EvoControl - custom Alexa skill for Evohome

[Somebody]

Starting with your 2nd question, EvoControl Smart Heat co-exists peacefully with both your panel and the mobile app so any of them can be used at any time to control your Evohome system.

I was trying to change the temperature of a zone on my iOS app but it wouldn't save so I exited and reopened the app, at which point I had to re-sign in with my username and password. This prompted the question.

On the 1st question, saying "Alexa, set lounge to 20 degrees from 7pm to 10pm" is valid syntax. I just tried it now and it inserted a switchpoint into the zone's schedule. What exact error did you get?

EDIT: The expected syntax is "from 7PM until 10pm" so you may have more luck with that. The 'to' variant is getting into fuzzy-matching territory and can be hit-and-miss.

When I tried it yesterday it it came back with something along the lines of "I'm having problems with that right now" but I've tried it just now with the Utility 8pm until 10pm and it comes back with a change to the live schedule screen and is expecting me to accept the change and save? Here's the screen:

[philchillbill]

[philchillbill]

[philchillbill]

Backups now also contain any normally-hidden zones that you use with the Peek feature (the green radio buttons on the Alias settings screen) so that they can also be restored without having to re-configure them.

[philchillbill]

A user (thanks Andrew) discovered a bug with uploading schedules for DHW which was inadvertently introduced during the last certification round and which nobody managed to trigger until now.

The fix requires a voice model change which implies recertification so will likely take a few days. I'll announce here when it's live.

[philchillbill]

A user called Simon pointed out that creating an account for the skill was returning a 403 error which was due to me being too careful in attempting to block hackers from accessing the back-end. That's now corrected so apologies to anybody who tried unsuccessfully to get past the account-creation stage. It was actually down to the regex used to check validity of username/password minimum requirements in the browser vs the same regex in the back end acting differently https://chromestatus.com/feature/5149507107422208. Whether you triggered the error or not would have depended on unusual characters in your password so it was not a common error and most people managed to create an account without issue.

[philchillbill]

I just noticed that Alexa is having difficulty when I ask to display a schedule, no matter how I pronounce the word. If anybody else is noticing this, the word timetable will also work with the skill.

[philchillbill]

The fix requires a voice model change which implies recertification so will likely take a few days. I'll announce here when it's live.

The changes were certified without issue so now the following will work again:

Show the hot water schedule
Display the hot water schedule
Upload schedule B to hot water

Reverting to baseline and e.g. Upload schedule C everywhere will also properly include DHW again (if present).

EDIT: forgot to mention, but permanently activating an activity that includes DHW will now also handle the permanence correctly.

[philchillbill]

Fixed a bug in the account-creation process which was causing the tickbox for "I have a HGI-80 and DOmoticz or HA" to be greyed out. Thanks to Mick for uncovering.

[Ghostrider]

Fixed a bug in the account-creation process which was causing the tickbox for "I have a HGI-80 and DOmoticz or HA" to be greyed out. Thanks to Mick for uncovering.

Thanks for your time and perseverance in finding and curing the problem Phil.

[philchillbill]

In the past week I've had 3 people ask me offline if a 'Cancel Activity' command can be added. So that I don't have to keep repeating the same answers via email/whatsapp, I'll post some thoughts here.

Evohome is multi-controller

• "Set all zones to follow schedule". Be aware this will not cancel any permanent overrides, only the temporary ones. So if you activated Standby permanently, this will do nothing.
• "Reset the System Mode". This triggers the AutoWithReset system mode via the API, which has the effect of cancelling all overrides, temporary and permanent.

Note that "Revert to Baseline" just changes the underlying schedule(s) for zone(s) and doesn't touch any overrides so it will not help with 'cancelling' Activities.

Activities don't ever change the System Mode but instead set zone

[philchillbill]

Widget Shortcuts

This morning I unexpectedly saw that Amazon's new widget shortcut paradigm was live on my Echo Show 8 Gen II.

Screenshot 2023-11-18 105922.jpg

https://developer.amazon.com/en-US/alexa/alexa-haus/widget-guidelines#widget-shortcuts

It means no longer swiping to access widgets but directly tapping an icon top-right on the Echo's home screen. EvoControl's 2 widgets have their own individual icons that can be tapped directly to show the widget mid-screen. For now, the icons default to a smart-home icon (EvoControl's 'category') because Amazon has not yet tacked on the forthcoming add-custom-icon capability to the developer portal, but that's coming. Then I'll add a custom icon like the one you see when the System Mode is follow schedule.

Screenshot 2023-11-18 105737.png

Anybody else seeing this change on their Echo(s)? Amazon didn't announce it as live yet so it may be a phased rollout.


EDIT: Sigh. It seems that the widget now no longer talks to the skill when it is tapped into view, so the little dashboard cannot update...
EDIT2: I found a workaround which uses a different event to tell the skill that the widget is active. However, that will need a recertification to go live so will take a day or 2.

[philchillbill]

Amazon certified my changes to the widgets to allow them to correctly update with the new widgets-shortcut launching method. You'll notice that the background image on the widgets is now replaced by a dark blue background as that's less distracting and provides better contrast against the new background Amazon automatically places behind widgets (used to be a mid-blue colour, now almost black).

Upside of the change is that each widget now updates noticeably faster when tapped into view.

[philchillbill]

I see quite a lot of errors in the logs related to fetching the weather so it would appear that the service is experiencing some issues at the moment. The main TCC service seems fine. Hopefully it will be resolved soon.

[philchillbill]

Looks like the forums might be back.
If so, I’ll add all the separate posts related to EvoControl from recent weeks to this thread for consistency’s sake.