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Alexa

[Skill] Alexa Homey skill

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  • lubbertkramerlubbertkramer Member
    chrisnash said:
    Anyone know when this will be available outside the US? I'm in the UK and I can't switch my Kindle content location as I lose all my existing skills and setup.
    As soon as possible. It has to do with a library they use that is not (yet) available to the UK/DE Amazon skills. They are busy with Amazon to sort this out and make the skill available also through UK/DE and upcoming countries that support Alexa native.
  • Dom2061Dom2061 Member

    I was just wondering if it would be possible to attach an external microphone to Homey… I'm fairly sure the mini jack is only line out, so probably not.

    It's only that Athom seem confident that the software is high quality, so I'd love to be able to experiment with different hardware to find out once and for all!

  • JschuetzJschuetz Member
    chrisnash said:
    Anyone know when this will be available outside the US? I'm in the UK and I can't switch my Kindle content location as I lose all my existing skills and setup.
    As soon as possible. It has to do with a library they use that is not (yet) available to the UK/DE Amazon skills. They are busy with Amazon to sort this out and make the skill available also through UK/DE and upcoming countries that support Alexa native.
    How should DE work? unfortunately Homey still only supports english....
  • G4nd41fG4nd41f Member
    I really do not understand, why they do not integrate Alexa directly into Homey and why I have to buy another device to have speech recognition. I just got my Echo Dot today and it recognizises almost everything I say correctly eventhough I set it to English and my native tongue is German. You can even use Alexa on your mobile phone with this app: https://reverb.ai/, which achieves the same results. Why not with Homey?

    Homey does not recognize anything at all and I do not believe that it will become better as soon it supports German.

  • lubbertkramerlubbertkramer Member
    Jschuetz said:
    chrisnash said:
    Anyone know when this will be available outside the US? I'm in the UK and I can't switch my Kindle content location as I lose all my existing skills and setup.
    As soon as possible. It has to do with a library they use that is not (yet) available to the UK/DE Amazon skills. They are busy with Amazon to sort this out and make the skill available also through UK/DE and upcoming countries that support Alexa native.
    How should DE work? unfortunately Homey still only supports english....
    DE not yet working, only Amazon US support so your DOT/Echo needs to be under a US account. They have a ticket at Amazon to extend to UK/DE but a library they use is not available in UK/DE. G4nd41f said:
    I really do not understand, why they do not integrate Alexa directly into Homey and why I have to buy another device to have speech recognition. I just got my Echo Dot today and it recognizises almost everything I say correctly eventhough I set it to English and my native tongue is German. You can even use Alexa on your mobile phone with this app: https://reverb.ai/, which achieves the same results. Why not with Homey?

    Homey does not recognize anything at all and I do not believe that it will become better as soon it supports German.

    Well maybe because company's like Amazon/Google who are working with speech for years, have a budget that is no budget maybe makes a little difference? :) Here no problems with Homey understanding me when speaking English or native Dutch to it. Alexa is better yes, but just said before that is no suprise i guess. 

    Oh, you can also use the Homey iOS/Android app to speak to Homey, just like the app you link for Alexa :) 
  • G4nd41fG4nd41f Member
    lubbertkramer said:
    Well maybe because company's like Amazon/Google who are working with speech for years, have a budget that is no budget maybe makes a little difference? :)
    There is no reason not to integrate Alexa into Homey only because Amazon/Google are larger. I don't understand that logic. The Alexa API can be integrated free of charge as stated above. So there is no drawback for Athom in doing so. Except maybe some work. But in exchange most Homey users would not have to buy an additional device to get speech recognition.

    lubbertkramer said:
    Here no problems with Homey understanding me when speaking English or native Dutch to it. Alexa is better yes, but just said before that is no suprise i guess.
    For me Homey understands about 5-10% of what I say, while Alexa gets 90-95%. And according to this forum and github, many users share my experience.

    lubbertkramer said:

    Oh, you can also use the Homey iOS/Android app to speak to Homey, just like the app you link for Alexa :) 
    I am well aware of that. It was just an example that other people than Amazon are also using Alexa. And I don't want to take out my phone every time I want talk to Homey.




  • lubbertkramerlubbertkramer Member
    edited March 2017
    G4nd41f said:
    Well maybe because company's like Amazon/Google who are working with speech for years, have a budget that is no budget maybe makes a little difference? :)
    There is no reason not to integrate Alexa into Homey only because Amazon/Google are larger. I don't understand that logic. The Alexa API can be integrated free of charge as stated above. So there is no drawback for Athom in doing so. Except maybe some work. But in exchange most Homey users would not have to buy an additional device to get speech recognition.

    You can say integrate Alexa , somebody else doesn't use Alexa but uses service X from company Z and so on. Wich service will be the best and suitable for everybody's needs and use? Also as long as Alexa doesn't speak Dutch wich is Athom there main market at the moment it's not very usefull for most of the users of Homey.

    Integrating Alexa into Homey may be a solution but i don't think Amazon will let Athom choose the word (oke) Homey as a triggerword to trigger Homey with Alexa native. So you will keep the problem just like with the skill that you need to ask the API of Amazon (alexa ask homey) to trigger something in Homey, otherwise it doesn't know wich service needs to be triggered as Alexa has a lot of skills/services (Lots of things need the words Alexa ask Uber/Domino's/Fitbit/ Homey -> https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01DFKC2SO/ref=ods_xs_dp_oop )

    So I don't get the logic of integrating a service like Alexa as a standard when they are working on there own speech.
    They are working on it but like we al know they are with a small team, they can't do everything when you want it because user x want something else first. They need to find the midway in all the problems (bugs) and feature requests they get.

    Here no problems with Homey understanding me when speaking English or native Dutch to it. Alexa is better yes, but just said before that is no suprise i guess. 
    For me Homey understands about 5-10% of what I say, while Alexa gets 90-95%. And according to this forum and github, many users share my experience. 
    I will not say there are no problems, but just like above they are working on it. I'm running 1.2 with a rewritten core and still there is room for improvement but as said they are working on it :) 

    Also comparing a Dot with 7 microphones and Homey with 2 microphones is not a  fair comparison. Like comparing apples with pears. Who knows Homey V2 will also have 7 microphones :) 
  • dewennidewenni Member
    Hi,
    are there any news regarding the Alexa Skill in Germany?
    I would like to use Alexa in the German language.

    thanks!
  • chrisnashchrisnash Member
    Great news! Alexa skill is now in the UK store!
  • vaderagvaderag Member
    Prospective buyer here...

    Alexa is a must have for me - I have Echo Dot's all over the house so being able to control things from  each of those is essential.

    With the skill it sounds like I can use that, but it is a huge step down from the standard home automation implementations.

    E.g. with my Hue I can ask "Alexa turn on Living Room lights", but with Homey I would need to say "Alexa ask Homey to turn on Living Room lights" - two wasted words (and more importantly, bigger learning curve for the family)... why do you need the "ask homey" - other home automation devices do not need this (Logitech / Smart things etc)

  • PandaPanda Member
    @vaderag: I think this is because Alexa otherwise will not know if you want to control the light trough Homey or Hue directly.

    Got my Echo Dot yesterday and it works 10x better then Homey's own voice, I have Homey since January 2016 and the voice recognition gave me a lot of headache. Sure it improved a bit due the last months but it is still terrible compared to Alexa, single words are mostly fine. but asking a sentence goes 9 out of 10 times wrong.

    Going to order another echo soon for the bedroom.

    I also wish that Athom integrates Alexa API in a future version, and let us choose which voice service we want to use, by just selecting from a dropdown menu for example.
  • vaderagvaderag Member
    @Panda
    Actually Alexa handles that if it sees multiple things named the same it asks which. But obviously you could disable the Hue skill or use a different name on Homey and no issue.

    This is a bit of a deal breaker for me... i need that seamless Alexa integration otherwise I may as well just get a logitech hub, hue hub, lightwave hub and use all seamlessly with Alexa...

    I still have a couple of months before I move and make my final decision, would rather one device like Homey which is futureproof, but equally simplicity is key with home automation and needs to play nice with Alexa (and therefore the wife!)
  • swtttswttt Member
    @vaderag
    There is a work-around for the tech-savy people :) I posted a tutorial a while ago here on the forums.

    The reason they added the ask homey part is that they wanted to parse the text on homey and do actions based on that. Alexa for now just supports dim, onoff (and maybe some audio/player based actions). So that is kinda limiting when combined with homey, and i do understand their choice about it.

    But i do agree with you, thats why i am using HA-Bridge to create virtual hue devices (that can control HTTP in return) and still the homey skill for non-light commands. So in the end i can control all my lights directly (and other devices like the TV "Alexa, turn on the tv" and "Alexa, turn on RTL 4") and still ask homey things trough Alexa with the ask homey skill :smile:

    The tutorial can you find here:
    https://forum.athom.com/discussion/3031/advanced-link-ha-bridge-to-homey

    You do need something to install the middle-ware on (RPI, Home Server or maybe even your NAS should suffice), and setting it up might seem hard at first but i got it up and running (without crashes) for weeks now.
  • vaderagvaderag Member
    Thanks @swttt  - good to know there is a workaround... do you think this (or something similar) is likely to be implemented as core? I'm not adverse to fiddling, but having to have another device running seems to defeat the purpose somewhat of having a £260 device that is supposed to combine things!!

  • swtttswttt Member
    @vaderag
    I totally agree, i still hope Athom will create a second skill (just as logitech did). One with direct lights support and one with the ask homey part.

    I looked into the possibility to run something like ha-bridge in nodejs, but still not sure if that would even be possible. Nevertheless, most people already have a NAS or server running at home. And HA-Bridge is really a nice tool to combine homey devices with allmost every other service/device. I used HA-Bridge to add some of the lights to my harmony hub with companion remote, this one has some smart home buttons to control the lights but only supports hue and lifx out of the box. 

    I simply don't have the time to look into adding something like ha-bridge to Homey, maybe some other dev. Ofcourse there is allways the other way around, and hope someone creates a 3rd party homey skill that is able to control direct light controls.
  • spamenigmaspamenigma Member
    Just bought the Echo dot this week, mostly because homey still isn't recognising my commands most of the time and yet I'm English with no particular distorting accent. Already Alexa is working a treat with homey and recognises me practically all the time. My wife said so to finally get this working you're now asking a woman to tell a bloke what to do?

    Thanks Athom! :)

    I hope homey speech recognition improves and it would be nice to have the added option to also just ask Alexa to interface with homey devices directly.


  • MbenzNoMbenzNo Member
    swttt said:
    @vaderag
    I totally agree, i still hope Athom will create a second skill (just as logitech did). One with direct lights support and one with the ask homey part.
    +1 to that!
  • cbucbu Member
    Homey skill for "German" Alexa? What is the status? Initially you claimed it is the library. But it seems to be available for UK and US now ... hmm
  • lubbertkramerlubbertkramer Member
    edited September 2017
    cbu said:
    Homey skill for "German" Alexa? What is the status? Initially you claimed it is the library. But it seems to be available for UK and US now ... hmm
    As long Homey doesn't speak German there can't be a skill because Alexa sends speech to text to Homey. Same reason we in the Netherlands can't use Alexa with a Homey in Dutch because Alexa doesn't support Dutch. They both need to support a common language
  • razorfish79razorfish79 Member
    I would not care if it is in english, but it is not available at Amazon.de. Thats the main problem for me.
  • daeslanddaesland Member
    I have some flows on my homey that are triggered by a virtual switch.
    example - I have a switch 'central heating' that switches nest on and opens the radiator valves and announces that they are turned on.

     However, when I ask my echo to ask homey to turn a virtual switch on or off (connected to a flow like the one above) she replies by saying homey got your message but didn't respond and the blue ring on the echo circles for a bit.  And nothing happens, the flow does not run.  Only seems to happen with virtual switches.

    The only way I can get echo to trigger a virtual switch is to add it to IFTTT and just say 'trigger' and the flow or really the switch that runs it.

    Its actually easier to say 'trigger' rather than 'ask homey to'. But, it does mean that for what ever you want to control with alexa means you have to set up a separate flow for on homey  that links to IFTTT.

    Anyone else experienced this?  Why doesn't the 'ask homey' alexa skill work with virtual switches?  HomeKit ( aka app on homey - thank you Sprutt) does.  And I can ask Siri to turn things on that are just virtual switches that then run a flow.

    The homey HomeKit apps are great btw - v impressed.

    BW

    Dan
  • swtttswttt Member
    @daesland

    This requires extra middleware but works as a charm here: https://forum.athom.com/discussion/3031/advanced-link-ha-bridge-to-homey
  • brumhildebrumhilde Member
    vaderag said:
    Prospective buyer here...

    Alexa is a must have for me - I have Echo Dot's all over the house so being able to control things from  each of those is essential.

    With the skill it sounds like I can use that, but it is a huge step down from the standard home automation implementations.

    E.g. with my Hue I can ask "Alexa turn on Living Room lights", but with Homey I would need to say "Alexa ask Homey to turn on Living Room lights" - two wasted words (and more importantly, bigger learning curve for the family)... why do you need the "ask homey" - other home automation devices do not need this (Logitech / Smart things etc)

    Same for me. I use Echo Dot with VeraPlus and Harmony hub and would like to replace the Vera with Homey but the "ask Homey" part is a deal breaker. 
  • spamenigmaspamenigma Member
    I've been using the HA-Bridge for a good 4 months now. It works really well to bring through homey devices as something Alexa can detect. Homey voice recognition is still bad and time has moved on with Alexa and google home devices.

    At the least, we need something that does the job of HA-Bridge as a homey app, at the most we need Athom to integrate with Alexa properly. I love homey and it's improving all the time, but voice control I suspect is never going to be its strong point and the convenience of having echo dots in multiple rooms has removed all need for working homey voice control.
  • vaderagvaderag Member
    spamenigma said:
    I've been using the HA-Bridge for a good 4 months now. It works really well to bring through homey devices as something Alexa can detect. Homey voice recognition is still bad and time has moved on with Alexa and google home devices.

    At the least, we need something that does the job of HA-Bridge as a homey app, at the most we need Athom to integrate with Alexa properly. I love homey and it's improving all the time, but voice control I suspect is never going to be its strong point and the convenience of having echo dots in multiple rooms has removed all need for working homey voice control.
    i'm using HA Bridge too - it's awesome. If we could add that as a server run on homey as a skill that would be immense.
  • MbenzNoMbenzNo Member
    I don't understand Athom's resistance to integrate Homey with Amazon Alexa as a proper Smart Home skill, instead of this inferior "ask Homey" skill which is just irritating!
    Homey is a capable Home automating device, but its voice recognition is inferior to both Amazon and Google. Amazon Alexa dot is a cheap way of getting multi-room voice recognition and voice announcements to Homey. The tin can speaker in Homey makes it useless as a device for voice announcements! 
    Athom should concentrate on what Homey does best; making a universal Home Automation Hub, and leave Voice and Speaker to more capable devices.
    Or at least give us the options to choose the solution that fits the end user in proper Homey fashion!

  • PhuturistPhuturist Member
    edited October 2017
    What is a proper skill in your own terms? The ask or tell Homey part is needed to identify that the voice command needs to be send to Homey instead of handled by Alexa itself.

    How else would Alexa know what to do with something like 'turn off the lights'?
  • MrDutchfighterMrDutchfighter Member
    edited October 2017
    Yes, I totally agree. Homey should get rid of the Ask Homey part for the Alexa and Google integrations. Just build an integration like Hue and expose the devices (lights, thermostats etc). They can use the ask Homey things for all non basic devices, but I hate to say "ok Google ask Homey to turn the lights on". I just want to say, ok Google turn the lights on.

    Swttt has done that the right way around with the Apple Homekit integration! Love it, but only my wife can do the cool stuff with her iPhone now...
  • MbenzNoMbenzNo Member
    Phuturist said:
    How else would Alexa know what to do with something like 'turn off the lights'?
    Nearly every other Home Automation Hubs that is able to talk to Alexa like Vera, Smartthings, Fibaro, Nest and even Harmony Hub have a proper home automation integration that lets You speak normally addressing lights, blinds and audio/Video equipment without forcing You to use the Ask <hubname> to do something. The whole point is that a proper Smart Home skill tells Alexa which Hub is controlling a device. Alexa should understand which device You want to operate without You have to tell her which device is actually controlling it.

    Harmony have even made two skills. One normal skill that uses the Ask Harmony trigger, ("Alexa, ask homey to turn on my TV") and one Smart Home skill that lets You just say "Alexa, turn on my TV"

    I know which one I prefer to use!
  • lubbertkramerlubbertkramer Member
    edited October 2017
    Feature requests can be made at the github of Athom. Athom builds a skill but the community can also build their own skill so i would say proof Athom wrong and do it better :) Just like you say @MbenzNo there are two ways to handle this and Harmony did choose to do it both ways but Athom chooses for one way now.

    Don't know anything about any resistance  from Athom what you are talking about, could you point out where they are doing this? :)

    Don't really see the problem in that because that's the beauty of Homey, you can do it better/build your own app/skill :) 
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