EvoControl - custom Alexa skill for Evohome

[philchillbill]

I noticed that the fuzzy matching library I use in the skill was producing some strange results when assigning names to Activities. In the check against existing names it was producing false positives. I've tweaked the engine so it should be better now.

When you ask "What's up next?" or "Show today's roster" the results were being sorted by time-of-day without taking into account if the switchpoint-time would be tomorrow morning and not today. That's now corrected.

The touchable area of the tiles for composing Groups was limited to the text within the tile. That has now been extended to the whole tile including the blank portion.

[Stevedh]

in a similar vein, but bit really important.
I was saying.
Alexa ask smart heat what the demand is..
and not being understood.
what I had to do was.
Alexa ask smart heat , what is the demand.

note sure if there is any way to also respond to the former as it seems more natural, but as long as I remember to phrase it as if I have opened the skill its find.

[philchillbill]

in a similar vein, but bit really important.
I was saying.
Alexa ask smart heat what the demand is..
and not being understood.
what I had to do was.
Alexa ask smart heat , what is the demand.

note sure if there is any way to also respond to the former as it seems more natural, but as long as I remember to phrase it as if I have opened the skill its find.

I'll include that into the delta for the next certification round by Amazon (any changes to the handcrafted voice-model need Amazon's approval). I'll be adding some completely new commands shortly and will tweak a few more variations into the existing phraseology.

[philchillbill]

https://vimeo.com/781761124

[Stevedh]

smart heat is having trouble recognising one of my zones.
I have a zone called 'kais room'
if I ask smart heat about demand, it lists kais room find.
If I ask evohome what kais room temperature is, it correctly gives me the temperature.
If I ask smart heat.. it just tells me that it is not a valid zone name.
other rooms work fine. It looks like it is setup properly in the EvoControl room
I have tried to pronounce it the way it is read back to me when I query demand.
any thoughts?

[philchillbill]

smart heat is having trouble recognising one of my zones.
I have a zone called 'kais room'
if I ask smart heat about demand, it lists kais room find.
If I ask evohome what kais room temperature is, it correctly gives me the temperature.
If I ask smart heat.. it just tells me that it is not a valid zone name.
other rooms work fine. It looks like it is setup properly in the EvoControl room
I have tried to pronounce it the way it is read back to me when I query demand.
any thoughts?

Do you have a possessive apostrophe in the name to help Alexa with context? Is there a difference between the spelling in TCC vs Domoticz?

I just tweaked the fuzzy match slightly to be a wee bit less strict so try again.

[Midland45]

smart heat is having trouble recognising one of my zones.
I have a zone called 'kais room'
if I ask smart heat about demand, it lists kais room find.
If I ask evohome what kais room temperature is, it correctly gives me the temperature.
If I ask smart heat.. it just tells me that it is not a valid zone name.
other rooms work fine. It looks like it is setup properly in the EvoControl room
I have tried to pronounce it the way it is read back to me when I query demand.
any thoughts?

[philchillbill]

[Stevedh]

Do you have a possessive apostrophe in the name to help Alexa with context? Is there a difference between the spelling in TCC vs Domoticz?

I just tweaked the fuzzy match slightly to be a wee bit less strict so try again.

Hi, thanks its working now, although the 1st time I tried it came back with bathroom.

I haven't tried with the possessive apostrophe, I can't remember why I don't use it, I might have a play with it later, although as its working now...

Also spelling etc were identical on TCC and Domoticz

[philchillbill]

New graphical schedule comparison





Two new functions in EvoControl to assist in graphically assessing schedules. The top graph is shown when you first open the schedule view (by tapping on a zone-tile on the main dashboard screen) and subsequently tap on one of the day-names above the switchpoint grid. It draws up to 4 schedules (Live + ABC) graphically, with smart scaling on the y-axis. If the Live schedule matches one of the presets then (as above) a combination such as e.g. A/Live is shown with B and C. This can be useful not only to compare the schedules among themselves but even to help realise what exactly a schedule is doing with your setpoints. This view better handles different counts of SP's per day per ABC preset than the Compare (grid) view.

Note that if you're in Editing mode this feature is disabled so as to not accidentally ruin your edits. However, tapping the day-name header in that case toggles all of the SP's for that particular day on/off for editing. This means it's even easier to use the block editor selectively.

The 2nd plot (which shows things for a whole week rather than for a single day) is reached by tapping on a zone-tile on the main dashboard screen to view the schedule and subsequently selecting View --> More --> Line-Chart which is a new button nested there beside the (also new) Compare feature mentioned a few posts back.

[philchillbill]

The 24h graphs drawn for HGI-80/Domoticz have been greatly improved with the dynamic scaling used in the schedule graphs, showing much more relevant vertical detail than before. The daily average for actual/setpoint is now bracketed after the labels. As before, the actual-average is drawn as a horizontal line across the whole plot while the coldest actual has a vertical line through it so you can see where it occurs on the x-axis (i.e. time of day).

[philchillbill]

Naming new scenes and/or groups no longer uses fuzzy matching to check for clashes with existing names. In retrospect, matching typed text is fundamentally different to matching hopefully-understood spoken text.

[philchillbill]

Quite a few people have created a dashboard account and then never performed the TCC or Amazon oauth stages of setup (maybe suddenly realising they don't remember their TCC password). FYI, I'm going to do a new-year's cleanup by purging those redundant database entries.

[Midland45]

Quite a few people have created a dashboard account and then never performed the TCC or Amazon oauth stages of setup (maybe suddenly realising they don't remember their TCC password). FYI, I'm going to do a new-year's cleanup by purging those redundant database entries.

Not sure if this purely a coincidence, but from this morning all my Alexa devices suddenly are unable to locate the Smartheat skill. The skill is still linked ok in my Alexa app, however when checking on my Evocontrol dashboard I have all black ticks, did think these were green previously. Does this just need re-authorising from the dashboard?

[philchillbill]

Not sure if this purely a coincidence, but from this morning all my Alexa devices suddenly are unable to locate the Smartheat skill. The skill is still linked ok in my Alexa app, however when checking on my Evocontrol dashboard I have all black ticks, did think these were green previously. Does this just need re-authorising from the dashboard?