EvoControl - custom Alexa skill for Evohome

[philchillbill]

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When using a HGI-80 (clone) and Domoticz, asking EvoControl for today's gas consumption will now show a barchart like in the example above. I hope to soon do this for HA too.

(Would have been posted Mar 10, 2024)

[philchillbill]

Amazon has certified a fresh build of EvoControl with some new voice commands for the Schedule Shifting feature. It's now possible to say the likes of

• Alexa, start my day tomorrow at 6AM
• Alexa, I'm going to bed at 10PM
• Alexa, my lunch break tomorrow starts at 1PM
• Alexa, dinner today will be at 17:00
• Alexa, sidestep my lunch break tomorrow
• Alexa, increase suppertime temperatureslower bedtime temperatures

In other words, you can now not only advance/delay schedules but specify a rescheduled start time for a day-segment (Waking Up, Lunch Time, Dinner Time, Going to Bed or any of their syntactic variations). Any staggering time-wise between the target zones will always be retained. Due to staggering, if you specify a start-time rather than advance/delay only the initial zone(s) will change setpoint at the requested time and staggered zones will simply be shifted by the same amount. The calculated shift from 'normal' will be mentioned in Alexa's spoken response.

The sidestep Segments.

Also new in this release is the possibility to say "Alexa, show the gas graph" if you have the HGI-80 connector and a P1 Smart Meter.

[philchillbill]

There is now an icon-button to trigger the LaunchPad on the main dashboard, bottom-left next to the help button. The feature gets used a lot, so being able to trigger it without having to delve down into the UI should be useful.

[MartyS]

I'm not sure if we just lost the most recent 1-2 replies to this thread because we just had to update something on the website server.

Apologies if we did lose something, I didn't delete it.

[philchillbill]

I'm not sure if we just lost the most recent 1-2 replies to this thread because we just had to update something on the website server.

Apologies if we did lose something, I didn't delete it.

I don't see anything missing Marty so no worries

[MartyS]

Phew, good to know. Thanks Phil!

[philchillbill]

schedshift.png

It's now possible to perform Schedule Shifting via the UI from a new button in the dashboard-footer between the existing launchpad/help buttons.

From the main dashboard, tapping this Shift button will display a screen with several tappable icon buttons plus a slider (see above). You first choose either Today or Tomorrow in order to enable/disable the 4 block-select buttons Wake Up, Lunch Time, Dinner Time, Going to Bed based on what is allowable/sensible given the current time of day and the current live schedule. For example, any blocks that have already passed for the day in question will show a history icon and be greyed out, while blocks that have no relevant switchpoints in their target zones (or only a single switchpoint in the case of Shorter/Longer) will show a calendar-X .

Next, you choose one of 5 operations: Cooler/Warmer, Shift, Time of Day, Skipover, or Shorter/Longer values to e.g. ? 6AM and vice versa. Observe that the slider disappears for the Skipover function as there's then no shift-value involved. When ready, press Execute or else hit the back button to abort.

Alexa's spoken feedback and the resultant visual screen-popups will be the same as for the spoken version of the command(s). Note that if you have not yet visited the Segments page to define target zones, you will be automatically taken there whenever you use the Shift button.

To restore 'normal' schedules again, use the button labelled Baseline from either the widget or the LaunchPad on the main dashboard.

The dashboard received a small redesign in order to make room for the extra button at the bottom left. The tiles are slightly less tall and the hints footer is now moved to below the button row. This also made it possible to widen the separation between the buttons and their brightness has been increased a little bit to boot. I verified all current screen sizes in the APL simulator but if anything looks weird on a real Echo please post or DM a screenshot so I can tweak if necessary.

In case anybody has forgotten what schedule shifting is:

From a time perspective you can advance/defer switchpoints by simply specifying how much earlier or later than 'normal' anything bounded by the block should start. All the relevant switchpoints then shift by the same ?t (i.e. time). It's also possible to directly specify a time-of-day such as 6AM instead of a shift value. Under the hood, that translates to a ?t for the first active switchpoint which is then copied to all later switchpoints in the block. Finally, you can lengthen/shorten a block's effective duration by pulling in or pushing out all the switchpoints except for the first one for each zone.

Setpoint-wise, you can choose to sidestepadjustment to make the target zones warmer or cooler than usual throughout the block's duration. All relevant SPs are then raised/lowered by the same ?T (i.e. temperature).

[philchillbill]

I never realised it but the whole setup process with authorising the skill with the Resideo oauth popup does not work on an iPad. Same goes for re-auth if necessary at a later stage.

All browsers on PC platforms always allow popups that result from deliberate user action like clicking on a UI button. Apparently Apple thinks differently (who would have guessed?). Safari is a complete out-of-luck experience where the buttons just don't work with no indication that a popup is being blocked. Chrome on an iPad will open the intended popups in a new tab rather than a popup. Perhaps better than nothing at all, but leaves the user confused at the end because the experience is supposed to be that the popup auto-disappears after successful completion whereas the tab just sits there and there's no hint to manually close it and go back to the original tab. Sigh.

I'm going to add a modal to the setup page that warns people not to use iPads or Safari because there's no easy fix for this...

Many thanks to Tony for contacting me to point this out.

[G4RHL]

I use an iPad and iPhone. The IOS app is not good, particularly on the iPad but the basic functions always needed are there so I suffer it!

[philchillbill]

I use an iPad and iPhone. The IOS app is not good, particularly on the iPad but the basic functions always needed are there so I suffer it!

I was not referring to the TCC app on iOS but rather the Safari/Chrome experience of trying to link EvoControl from an iPad. And trust me, if you've ever had to suffer the Resideo app that controls the Lyric thermostat family you'll think that the TCC app is exemplary I took a look at adding Lyric support to EvoContol but gave up because the whole experience is truly awful. It really made me appreciate the TCC app, shortcomings and all !

[freeranger]

Fire 8" tablet vs Echo show 8"

Hi all
Very recently found this amazing app and have had a few chats with Phil about it.
I have an Echo Show 5" which is far too small for my old eyes, so I want to get something else.
Phil recommends the Echo Show 8 as he is aware of people having issues with Show mode on a Fire tablet so I am looking for some opinions on it.
- I don't need any new smart speakers because I use Sonos for my audio
- I don't need any more alexa devices because the house is full of them
- I don't really need a tablet because I love my iPad

So I really just need something that will run this app well, allowing me to use all of the functionality of it.
A Show seems a bit big and bulky for it where a tablet that I can put away when not in use would seem a better option.

So...is the Fire 8" good enough (I would get the latest model I guess) or is it really so terrible that I should just get the Show 8 and make some room for it, or a magnifying glass for my Show 5?

And side note: does anyone have experience of using this: https://indalo-tech.onlineweb.shop/product/ssm-d2 plugged into a Synology NAS? It seems like this + Phil's app would be killer to get all of the useful info that Honeywell *should* have provided in the first place.

many thanks in advance for your thoughts on this all

[bruce_miranda]

The skill does work on a Fire Tablet. You launch the skill by saying "Alexa Open Smart Heat SKILL". Don't ask me why, but you need to say that skill word at the end on a Fire Tablet.

WRT the SSMD2, couple that with Home Assistant and EvoControl and you suddenly are in a different level. So definitely recommended.

[freeranger]

[bruce_miranda]

EvoControl tries to detect an issue with a zone in several ways. In theory, the controller can detect a dead battery, but that is often after the fact and so useless. EvoControl tracks the Heat Demand from the zones via HA/SSM-D and that provides the earliest sight of an issue. Heat Demand of Unavailable is something to investigate. Unfortunately Honeywell doesn't publish Heat Demand to the cloud, so EvoControl needs help with that.

[philchillbill]

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A rather big update to EvoControl is now live with dozens of UI changes. The most important is that the skill can now be used 100% by touch on Echo Show and Fire Tablet devices, so anybody who is afraid of Alexa listening can permanently switch off the mic . You'll notice a new custom header on the main dashboard which replaces the inflexible standard AlexaHeader component. If you have local outside temperature, tapping the weather icon (which is grouped with OT) will draw a graph of outside temp over the previous 24h.

System Mode is now shown in a coloured icon which can be tapped to launch the sysmode-switcher. You'll see that Eco and Boost now have own dedicated icons instead of relying on the common EURO symbol that Resideo uses for both.

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The interactive Setpoint Editor now shows the current actual temperature for each zone in the bottom left corner of each tile. If you make a change to any tile, a little pen icon will show to remind you that you made an edit. You can now also use your Groups within the editor and there is a slider for Duration setting

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The scenes-browser now has 2 new buttons for Delayed Start and Duration

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When you pop the Delayed Start one, it looks like this

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That's an example of using the UI to schedule the GoodNIght activity to start at 19:50 and have a duration of 2h 30mins.

There were also countless icon changes because I found a way to make Google's Material icons compatible with Amazon's ???rather limited SVG implementation. Plus, the background blue colour is darker for better contrast.

Finally, because the Fire Tablet is now supported by EvoControl, the screen layouts of all screens on those devices has been improved.

Enjoy!