[pimatic-echo] Control your pimatic devices using Amazon's echo

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@Felix-Haverkamp

Ok that has worked, simply connect both echoes via an account and already can both access the Pi via an IP address, many thanks for the info Felix-haverkamp

Hi guys,

great plugin! Probably I missed something but for some reason all my HomeduinoRFSwitch Devices are now also discovered by Alexa and work perfectly fine. However, I can’t configure them in piratic like I can with the DummSwitch devices - so I can’t change the names or exclude them. Any idea how to get the configuration section also for those kind of devices?

@GuybrushMR80 make sure to rescan your devices with Alexa if you changed the configuration. Outdated devices should be removed, too.

Just released version 0.1.0 of pimatic-echo. This includes some improvements for people having problems with device discovery and adds support for tradfri switches

Just released Version 0.2.0.

@thex Could you test if the device number limit is fixed with this update? Now pimatic-echo emulates a Philips Hue Bridge and the discovery mechanism changed completely, so your changes from https://github.com/michbeck100/pimatic-echo/pull/20/commits/80bc1983e4b618010a33607ceb18a11bd530df14 are obsolete now and were removed.

sounds great, can’t test this weekend but next week.

WIll this fake a complete hue setup?
Can I also link it with the Hue App? Thiswould be a good way to also link it to other automation systems which support hue.

If so this maybe should become pimatic-faux-hue

@thex No it doesn’t implement the complete api. Just whats needed for Alexa.

@michbeck100 with the latest update all my shell switch devices went offline and can’t be discovered by Alexa. Pimatic also showed errors for invalid config (i.e. property “echo” is invalid for certain devices) so I cleaned that up. It worked just fine up to the latest update.

Any ideas? Do you now require devices to have certain property or inherit some new type? The shell switch plugin didn’t change.

Thanks.

@atus did you restart pimatic again? the echo plugin needs to be at first in the plugin section of the config.json. that’s what the plugin will do if you restart pimatic after the update.
not sure if you have to reboot twice though.

the switches are offline since you now explicitely have to use a “whitelist” function.
you need to activate each device that you want to use with alexa.

the exclude function has been disabled since alexa can only detect 50 devices.
many users have more devices, now it is easier to set the wanted devices instead of excluding the unwanted.

Thnaks for your answer @leader21. Yes, I tried just restarting a couple of times, removing the plugin completely and reinstalling + 2-3 restarts. Cleaning up everything again (including config this time) and setting everything up again, but no luck because the settings aren’t there anymore. If I manually add the “echo: {}” settings I get the same config error as I mentioned in my first post.

I’m aware of the new echo settings section that shows up for devices, but it only shows up for dummyswitch devices and not there for shell switch devices on my installation. Do you see them for your ShellSwitch devices? Just try adding one and see if it shows up.

I see that @michbeck100 is mentioning that his plugin accepts everything that inherits from DummySwitch, but ShellSwitch inherits form PowerSwitch.

@atus again, the error messages are actually just warnings. Please make sure that the echo plugin is the first in the plugins config. This makes sure that the warnings don’t appear and makes all devices configurable from the gui. Finally you have to set the active flag to true in the echo configuration of every supported device.

And the plugin works for more than just DummySwitches (including ShellSwitch). I have to update the plugin description, I guess.

@michbeck100 yes they are warnings indeed, I just used the wrong word.

Adding it on top of the plugin list helped. Things work again. Thanks for the tip.

Having to add it to the top should either way be fixed somehow. What if another kind of plugin gets released which also needs to be on top? It is good as a temporary fix but shouldnt be permanent in my opinion

@Gleno0h This needs a change in pimatic, though. I would say the config of devices should be validated just before adding the device. For plugins this happens when loading the plugin and for dummy devices it happens when loading the device. This is why the error never shows up for dummy devices.

@michbeck100 could you be so kind to file an issue on github?

@michbeck100: Would it be possible to let the echo play a sound triggert by pimatic to use it eg. as a doorbell?

@OrTiN no. Currently it’s not possible to send any events to Alexa by 3rd party software. Maybe someday…

@OrTiN you can try this device here
https://forum.pimatic.org/topic/3290/kerui-m8-rf-doorbell-and-alarm-device
with that, you are able to use a sd card and customise your own doorbell sound via mp3 file.
having Metallica’s “for whom the bell tolls” ringing at the moment.
my wife wants to kill me for that

@OrTiN

you can pair alexa via bluetooth with an android device, set a static ip, install LANnouncer and send something like

 ... execute "curl \"192.168.0.128:1035/?SPEAK=@|ALARM=CHIME&SPEAK=The door rings&@DONE@\""

to the phone.

http://www.keybounce.com/lannouncer/configuring-lannouncer/playing-audio-files/
http://www.keybounce.com/lannouncer/commands/

works very well for me and “alexa” speaks notifications