Home Assistant Assist through Alexa (skill)

[LiQuid_cOOled (Not really a...)]

Is Home Bot IR based like the Harmony Hub?

I assume no if it’s Amazon’s Home Bot. Is there link between the Bot and Harmony?

[Ltek]

When I say ‘Open home bot’ Alexa tells me its unavailable.

‘Home Bot’ is the string used for Invocation

[Zeroth25]

Hello, same problem here !

[fabianosan (Fabiano)]

@kuddl

Edit:
It actually works – but only if I first start the skill with “Alexa, start Home Assistant.”
If I ask a question a few hours later with “Alexa, ask Home Assistant […]” I get the error message.

After a while of not using it, I believe it closes the skill automatically, this is Alexa’s default behavior.

You need to start the skill again to use it again.

Here, I solved this by creating an automation to start the skill automatically when Alexa identifies that I am in the room.

[fabianosan (Fabiano)]

@Ltek

I installed the AWS Hosted today… the Lambda test succeeds and I inked the Skill in my Alexa App. But no matter what I try, Alexa says ‘that skill is not available’

I tried invocation phrases : ‘home assistant’ and ‘home bot’

How do we figure out what is wrong?

Please, collect all AWS and Home Assistant logs and post here as a file, so I can take a look.

Are you followed the step-by-step installation guid correctly?
The AWS lambda guid is configured correctly in the Alexa developer console?

[LiQuid_cOOled (Not really a...)]

I don’t have an issue

[Ltek]

I followed the guide diligently since there are many small details; I read each section at least 2x.

Where do I get the AWS logs you need? (treat me like I’ve never done anything in the AWS console or Lambda before this – I have not).

[fabianosan (Fabiano)]

@Ltek

eat me like I’ve never done anything in the AWS console or Lambda before this – I have not

I believe that is a step in the installation docs to guide in how to get logs.
But you always can ask do ChatGPT to help you step by step to this type of task.

I need the HA logs in debug mode for IA integration and Assist too…

[Ltek]

I appreciate the help. Before your help post. I thought ‘Assist’ was your integration. Maybe the problem is some core HA perquisites are not explained in your posts/docs, and thus I dont have everything installed - in HA itself. For a new person (like me), not knowing anything about HA’s STT/TTS requirements, this is a gap that might be causing my issue.

I did not see any HA ‘requirements’ outlined in your landing page or Instructions

Do I need one or more of the Wyoming integrations, or Speech-to-Phrase or Piper? (I only want to use voice commands to control lights, etc)

Specific to the logging/debug…

The docs have logging info in 2 sections:

1. Lambda Configuration → Environment variables… which I enabled on initial setup.
2. Under section Enabling Room Recognition which I skipped because it looked like it only pertains to if you are doing that, which I did not.
   – I now enabled this

What is still unclear is your comment “I need the HA logs in debug mode for IA integration and Assist too”

Per the docs, I added…

logger:
logs:
homeassistant.components.conversation: debug

1. Does the config settings enable ‘Assist’ debug?
2. What is “IA” integration? – how to enable debug logging?

[fabianosan (Fabiano)]

@Ltek

Do I need one or more of the Wyoming integrations, or Speech-to-Phrase or Piper? (I only want to use voice commands to control lights, etc)

No, you do not need anything of this to work with this skill in Alexa, it’s requirements for use Home Assistant local voice, not this skill, because the speech-to-text and text-to-speech are done from Alexa engine (Is this the skill purpose).

But I’ll put an explanation in the installation instructions to clarify it.

The skill have only two requeriments:

1. Having Assist working from the HA.
2. HA exposed to the Internet through HTTPS connection (with valid certificate).

[WarLion (Fernando Alvarez Buylla)]

well i decide to try, and it works great, thanks for you hard work

Edit
i have been testing it, it works on my echo dot 5 generation, but there’s something strange on my echo dot 3 generation it responds that i need to configure the skill in the alexa app, do you know why this happend?

edit 2 same thing on echo dot 4 generation and on echo flex

[fabianosan (Fabiano)]

@WarLion

Edit
i have been testing it, it works on my echo dot 5 generation, but there’s something strange on my echo dot 3 generation it responds that i need to configure the skill in the alexa app, do you know why this happend?

edit 2 same thing on echo dot 4 generation and on echo flex

Are your echo 3, 4 and flex in the same region and language of the echo 5?

[Jack_Hopperton]

Fabiano, firstly thank you so much for your work, I’ve been using this flawlessly for quite a while now and I’m very grateful for you sharing it. I’m just wondering, are you currently, or planning to, develop a way of being able to initiate a conversation from an automation. By that I mean, having an automation trigger, that then starts a conversation process with a prompt specific to that automation, which will then start a conversation on an Alexa device? Not sure of the best way of adding this functionality but would it be possible to pass arguments from HA to the Alexa skill when triggering the skill from within HA?

[WarLion (Fernando Alvarez Buylla)]

oh i see, a few of my devices where configure with Spanish/English ( Usa/usa) and others with Spanish/English (Mexico/Usa) after a sync language all of them start to work as intended, thanks for pointing that out