EvoControl - custom Alexa skill for Evohome

[bruce_miranda]

Also try this, if you have an HR92. Press the button on the valve. That issues a command to get the zone name from the controller to display on the HR92 display. ramses_cc should then catch that message and use it to rename the climate entities.

[Midland45]

Set restore_cache = false and restart HA a couple of time but space out the restarts by atleast 2-4 hours. Or just wait a while and hopefully ramses_cc will get the zones named. Or just rename the entities yourself to whatever you expect them to be so that they match the TCC zone names. Just remember a SPACE character becomes an _ in the HA entity name.

Thanks for the help @Bruce @Phil

So I set restore cache = false and left it a couple of hours, on checking HA entities I had "ramses_cc_01_xxxxxxx_07" etc for all rooms except zone _01 which was named "climate.kitchen"
Then decided to just rename the climate entities in HA/Settings as suggested which is actually really straight forward :-)
Am I correct in presuming that Ramses_cc will not overwrite my renamed climate entities?

Tried to leave things alone, but couldn't resist launching EvoControl......

Anyway I now get a good initial link with HA (HA Green), and no zones failing to match, however at first refresh I now have the following error :-

"Although your TCC setup has HW capability your HA schema or sensor list does not reflect this. Please address and retry. Missing Water_Heater.Stored_HW"

My boiler is a combination type and my Evohome is configured as Heating only.

[philchillbill]

"Although your TCC setup has HW capability your HA schema or sensor list does not reflect this. Please address and retry. Missing Water_Heater.Stored_HW"

Strange. That error can only be generated during discovery and not during a normal query upon skill launch. Can you refresh your configuration from within the skill while enable/use HGI is enabled?

EDIT: BY the way, if you have a red HA icon top-right and you tap it you'll get a popup with an explanation of what EvoControl dislikes about the data received from HA.

[Midland45]

Strange. That error can only be generated during discovery and not during a normal query upon skill launch. Can you refresh your configuration from within the skill while enable/use HGI is enabled?

EDIT: BY the way, if you have a red HA icon top-right and you tap it you'll get a popup with an explanation of what EvoControl dislikes about the data received from HA.

That's another good bit of info to know.

Edit: Tried the red HA icon for this error but just got a box pop up with no further information.

Trying to do an account refresh seems to fail at the moment with HGI enabled, which then leads to TCC 400 error and reauthoring of TCC required.

[philchillbill]

That's another good bit of info to know.

Edit: Tried the red HA icon for this error but just got a box pop up with no further information.

Trying to do an account refresh seems to fail at the moment with HGI enabled, which then leads to TCC 400 error and reauthoring of TCC required.

For some strange reason you are running outdated code when you invoke the skill. Console logs I removed still show in your runs. Amazon might just happen to be patching servers somewhere and you got assigned one (randomly) that's not receiving fresh code when I push an update. Happens infrequently but is not unknown. I hate to say it (because it's the standard Apple error message) but "try again later" and it will likely work. The 400 error is also because the skill is losing recent oauth after dozens of refreshes and just seeing the original grant from the very first time you linked the skill.

[Midland45]

For some strange reason you are running outdated code when you invoke the skill. Console logs I removed still show in your runs. Amazon might just happen to be patching servers somewhere and you got assigned one (randomly) that's not receiving fresh code when I push an update. Happens infrequently but is not unknown. I hate to say it (because it's the standard Apple error message) but "try again later" and it will likely work. The 400 error is also because the skill is losing recent oauth after dozens of refreshes and just seeing the original grant from the very first time you linked the skill.

Thanks for checking this out, I'll try relaunching the skill a bit later. In the meantime I'm tempted to do a reset of my echo show to see if I can get the Evocontrol widget back in the gallery.

[bruce_miranda]

Thanks for checking this out, I'll try relaunching the skill a bit later. In the meantime I'm tempted to do a reset of my echo show to see if I can get the Evocontrol widget back in the gallery.

I would....the widget was the only reason I bought the 8 and is probably the thing I use the most.

[Midland45]

So I carried out a factory reset on my Echo Show 8, but still no sign of the EvoControl Widget in the gallery. However it may turn up in a couple of days, perhaps after using Evocontrol a few times.

[philchillbill]

TBH, I don't believe the Amazon 'solution' that a reset will help. I'm betting that's their standard pawn-off when clueless. What I will do in the next few days is migrate to the newest version of the Skill Management API (SMAPI) and see if that makes a difference after I resubmit the skill for certification. In theory V1 still works and is supported but it has no provision for Widgets so I've done the widget via a web portal. I have a sneaky suspicion that using V1 to push a code update after the widget was created overwrites the directory structure with a blank folder and that's why the widget is gone, although the web portal still shows it (so that's their bug to solve). Upgrading from V1 to V2 entails renaming all the folders and files in the skill code hierarchy which is why I never did it until now because V1 always just worked. It's just a hunch but I'll try it anyway as I will have a few more tweaks that justify recertification.

The problem with Amazon support (and Apple also, via a buddy of mine who codes Apple apps) is that you get assigned very junior/clueless tech support and have to escalate every time you report an issue to get a meaningful answer. They don't grade developers as "ok, this guy knows what he's doing so we'll automatically send his bug reports to senior support" so as a developer you get ranked along with the clueless script-kiddies who waste a lot of support time with really dumb questions

[s.w.webb1]

Echo show 8 now 64.99GBP (46% off) in Prime Day sale for anyone else who may be looking to jump in.

[philchillbill]

I can see in the logs that somebody is getting { code: 'ScheduleNotFound', message: 'Schedule not found.' } from TCC when trying to query their schedule (for a zone named 'blank 1' so might be some kind of spare TRV). This currently causes the skill to exit with "oops" because I considered it a 'game over' situation. I thought it was impossible not to define a schedule for a zone, or is this my mistaken assumption? If it's actually feasible in TCC then I'll of course handle more gracefully. Anybody know?

[Midland45]

Just an update on my EvoControl since moving from Domoticz to HA. Must admit I'm really impressed with Home Assistant and the custom Evohome Integration.
Anyway I'm getting a successful link now (HA Icon green), however I still have a the warning "TCC setup has HW capability your HA schema or sensor list does not reflect this", my system is a Combi boiler, so no stored HW. Tried deleting and re-linking my HGI-80 type device, however the error persists.
I'm presuming this error is causing EvoControl to use TCC for its data as I've not seen the 0.1 deg C resolution on zone temps.

Also I've lost my "activities", so have tried to upload a recent evocontrol.json back up, but this fails with the following message :-

EvoControl Restore

Restoring evocontrol.json resulted in status:

⚠ Item 'groups' must be an array of arrays-of-pairs

Thanks in advance

[philchillbill]

Just an update on my EvoControl since moving from Domoticz to HA. Must admit I'm really impressed with Home Assistant and the custom Evohome Integration.
Anyway I'm getting a successful link now (HA Icon green), however I still have a the warning "TCC setup has HW capability your HA schema or sensor list does not reflect this", my system is a Combi boiler, so no stored HW. Tried deleting and re-linking my HGI-80 type device, however the error persists.
I'm presuming this error is causing EvoControl to use TCC for its data as I've not seen the 0.1 deg C resolution on zone temps.

Also I've lost my "activities", so have tried to upload a recent evocontrol.json back up, but this fails with the following message :-

EvoControl Restore

Restoring evocontrol.json resulted in status:

⚠ Item 'groups' must be an array of arrays-of-pairs

Thanks in advance

I've put back your scenes for you from a backup made June 22nd which was the most recent I have with a lot of scenes so if you changed nothing very recently it should be ok. If you need your B and C schedules restored too let me know.

Please PM me the JSON backup file that's not uploading for you so I can take a look. Looks like you have no groups at all defined, correct?

The DHW warning was removed from the skill's code several days ago so you are clearly running old code stuck somewhere on an AWS server. In theory when I push new code live it goes everywhere but sometimes a rogue AWS server fails to update and you're the unlucky one if Amazon just happens to allocate such a rogue server to you when you invoke. I'll check a few things to see if I can force an update but there are no docs for dealing with this


EDIT: The upload was failing because your groups in the backup file is described as 'null' when you have no groups instead of being an empty array which I seemed to want for some reason. I've corrected the code so your backup should actually restore now. Apologies.

[bruce_miranda]

Or I could suggest another feature or find another bug that forces you to release new code :-) Sorry couldn't resist.

[philchillbill]

I deleted the lambda completely and re-pushed which means all containers should be fresh now. Please try again Paul.