Garadget Skill for Amazon Echo (Alexa)

Garadget Alexa skill is now live.
Please give it a try and post your feedback here. Thanks!

Invocation

The invocation word for the skill is “garadget” so you start your complete request with:

Alexa, tell Garadget …
Alexa, ask Garadget …

Alternatively, you can invoke the skill in a session mode by saying:

Alexa, run Garadget.
Alexa, launch Garadget.
Alexa, open Garadget.

Following the introductory message you’ll be asked to proceed with your actual request.

Requests

Currently there are three types of requests:

  • command - This requests operates the door. always contains the word for requested state: open, close or stop.

Alexa, tell Garadget to open door home.
Alexa, tell Garadget to close all garage doors.

  • status - This request contains the word “status” or question about specific status.

Alexa, ask Garaget what is the status of door home?
Alexa, ask Garadget if door home is closed.

  • history - This request contains words such as “events”, “times”, questions such as “how long”, “when was”.

Alexa, ask Garadget what were the recent events?
Alexa, ask Garadget how long was home open?

###Single Door Context
In Garadget accounts with a single device there is no need to identify the door. You can just say things such as:

Alexa, tell Garadget to open.
Alexa, ask Garadget about the status.

###Multiple Doors Context
In accounts with multiple devices above mentioned requests will be applied to all doors. You can also explicitly say:

Alexa, tell Garadget to close all doors.

###Individual Doors Context
Additionally, individual doors can be identified by name, partial name or their number in the alphabetically sorted list of names. For example, if you have doors named “Cute Puppy” and “Awesome Snake”, you can refer to former as “cute puppy”, “cute” or “puppy” or “two” while latter can be called as “awesome snake”, “awesome”, “snake” or “one”. The complete request would be something like:

Alexa, ask Garadget is awesome door is closed?
Alexa, tell garadget to open door one.

Words “door” and “garage” can be added as necessary for the naturally sounding request. Identification by number is not available when door names contain the numbers or spelled out numbers.

####Your feedback
The current skill is not final, please submit your suggestions, requests and critique in this thread to shape its future releases. Amazon allows users to rate and review the skill; please use this feature if you have something encouraging to say :heart_eyes: While you’re there, please also don’t forget to review Garadget itself.

####Security Note
Please keep in mind that at this time Alexa does not authenticate the person issuing the request. Anybody within its hearing distance can command it to open your garage doors.

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The code is now available in public github repo. Feel free to run with it :wink:

Says I have to link my account with Alexa. Where do I go from here?

Yes, you can do that in Alexa’s mobile app. In this step Amazon is not receive your login credentials, just a revocable authorization token.

It keeps saying “client_id app is asking for access to your Garadget Account”. ???

I re-connected with the test account and it worked fine for me.

For some reason, it errored on my phone but when I tried it again online, it worked. I’m up and running fine. Thanks!

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Can I support with German translations in order to have a german Alexa Skill for garadget?

regards,
Michael

Thanks for your offer, @pimsen.

You can find all the files for the skill in github repo.
The things Alexa hears are in speechAssets directory and the responses are in scr/index.js

If you’re not familiar with github’s pull requests, you can just send me the modified files and I’ll do the merging.

A favorable review would look nice on the new skill :wink:
Looking kind of lonely with zero stars.

Thank you for implementing this feature. I would like to point out a minor problem. I’m able to have Alexa ask Garadget to open/close, request status, etc. without naming the door. This is not good from a security point of view. For instance, I asked Alexa to instruct Garadget to “open the door” and my garage door opened. Alexa responded that my (name) door was now open.

Yes, it’s s trade off between convenience and security. The skills description clearly warns about this scenario:

Security Note: Currently Alexa does not authenticate the person issuing the request. Anybody within its hearing distance can command it to open your garage doors.

My concern is that you don’t even have to know the name of the door.

Requiring the user to pronounce the name of the door would add a just little bit of security at the expense of a lot of convenience. Realistically, users will not give the doors the proper password-strength names (long strings of random characters, numbers and symbols) and the secrecy of the password is compromised if it is repeated out loud several times per day. In the end most of the names will be an easy guess in two dozen attempts.

For now, the plan is to optimize the skill for the maximum convenience and make it clear to the users that for maximum security it should not be used at all.

I cannot link my account. “client_id is a required parameter”.
Help

Allyn,
I just re-activated the skill in my account and it worked fine.
Please try again and if you get the same error message again, please PM me your account email and/or device ID and I’ll check if the records look good on the server.

Garadget - I am also having trouble accessing the Alexa skill. My Garadget is working fine with the app, but I have attempted to enable/disable the skill multiple times on the Amazon Echo and for every command it states “Sorry I’m having trouble accessing your Garadget skill right now”. All of my other Echo skills are working ok.

Mike,
Do you have problem enabling/linking the skill or using it?

Garadget - The skill shows as linked when I log in to add it so it appears to enable and link properly. But the Echo states when I issue a standard command that she is having trouble access the Garadget skill right now. I have tried disabling and enabling multiple times with the same effect. I am not having any issues with the app though in regard to opening and closing the door.

Garadget - Just tested it again this afternoon and the skill is now working. Not sure what the problem was. I had just setup my garadget yesterday, so perhaps the device hadn’t fully registered online.