Todoist with IFTTT?
I donât know, I like voice recognition of GH sooooo much better
Prime Video
Hi All,
Iâve done a very basic setup of Alexa using the new home assistant skill and I was wondering if there is anyway to run a script with out saying âturn onâ.
Eg, I have a script for âPause Apple TVâ and its not really fun saying âAlexa. turn on pause Apple TVâ. Ideally Iâd just like to say âAlexa, pause apple tvâ
(Note, Iâve only owned an amazon echo for a couple of hours so Iâm not sure if there is anything huge Iâm missing from the echo side that might help also)
Thank you 
Linton
You can go into the âRoutinesâ section of the Alexa app and create a routine that does âturn on pause Apple TVâ whenever you say "Alexa, pause Apple TV. 
Wow thatâs very interesting thank you Iâll give that one a shot. Ha see I knew I could be missing something
No problem.
@GreenTurtwig Just a thought while Iâve got you, can routines still play nicely with groups? (Assuming groups is where if you have an echo and identical types of devices in each room, echo will command the contextual device)
and is there a way to âsync changesâ with the echo? Iâm creating a couple of new scripts and changing the names of some in HA but those changes arenât going to echo. Iâve tried discover but âno new devices foundâ.
Thank you
Unfortunately routines wonât work with controlling devices in a room. Instead of âAlexa, turn on the TVâ, youâll still have to say âAlexa, turn on the living room TVâ for example. 
Yeah, syncing changes is a pain in the arse. No idea why the new devices arenât showing up as the skill contacts your Home Assistant instance and the skill is really just a bridge, it should find all the new devices.
Seems like an Alexa problem more than anything. Smart home stuff is finniky, for example you canât remove devices from Alexa on the mobile app for, youâll have to visit the app on the web to access the old UI to âforgetâ devices.
Hope some of thatâs useful.
Much appreciated thank you
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For the life of me, I canât find the web interface to remove devices.
https://alexa.amazon.co.uk/spa/index.html#smart-home
(probably not .co.uk if youâre elsewhere in the world, adjust accordingly)
Iâve been struggling with the official Alexa skill for several days. It could be due to my total lack of experience with HA, but this behaviour is just weird.
Initially I only had to set up my credentials and add âcloud:â to my config. It worked like a miracle, but several hours later Iâve started getting âX isnât respondingâ from Alexa for every request. Confused, Iâve decided to list all the entities (filter: include:). It worked! Several hours laterâŚ
So Iâve got suspicious and commented the filter. It worked again:/ I went through this cycle several times.
It seems that the skill loses access to my HA devices after some period of inactivity and fixes itself once I touch the config. I donât quite understand whatâs going on here. Everything works fine in HA itself. Where should I report this? What should I check?
If the clould connection dies it seems to never come back on itâs own. Restarting HA or re-logging into the cloud component fixes the issue. See this other thread here, I posted a little cronjob that I am running to keep it alive.
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Alright, I wanted to give my two cents on this issue of payment for the Alexa feature. I fully understand wanting to do some type of fundraising for the project. To help facilitate and pay for continuing costs associated with such a large scale open source community, but again, weâve seen that this isnât necessary. OpenHAB along with many other non smart home based open source communities far exceeding the size of HA live on just fine without the need for a subscription based monetization model. Some of these services use far more resources for hosting than HA ever will and have far more expansive communities. Yet again, they do not charge.
The rely on the generosity of others to keep the project going, those who believe in it, who enjoy it and get value out of it. Monetizing a section of HA erodes that trust and dissuades those who wouldâve otherwise donated time, energy and money into continuing the project to think that their fiscal resources cannot be used or are not needed.
Just think of the number of people whoâve posted in this thread and in the comments on the original post who said theyâd be willing to make a one time donation, to then be told that isnât on the table at all. Effective causing HA to place its fiscal bets on a small subset of its user base. Those will amazon echo devices and willing to pay a pretty hefty monthly fee. (It is highly unlike that those without amazon devices will ever pay $5/month to support HA)
What is worse is that the transparency of how this money will be used was discovered by those asking questions in the comments section of the announcement post, not by the leaders of this community being up front about how the money will be spent. Leading many to believe that the $5/month would cover the operational cost of the Alexa service only to learn quickly afterwards that the plan was to use those resources for other things. Like the hosting of hass.io services.
Lastly, and what I am most upset about is the erosion of associated open source projects. Many of you may have noticed that haaska has not received any major updates and currently doesnât support v3 of the Alexa Smart Home Skills API. For those who have looked closely into the issues and pull requests for haaska you might have noticed that these lack of pull requests alarmingly align with rumors and speculation circulated by @robbiet480 who discretely mentioned future support for alexa smart home built into HA.
My major concern is that the actively development of haaska stopped when an alternative (paid or not) was tossed onto the table and I suspect that the developer of haaska and the HA leadership actively encouraged the lack of development for haaska as the cloud component became closer to reality.
For those who have said that we do not have to pay for the cloud component that haaska and emulated hue exist. I agree they do, in a state that doesnât even begin to compare to a fully featured use of the Smart Home Skill provided by Amazon and the lack of development on those options being stagnant is the exact reason why open source projects should remain open and free and why I strongly believe at a minimum that the cloud code for HA should be released publicly.
Anyways, enough of my thoughts. I hope some can agree.
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did u get it to work? im also trying to figure out how to use the open/close voice command
Hey All,
Can Alexa see the HA entity state with cloud?
I.e if a light or plug etc is on via home assistant, Alexa does not seem to read this state.
Also whenever I go into a entity or group in the Alexa app I get a Grey banner with âthere was a problemâ. Iâm thinking this is all related.
Alexa will still trigger on/off for things though.
Cheers
Has anyone in Australia been using HA and the Echo? I bought my Echo Dot just over a week ago and had it setup with HA and all was working fine until a couple of days ago. I canât even locate the Home Assistant skill anymore.
Well reasoned and I agree. I would rather pay an annual fee rather than monthly just for convenience. I am willing to pay for what adds value to my life and HA certainly does. They have taken nothing away. Buy or not on their cloud feature. I choose to buy partly to support their future development of HA and partly because I am getting something I want.
Hi, I think I resolved mine by ensuring my echo and skills were all set to Language of Australian. If youâve been developing for a while the skills were in Language US, so you need to add a new language of Aus, and then delete the US one. And make sure all your Echoâs and Amazon account are also now set to Language AU, which will finally allow you to set your device for a real home address, they also now have the Alexa App available so you can config the Echoâs properly.
At least I think doing all this is what resolved my similar problem. Enjoy