Approaches to room aware voice commands for Alexa with Node-Red

[obaldius]

I found a way to get this working with the sentences: “Set the fan to high”, “Set fan to level medium”, “turn on fan to low”, “Turn fan to 1”, “set the fan to 2”, “Turn fan to level 3”, “Turn fan on to level 2”, “turn the fan on to 1”, “Put fan at 3” etc etc etc… 1 low, 2 medium, 3 high. It should also allow saying set to minimun, maximum, middle, low, medium, high, 1, 2, 3, spelling level or not… pretty flexible I believe, let me know please, I can’t test it out in english.

Alexa won’t complain, at least in Spanish, and you can set colours, white temperatures, increse/drecrease and set%'s of brightness/speed and turn on/off of course

Catch the first section from here:

Node Red Room aware Alexa voice commands

Previous post became obsolete, this method is working as of 04/07/2021 7/7/2021 - Both node-red-contrib-alexa-remote2-applestrudel and Alexa Media Player seem to have problems getting Alexa events consistently. It’s not terrible, but maybe 1 out of 10 times the “Currently listening device” flow won’t do its job. It’s not a problem of the flow itself, those issues will be resolved at some point with updates for those two components With Alexa Media Player You need to create an input_boolean.r…

Get the Fan example from here:

Node Red Room aware Alexa voice commands

@mboarman Before trying this. Move all sections to the same flow and change ‘global’ to ‘flow’, the opposite of what you had to do the last time. It’s makes it easier for me to go on. Regarding the NR flow, read the full post before starting to do anything: If you want to use only the voice as a trigger: [image] [{"id":"d24786c2.2b4078","type":"ha-wait-until","z":"7fd466a.0d41e98","name":"","server":"9405c3fe.d0a6c","outputs":2,"entityId":"input_boolean.room_aware","entityIdFilterType":"exa…

[123 (Taras)]

@obaldius

I found a way to get this working with the sentences: “Set the fan to high”

FWIW, this ability was described several posts ago. A function node converts text to numbers. For example, the ‘twenty-five’ in the command ‘Set light to twenty five’ is converted to 25. It uses a map so it’s trivial to add other phrases like high, medium, low or pretty much anything like super bright, extra dim, night time, etc.

Within the received phrase, Alexa reports the brightness level using words , not numbers. The first function node (“Parse”) converts the words to numbers (because the command to set a light’s level requires a numeric value). The conversion is performed using a map. It’s possible to enhance the map by adding words like “low”, “medium”, and “high”, or even “night time”, with corresponding numeric values. Otherwise, there’s no need for the end-user to change anything within the first function node.

[obaldius]

oh ok sorry, every time I come across a function node I just don’t read it

[obaldius]

and when you say, set the light night time, doesn’t alexa complain? Isn’t there any situation where alexa complains?

[mboarman (Mark Boarman)]

Been playing around with this flow as well as another one in hope of creating a room aware echo setup…While setting this up I ran into a snag while trying to set my Fan percentage levels in their respective nodes. I use a Homeseer FC200+ switch and although the Alexa app shows the 4 stages of power levels:
off
1
2
3
NR won’t let me add a percentage?! Any thoughts?

[quadhammer]

@randytsuch

I’m also trying to figure out what to do if I say “turn on light” and two dots hear it. I have dots in connected rooms so sometimes the one in the other room responds.

Imgur: The magic of the Internet is how I approach it. I also have two Alexa accounts combined, but because they share the same household, it ends up in duplicate messages, unless you use something like dropping a message.

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[obaldius]

@zkniebel

Eliminating the “[device] doesn’t do that” messages for commands hue devices don’t support
You can actually eliminate these messages pretty easily by creating routines in your Alexa App that don’t actually do anything. The routines won’t prevent your room-aware routines from being called. However, it may be more work than you’d like to create all of the routines in the Alexa App to match your room-aware routines. For example, I use a the following regex to match the command to set a fan to medium speed:

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(set|turn) (the )?fan ((on|to) )?medium

Regarding this, have you tried creating two HUE devices called “Fan to medium” and “Fan on medium”? I believe Alexa would take care of the rest… articles or not, whichever verb… As you said, even one device called “Fan medium” would do it. It might work, I can’t test it out though

[quadhammer]

@obaldius

Regarding this, have you tried creating two HUE devices called “Fan to medium” and “Fan on medium”? I believe Alexa would take care of the rest… articles or not, whichever verb… As you said, even one device called “Fan medium” would do it. It might work, I can’t test it out though

As I said here: Approaches to room aware voice commands for Alexa with Node-Red - #12 by quadhammer if you use a different skill to emulate the fan properly, you don’t need to mess around with fake routines to avoid the error messages.

[obaldius]

Didn’t read that, sorry

[123 (Taras)]

@obaldius

every time I come across a function node I just don’t read it

I have a similar reaction when I see a flow with many duplicated nodes.

The reason I used function nodes is because it allows me to do more with less. Those five nodes handle 8 devices (4 lights and 4 fans) in 4 rooms. It supports brightness commands as well as custom phrases and can easily handle more devices.

@obaldius

when you say, set the light night time, doesn’t alexa complain?

Without question, Alexa will complain if the phrase contains words it doesn’t support. For example, ‘Set light to medium’ isn’t understood and will result in a reply along the lines of “I don’t know how to do that.”

The solution is explained in the first post:

@zkniebel

Eliminating the “[device] doesn’t do that” messages for commands hue devices don’t support

You can actually eliminate these messages pretty easily by creating routines in your Alexa App that don’t actually do anything. The routines won’t prevent your room-aware routines from being called.

I have created a routine that responds “OK” when it hears the phrase “Set light to medium”. In addition, I added a key to the dictionary in the Parse node to identify medium as a value of 50:

That’s all there is to it. Now when I say “Alexa, set light to medium”, in any of the 4 rooms, Alexa responds “OK” and the light in that room is set to 50% brightness.

[obaldius]

Yeah, don’t get me wrong, I don’t read function nodes because I don’t still understand them. Hopefully someday I’ll be able to use them. Good job you all did here.

[apnar]

Huge thanks for this, really helped get room aware stuff working that I’ve been wanting to do for years with Alexa. Thought I’d share some small tweaks I made to the original approach to cut down on some repetition. Main changes from the original posted at top of the thread:

• Check the domain is “HomeAutomation” which filters out extra calls from other Echos in the area
• Cleared the data payload to avoid some down flow errors
• Set actions in the msg body earlier in the flow so there isn’t duplication
• Route based on device name as opposed to serial number
• Added replies for devices where the command doesn’t apply

Few other notes:

• 586837r doesn’t seem to be maintaining node-red-contrib-alexa-remote2 anymore, I strongly suggest using the node-red-contrib-alexa-cakebaked fork instead
• This flow doesn’t actually create any of the devices in Alexa, you’ll need to create dummy devices through one of the many other means (for example I have a device named “fan” that doesn’t actually control anything)

Here is my config that controls a series of Fans, TVs (including inputs for TiVo, Shield, & Games), and Blinds.

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}}","entityId":"remote.family_room_hub","data":"","dataType":"jsonata","mergecontext":"","output_location":"","output_location_type":"none","mustacheAltTags":false,"x":960,"y":940,"wires":[[]]},{"id":"f0064aef.d42ea8","type":"change","z":"35964044.fcf53","name":"Set Service Off","rules":[{"t":"set","p":"my_service","pt":"msg","to":"turn_off","tot":"str"}],"action":"","property":"","from":"","to":"","reg":false,"x":480,"y":920,"wires":[["c932d4e.8cf19a8"]]},{"id":"9e17091e.f6885","type":"api-call-service","z":"35964044.fcf53","name":"Master Bedroom TV","server":"3ddda582.b891ea","version":1,"debugenabled":true,"service_domain":"remote","service":"{{ my_service }}","entityId":"remote.master_bedroom_hub","data":"","dataType":"jsonata","mergecontext":"","output_location":"","output_location_type":"none","mustacheAltTags":false,"x":980,"y":1060,"wires":[[]]},{"id":"9c4dad67.291ca","type":"api-call-service","z":"35964044.fcf53","name":"Office 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[123 (Taras)]

@apnar

I strongly suggest using the node-red-contrib-alexa-cakebaked fork instead

I’m impressed that you got that one to work. I had to switch from 586837r’s no-longer functional version to cakebaked’s and it failed for me. I posted a detailed Issue but there was no support available from anyone. The node connects but requests ultimately end in “smarthome entity not found” or “unexpected response layout”. Ultimately I closed the Issue in cakebaked’s repo (due to zero response) and abandoned my long-working but now inoperative flow.

[apnar]

I had it running oriongally on 586837r’s for a while but then it stopped and I had to switch over to cakebaked’s version. I had to tweak a few things in my flow as the data coming in was slightly different but it’s working fairly consistently.

When you switched over did you export and delete all your flows prior to removing and installing the new version?

[apnar]

Found and took a look at your GitHub issue. You’re using the component differently than I am. I’m only using the plugin for input into my flow (and to announce failure), the actual device commands I’m routing through Home Assistant instead of trying to send them back to Alexa.

[123 (Taras)]

@apnar

When you switched over did you export and delete all your flows prior to removing and installing the new version?

No because it was ultimately determined(by others) that it’s unnecessary and amounts to nothing more than hocus-pocus. I did what others did and that’s remove all nodes in the flow (just two) that referred to 586837r’s version then replace them with cakebaked’s version (after having completely removed all traces of 586837r’s nodes from Node-Red).

The fact is it works partially. The “On Device Activity” node connects, listens for requests, receives them, passes them to the balance of the flow where they are successfully processed . Where it fails is in the final “SmartHome Action” node seen below. The error message suggests that the data submitted by the node is not in a valid format.

@apnar

the actual device commands I’m routing through Home Assistant instead of trying to send them back to Alexa.

I may try that but my concern is that Alexa won’t get feedback to the command it just submitted and will result in “I’m sorry, something has gone wrong.” However, maybe I should try it first and see what happens.

[Stephenn]

@zkniebel

Eliminating the “[device] doesn’t do that” messages for commands hue devices don’t support
You can actually eliminate these messages pretty easily by creating routines in your Alexa App that don’t actually do anything. The routines won’t prevent your room-aware routines from being called. However, it may be more work than you’d like to create all of the routines in the Alexa App to match your room-aware routines. For example, I use a the following regex to match the command to set a fan to medium speed:

Yesterday, I discovered that you can create a Alexa Skill Blueprint Custom Q&A and replace all of the dummy routines into the one skill. I do similar Room Aware Voice Commands thru Hubitat and was able to delete all of my dummy routines.

Alexa Blueprints

[123 (Taras)]

I tried it when it was first announced and didn’t find it to be sufficiently flexible. The speech parser in my flow can easily handle various permutations of noun, verb, and subject for a variety of devices. An Alexa Blueprint requires explicitly specifying all the permutations.

I’ll take a look at it again but, based on your screenshot, it doesn’t appear to have evolved much since I last tried it.

[quadhammer]

@123

No because it was ultimately determined(by others) that it’s unnecessary and amounts to nothing more than hocus-pocus. I did what others did and that’s remove all nodes in the flow (just two) that referred to 586837r’s version then replace them with cakebaked’s version (after having completely removed all traces of 586837r’s nodes from Node-Red).

Did you delete the config bit, not just the nodes, under alexa-remote-account? I went the whole hog, and deleted the flows after exporting. Can’t hurt to try.

I just put a timestamp on Smarthome Action, and it turned on what it should, using cakebake. I just call the device from a home assistant service node normally though, and emulated device to avoid error messages.

[quadhammer]

@apnar

Check the domain is “HomeAutomation” which filters out extra calls from other Echos in the area

Another way to do it, especially if you have different accounts/household Echoes is to limit the messages/sec, eg.

[{"id":"3aeafa0e.2a27c6","type":"tab","label":"Flow 1","disabled":false,"info":""},{"id":"8f9d4238.ea0608","type":"change","z":"3aeafa0e.2a27c6","name":"Strip Wake Word","rules":[{"t":"change","p":"payload.description.summary","pt":"msg","from":"^(alexa )?","fromt":"re","to":"","tot":"str"},{"t":"change","p":"payload.description.summary","pt":"msg","from":"^(amazon )?","fromt":"str","to":"","tot":"str"}],"action":"","property":"","from":"","to":"","reg":false,"x":1070,"y":440,"wires":[[]]},{"id":"4b0721a5.681f5","type":"alexa-remote-event","z":"3aeafa0e.2a27c6","name":"Alexa Account","account":"","event":"ws-device-activity","x":430,"y":400,"wires":[["36208ab5.dda8be"]]},{"id":"9bd0d6f8.d1c4c8","type":"alexa-remote-event","z":"3aeafa0e.2a27c6","name":"Alexa Account #2","account":"","event":"ws-device-activity","x":440,"y":500,"wires":[["36208ab5.dda8be"]]},{"id":"471a3042.6ed8c","type":"delay","z":"3aeafa0e.2a27c6","name":"","pauseType":"rate","timeout":"5","timeoutUnits":"seconds","rate":"1","nbRateUnits":"2","rateUnits":"second","randomFirst":"1","randomLast":"5","randomUnits":"seconds","drop":true,"x":860,"y":400,"wires":[["8f9d4238.ea0608"]]},{"id":"36208ab5.dda8be","type":"switch","z":"3aeafa0e.2a27c6","name":"Alexa hears","property":"payload.description.summary","propertyType":"msg","rules":[{"t":"regex","v":"alexa|amazon","vt":"str","case":true},{"t":"regex","v":"^(?:(?!amazon|alexa).)+$","vt":"str","case":true}],"checkall":"false","repair":false,"outputs":2,"x":650,"y":440,"wires":[["471a3042.6ed8c"],["8ef758e0.afdcf"]],"outputLabels":["Turn on",""]},{"id":"8ef758e0.afdcf","type":"delay","z":"3aeafa0e.2a27c6","name":"","pauseType":"rate","timeout":"5","timeoutUnits":"seconds","rate":"1","nbRateUnits":"2","rateUnits":"second","randomFirst":"1","randomLast":"5","randomUnits":"seconds","drop":true,"x":860,"y":500,"wires":[["8f9d4238.ea0608"]]}]