I’ve been thinking that for the “Alexa, ask Garadget for status” type of question Alexa may be giving a too detailed response.
I’m thinking about something like a short “the door is open” , “left door is open and right door is close” or “all doors are closed” type of response would be better.
Then adding a new “Alexa, ask Garadget for extended status” that would give door position, laser reflection and wifi signal.
Ideas?
During submission of the Garadget-Alexa skill to Amazon, Amazon requested, amongst other things, written authorisation from Garadget for me to use the Garadget brand and icons as the skill was NOT written by Garadget.
Although throughout development Garadget never expressed concern about branding (they were asked twice) and freely supplied the icons used by me, they refused to supply Amazon authorisation. Garadget required that the effective ownership of the code be transferred to them and the skill published under their name, removing my intellectual property rights. However, they would “graciously” allow me to continue developing “their” code.
This is unacceptable to me and therefore this Alexa skill will not be published.
I would also like it if I could use the phrase “Alexa open the garadget door” instead of “Alexa ask garadget to open the door”. Same for closing the door.
Amazon expose only 2 APIs for controlling devices.
The Smart Home Skill API only allows "on. “off” “increase”, “decrease” and “dim” to control lights and thermostats. Alexa will not recognize “open” and close will trigger the Stop response. That would leave you saying “Alexa, turn garadget on”, to open and “off” to close.
The only way I can use Open and Close in the correct sense is to use the Custom Skill API and this requires you to call out the skill “Alexa, tell Garadget…” or “Alexa, ask Garadget…” it’s used like a function call to the custom skill.
If Amazon decide to change the Home Skill API and add open and close, I’ll make the changes immediately.
Last night I invested the time to connect the Garadget to the Echo /Alex skills. It took a little time but I think I had success.
Here is why I think I had success.
I was able to get status on my doors. My doors were named for the cars I park in each of the slots. They are not names like right, left, center, etc. I think there was some on the problems although Alexa did try to ask me or tell me my door names. I was able to get detailed status as they were both closed when I was asking questions.
What I could not do was get Alexa to open either of my doors. I asked but Alexa kept coming back with which door? “Lexus” or “fsport”. Even though I provided an answer she got stuck in a loop and continued to ask the same question.
For tonight’s test I have changed the names of my doors to “one” and “two”. Because using “right” or “left” can depend on your reference as to whether your approaching the house pulling in or being behind them in the house.
I am hoping to be able to open and close tonight.
One other note. In asking Alexa to activate the Garadget skill there is another skill related to garage doors with a similar name. Alexa activitated this skill for me until I went back and deactivated it. I won’t name the inferior product here.
The skill has worked well for me so far. I only have one door, so my case is not exactly the same as jwmckeever. I was able to get the status and open or close the door by saying “Alexa, ask garage to open the door” or “Alexa, ask garage for status”. I was able to get away with just saying garage instead of garadget, I guess its close enough for Alexa to open the right skill.
I agree that “status” and “extended status” would be good. I think normally someone just wants to know if the door is open or closed. With the extra information, it takes Alexa a bit long to get through it.
In the Alexa app feed, whenever I used the skill there was a giant gray box with “No Image Found” in the middle. The rest of the information was correct, but there is an image not being displayed correctly. I am using iOS.
First, thanks for putting in the time. The majority of the time programming the skill was for handling multiple doors. So your help is a real benefit for me.
I’ll make some changes to the skill so that opening and closing multi doors will create a card on the Alexa app. This should allow you an I to see if Alexa is interpreting the door names correctly.
Also when Alexa asks “what was that again?” are you just responding with the door name" “one” or “two”? the skill is looking for the name only.
I’ll also change the status code for extended status. Changes should get done this weekend. I’ll post here when ready.
What should work to open the door is “Alexa, ask Garadget to open the NAME door”
But, I’m interested to know what you are using because maybe I should add that utterance to the skill also. What are you saying?
Thanks for the feedback on the status. I’ll definitely be changing it. I’m thinking it will be more useful to say “ask garadget for status” than “ask garadget if my door is open”, so a shorter response will be better.
The “no image found”, i’ll look at that soon, thanks.
I’ve included more debug for the multi-door issues.
If alexa didn’t understand the door name it will now repeat back what it heard and ask for the door name again.
The Alexa app card now will also include the details of what was heard and I have some debug logging in this area also.
If you are having trouble with Alexa recognizing you garage door names please note down the response name heard and the details of the Alexa card (screen shot?) and message them to me please.
I will be trying again tonight. All the items you have posted here are taking place to a degree. Alexa will repeat door names to open but I have not been successful on getting the door to open. Also the repeating just stays in a loop until I have to manually cancel using the buttons on the units. This scenario takes place on both the original and dot.
Yes I agree the status response is too long and most of the data is irrelevant to the simple user. Perhaps, a response like garadget is online and garage 1 is open (closed), garage 2 is open (closed), etc.
Extended status seems to be a good addition for a more comprehensive response.
Also, and I do not have a thought on how to fix this, Alexa sometimes confuses garagdget skill with some other skill that is not enabled.
Im not a user of IFTTT I haven’t included any code to support this.
Maybe I can in the future, but if your after simpler phrasing, are you talking about the “ask Garadget” requirement?