from Create a flow so that any time homey speaks - it also gets said upon all echo devices, so the entire house can hear it.
through to if it s a weekday before midday and your presence is detected in the bathroom, turn on the light and exhaust fan and play today weather on alexa.
After which if when the vibration sensor is triggered on the stairs, play todays news flash briefing.
When the contact sensor on the mail box is triggered create a reminder at 7pm that night to all devices “Please check the mail box”.
When owntracks presence tracks me leaving the office and its after 5pm and alexa Text to speech say ‘Jamie has left the office, with current traffic he will be home in 50 minutes’ , then play ride of the Valkyries on all devices.
When the bedroom light is turned off and everyone is in bed , if a perimeter window is not closed have alexa announce through the spot alarm clock that the ‘house is not secure’.