Alexicz - FREE Domoticz to Alexa Integration

[mcwieger]

Oh man, Amazon and accounts. I order stuff on amazon.de, but I sometimes browse articles on amazon.com. I have an account to use Alexa and now a developer account. They all use the same e-mail address, but that company is so messy, I don't have a clue if this is one account or four. When I go to amazon.de I have 3 articles in my cart, on amazon.com I have 1, so I guess I have multiple.

Where can I link a store to my Alexa account?

[philchillbill]

Yep. But it's about which one your digital devices are linked to. Check

https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer ... =201248840

[mcwieger]

Checked it an changed it. Lambda is in Ireland with languages English - US and English - UK. Address is in Dublin (so connected to .co.uk.

Nothing is discovered...

[nigels0]

Silly question; but did you put devices in the room plans?

[mcwieger]

Not silly at all. Yes, I have room plans in Domoticz. Should I list the IDs of those in the config file? Or can you use only one? Right now, there's just -1, indicating there's none.

Somehow I assumed it was an Alexa room plan, but that doesn't really make sense I guess, since you first need devices in Alexa to be able to put them in a room...

I'll give it a try.

[philchillbill]

You can also just comment out these lines in the Domoticzhandler.py file

if (device['PlanID'] == "0" or device['PlanID'] == ""): continue
if (self.planID >= 0 and (not (self.planID in device['PlanIDs']))): continue

That way, you will know for sure it's not a room plan issue. I removed those myself as I do not use room plans as I use a different filter to trap unwanted devices from discovery.

If you use print statements in the code then you can see the output in the Cloudwatch logs so you are not blind to what the skill code is actually doing.

[mcwieger]

Tried commenting out the two lines above. No result though...

Running the test discovery and the test switch works perfectly, just not when I do an actual discover in Alexa...

How can I get print statements in the code? Or could I share a log in this forum in a different way?

[Madgeni]

From my experience, this is typically down to your Alexa account, and language setup. If the code is working, it's working, but the skill in Alexa isn't triggering it.
Maybe remove US English, unlink/relink?

[mcwieger]

@Madgeni, providing help on something that's competing with your business, that's very noble!

However, no result. Tried US English only as well as UK English only.

You do trigger me though...in Alexa, my skills (both versions) show a green tag/button that says 'DevUS' in the skill icon. Can that be influenced somehow? I can imagine a Lambda in Ireland does not work with a DevUS skill?

(I'm completely puzzled why these geo-limitations exist in the first place, in a fully globalized society, but anyway...)

[Madgeni]

Always happy to help
It's not quite competition, Controlicz has other functionality.
When you trigger a discovery from the app/website, does it hit your lambda? Do you see anything in the cloudwatch logs?
The devUS thing is a concern, it's possible your account is actually hitting the US. As a test, deploy the code to the Virginia region.

[mcwieger]

Nothing happens in the lambda when I trigger it from Alexa. I tried creating it in Virginia, but the lambda doesn't even work there. Did everything exactly the same, but it simply doesn't work...

[Damsee]

@mcwieger :
Could you check the following link which explains the language/location settings of different Amazon accounts :
https://transferwise.com/us/blog/amazon-change-country

Try to set everything to your country "Netherlands" or something in Europe if you're using the Lambda in Ireland.
Hope that helps

[mcwieger]

Changed it to 'English - EN' in every location possible...no result. Of course, I don't know if this means it is UK or US English. Also tried setting to German (NL is not available everywhere), but that also doesn't work.

On my previous comment: is there anyone whose skill does not say DevUS? So DevUK/DevEU or something else?

In that case, I can try setting it up again and see if it lands in Europe somehow...

[Madgeni]

when you go to alexa.amazon.nl (or wherever is normal for you) - and log in, does it route you to alexa.amazon.com?

[philchillbill]

I think his best combination will be Amazon store set to .co.uk, skill language en-US and lambda endpoint in Ireland. I’m in NL too and it’s worked that way for me for over a year. If the Lambda is not even being invoked then it’s pretty certain that’s an issue related to where his store account is.

The default NL store for Amazon is the .de one as Amazon has no presence in NL but you can request the .de store pages in Dutch. However, for Alexa you’re much better off associating with .co.uk if in NL with skills that only work in English (like Alexicz).

[mcwieger]

Yes! It's working.

I did the following:
1. Set language to English (EN) in regular Amazon account. Set store to amazon.co.uk.
2. In 'Manage Your Content and Devices' > 'Manage Smart Home Devices History' I pressed the 'Delete Smart Home Devices History' button
3. Went to alexa.amazon.nl, routing to alexa.amazon.co.uk to find out my old smart home devices were back (retrieved from ha-bridge, which is no longer working). Deleted them all.
4. Also found out my Dev Skills were no longer available. Went to developer console to set my skill language (was English (US), added English (UK), so skill has two accents now).
5. Went back to my Alexa, Dev Skills was back, added Alexicz, discover, and bingo!

I guess the old saying 'Cache is King' proved to be true once again, somehow...

Thanks all for standing by me!

[eserero]

I just installed Alexicz and tinkering with it a bit. my happiness knows no bounds

does the device synchronization include data about the rooms? so I can say "turn on the lights in living room" and it will turn on all the lights in the living room?
the Alexa interface show me all the devices that I wanted, but does not seem to include room information or respond to such queries, seems like I need to give a meaningfull name for each light, temperature etc.

[philchillbill]

You need to control devices individually by name, yes. But groups and scenes defined in Domoticz do work as you’d expect. And you can define groups from within the Alexa app too. So you should come close to what you want.

The one thing a smart home skill will not do is associate a specific Echo with a specific room. So you can’t say ‘Turn on the lights’ while in the bedroom to the bedroom echo and have those lights come on, and say the same thing in the livingroom and have the livingroom lights come on. But hey, maybe some day Amazon will provide the echo deviceId in the request like they do for custom skills...

[eserero]

You need to control devices individually by name, yes. But groups and scenes defined in Domoticz do work as you’d expect. And you can define groups from within the Alexa app too. So you should come close to what you want.

The one thing a smart home skill will not do is associate a specific Echo with a specific room. So you can’t say ‘Turn on the lights’ while in the bedroom to the bedroom echo and have those lights come on, and say the same thing in the livingroom and have the livingroom lights come on. But hey, maybe some day Amazon will provide the echo deviceId in the request like they do for custom skills...

Thanks - do you know if its possible to create the groups and assign the devices automatically during device discovery?

I just created a group in alexa and assigned the relevant devices - and it actually behave quite nicely - so you can say - what is the temperature in the bedroom and it will give you the value regardless of the name of the temperature device. but it will be nice to just automatically sync the structure in domoticz to the structure in alexa

[philchillbill]

You’d have to play with the Alexicz source code to do that. You could e.g. put room names in the Description field in Domoticz and read those during discovery. I do this with my Evohome thermostats to create groups like upstairs rooms, bedroom areas, etc. Alexicz is not a general purpose skill but a dev skill and you can do what you want with it


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