EvoControl - custom Alexa skill for Evohome

[G4RHL]

1.png

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.

2.png

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

3.png

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

4.png

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

5.png

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!

I used to live in hopes Honeywell would do something like this for the iPad. I have given up hoping!

[philchillbill]

I used to live in hopes Honeywell would do something like this for the iPad. I have given up hoping!

6.png

I'll bet you never even dared to hope for this reality because it was too far from what Honeywell might ever offer even if they pulled out all the stops.

Schedule advance/delay. In this case, adding 30 mins to all the schedule switchpoints for Going to Bed later today.

Now all I need to do is port the APL ViewHost to the browser and EvoControl will run on anything. Even Apple.

If we can crowd-fund EUR 100K I'll start tomorrow

[philchillbill]

I found a nice SVG icon for flame-off so the demand screen (that also shows battery percentages) has now dropped the LHS heat symbol when demand is zero. Instead it shows a black flame-off symbol on the RHS of the tile in the same spot where the orange flame-on symbol appears when there is demand.

[ShaunB]

This is fantastic.

I'm a brand new user with EvoHome, and I am just so glad that I discovered this forum.
Incredible work PhilChillBiil!

[philchillbill]

1.png

The schedule editor has a new look and several new features, including the ability to both create and delete switchpoints in bulk and not just modify existing ones.

The UI hierarchy/nesting has changed, making it much easier to choose the ABC or Panel (ABCP) schedule you want to want to go live with or edit.

The ABCP icons have changed and are now SVGs and the main screen has the buttons divided into groups with small gaps between them for more logical operation. The screen's top right corner has a new badge to show which preset is currently selected for further tasks. It shows the nickname of the schedule if known and also in the case of the Live (P) schedule it will show which preset it matches (if any) or whether it is unsaved to any preset.

2.png

After selecting Edit you'll see 4 groups of buttons with logical grouping for the operation(s) in question.

The Selective button now unveils a new button labelled Del SPs which will delete any cherry-picked switchpoints.?

There's now a New SPs button which shows the following screen when chosen:

3.png?

It allows you to select the days plus time/setpoint for up to 7 new switchpoints in one operation. If you try to create something at a time where there is already a switchpoint, you'll see a warning and the new switchpoint(s) will not be created

Some other changes:

• Any modified cells now show a little pencil icon instead of the crimson colouring that could be overwhelming when lots of edits are made.
• The Save As button at the top UI level now immediately saves the chosen preset to a different preset location without having to enter a sub-menu.
• Selecting More after first choosing an ABCP preset will now immediately work on the preset in question.
• The grid-based form of schedule comparison is gone and is replaced by graphical comparison that's much easier to access.
• Tapping the day-name while editing a schedule no longer calls up the graphical depiction of a single preset. That now has its own button Graph Form under More.
• On any of the graphs accessible from the More screen, tapping the badge in the top-right corner will proceed to the next preset or the next weekday, as appropriate.

https://vimeo.com/952911147

[philchillbill]

freeranger had the bright idea of removing the Selective button on the schedule edit screen and instead just automatically transitioning to selective-mode if the user clicks on any grid-cell or the day-name. You can now also immediately either GoLive or SaveAs after any edit without having to first go back to the full grid.

Also, DHW now participates in schedule-shifting. You'll need to add it to the chosen block-targets via the Segments screen to include it in any blocks where you want it to participate.

[philchillbill]

The schedule editor now also supports gestureslong-press or a double-tap long-press or a double-tap on any cell will select that whole row.
While any cells are dimmed, the aforementioned 4 buttons (plus the Del SPs button) work on highlighted cells only.

There's a new help button in the left-hand corner of the editor screen to jog you memory on all this.

Don't forget you can download your schedules from the smartskills cloud to a file on your PC or Mac for safe keeping. So if you want to play with the editor in depth, you can't really mess anything up...

[philchillbill]

https://pictogrammers.com/library/md...ome-assistant/ because there's now a Material icon for Home Assistant, the red microchip of old which recently became a red USB symbol has now become a red HA icon to indicate you need to check something in HA.

That change is immediate in the skill and will be made in the Widget also when that is next certified by Amazon.

[philchillbill]

The Aliases/Peek setup used to share a screen where the radio-buttons of the Hide/Peek functionality hijacked the Aliases definitions screen. That's now no longer the case and the 2 functions are separated. There's a new 'Hide Tiles' button on the settings screen to access Hide/Peek setup. Incidentally, the Aliases button has a new icon which looks like INTL in text form.

[ShaunB]

Morning Phil,
Are you able to do any sort of reports/enquiries on how long heating has been on in each zone etc?

[philchillbill]

Morning Phil,
Are you able to do any sort of reports/enquiries on how long heating has been on in each zone etc?

Hi Shaun, the online docs at https://smartskills.tech/evocontrol have just been updated with all the latest changes. Good idea to clear your browser cache with ctrl-F5 on the page to make sure the images are proeprly refreshed as your browser may have cached old ones for 30 days if you visited this link before.

The section on Smart Home Integration shows what's possible regarding graphs/reports in EvoControl. Because TCC does not provide historical data, we need to either poll TCC e.g. every 10 mins and store that data somewhere, or use Domoticz or Home Assistant to store it for us. For now, I've chosen that 2nd route so you'll need to install DZ/HA to see the charts. It's a shame that the Evotouch itself doesn't cache any history that could be requested via the API. But it's an incredibly old piece of hardware running (we believe) Windows CE so it likely has very little memory to do so.

[philchillbill]

The Widget has been updated to version 1.20.0 in the live skill. The header now matches the skill's header by showing the system mode icon in colour and differentiating between Eco and Boost. The aggregate boiler demand has 2 new icons when <50% and >50% which show up if a HGI-80 is in use and your boiler is active..

[evoboff]

philchillbill I have one of the new Echo Spots. Not sure what functionality is available to you on these - are you able to display anything custom on the Spot when I interact with the skill using that device? Currently it just displays the icon for the skill.

[philchillbill]

philchillbill I have one of the new Echo Spots. Not sure what functionality is available to you on these - are you able to display anything custom on the Spot when I interact with the skill using that device? Currently it just displays the icon for the skill.

[philchillbill]

It seems Resideo redesigned the authorisation page you get redirected to when account-linking the skill or redoing auth from your smartskills account dashboard. Looks less intuitive to me than the old one was (not that that one would win any prizes either) so let's see how people fare out in using it. Sigh.