Internet Of Things / IoT / Connected Home / Smart Houses

Love that they crack a joke whilst inconveniencing you

You'd expect the new Echo to outperform a 4-year old Echo but so far it's not been the case in terms of functionality and understanding.

Sound quality is a lot better which was the main reason for me to change but not being able to control the Hue lights by vocal command is a real pain in the ass.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enshittification

It applies to almost every tech product... and is a core part of why I'm gradually moving virtually everything to self-hosted (Home Assistant + NAS + hardware, etc).

I just never had a good term for it in the past.

In Hue -> settings -> smart home -> choose your platform. I think mine may auto-discovered when I went the other way (started in Home app -> add device) but can’t quite recall.

There's a suggestion here
https://www.amazonforum.com/s/question/0D56Q0000BZZKheSQH/phillips-hue-skill-no-longer-exists
that you need to authorise it again

just fixed the issue... apparently it was about expired authorisation. I re-authorised Philips Hue on "amazon.de" and the issue has been resolved.

The skill definitely still exists and still works. I just removed it and added it back again to test.

The device you're using to access Alexa shouldn't make any difference (unless you were inadvertently previously using a device with built-in zigbee and were actually controlling the lights that way), it's just an interface to the underlying account.

Amazon Echo Dot no longer understands "Alexa Stop", saying it doesn't make it stop playing the radio as it used to.

It's definitely understanding it as I can see the "alexa stop" in the logs in the Alexa app. Odd.

Funnily enough I'd usually turn to twitter to search whether this was a thing for more people or not, but I binned off twitter ages ago so I'm left just wondering.

Yes, there's an option in the Hue app to set timers and flash lights but the timers are all done on Alexa.

I've resisted integrating Alexa and home assistant but may have to, or you can make your own skills pretty easily but it seems a hassle for a small bit of functionality.

@Velocio, Are you using Home Assistant already? Do you like it? Interesting read btw, thanks.

From what I can tell now from their website, in order to solve my current challenge I'd have to get the HA Yellow unit and subscribe to their cloud service in order to make it work with Alexa correct?

In my situation it simply keeps looking for a device to add after selecting the correct platform but never seems to find anything.

You can just install Home Assistant on whatever hardware you have spare and set it up that way. There may be a lot of messing around with port forwarding and certificates and Amazon accounts and stuff though.

I think the easier solution would be to just work out why it isn't working on your current setup. Have you moved country by any chance? Are you sure you're on the same account (after some time recently troubleshooting why my dad's kindle books weren't showing up on all of his devices he happened to mention that he had two Amazon accounts ...)?

In Hue -> settings -> smart home -> choose your platform. I think mine may auto-discovered when I went the other way (started in Home app -> add device) but can’t quite recall.

It’s odd, hue only offers Alexa and google home as options, not Siri/home.

And the home app won’t find my hue bulbs.

Maybe i need hue bridge?

I think I found the problem. // edit, it's exactly what you mentioned in your other post actually!

As I travel quite often, my account was linked to Amazon.de whilst I'm actually living in Italy.

This resulted in the skill not showing at all. I now changed my settings to Italy and was able to both find and activate the Hue skill.

Just need to wait to get back home to check if it's actually operational or not.

Thanks!

PS: This explains why Alexa started talking in German to me upon initial activation haha.

ah yes I think you do need the bridge. I got mine all bundled so never used bulbs without the hub but it adds a bunch of away from home functionality by the looks of things.

Thought that might be it. Ordered.

Thanks

So we want one of those robot vacuum things instead of buying each other presents this year.
Just looked and they are a grand which seems a bit excessive. What’s the go to one for £3-£350?
Only one large room to do with a hardwood floor.

Our Ecovacs Osmo 820 has been great for 3 years now. We got it for around 300 one black Friday. I'm sure there's a newer equivalent model these days.

It's worth paying extra for one with radar so it will make its own map, avoid things, and clean the space in an efficient manner. When I was buying all the cheaper ones would just do lines up and down until they hit something.

Thanks, they do 2 models at £320-£350 that look like they will do what we need, they are standalone not ones with a bin sized base station which is also a requisite.

Yeah, I think the best ones where the base station allows it to unload to a larger capacity bin, and some refill with fluid for mopping, look like they'd be great. In practice, though, it's never too much of a hassle for me to just empty the bin from the robot after every time it does the house. That certainly depends on how often you use it and how much dirt and dust gets in your house, though. I imagine thing might get tricky if you've got pets that shed or kids who bring in a lot of mud on shoes.

Has anyone ever tried linking an old Philips Living Colors remote to the Hue hub?

I'm trying to find out if it will work, so I can get a pair of old remotes to put in kids' new rooms rather than them needing to bug me to play with the app on my phone

Any hive users know what the icon next to the receiver means? I would think it means disconnected as it’s not showing signal strength, but it says “connected” and it all seems to work.

Woke up to no heating this morning but restarted the thermostat and all seems to work fine but have this strange icon.

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Anyone had trouble with their Phillips Hue lights and shortcuts on iOS? Any pre-existing shortcuts error out when using home wifi (that the hub is on), but work fine on mobile data. Seems very odd behaviour (and looking at Reddit not the only one but no solutions, just lots of complaints…)

I think you can do it with the Hue Essentials app. I had a little play with it before when adding IKEA stuff and it had lots of options for adding stuff but I didn't bother persisting with it.

That’s a connection fault.
Unplug receiver and hub.
Batteries out of the thermostat, wait 30s, batteries in. Plug receiver and hub back in.
Not sure it’ll work but that’s my go to for any hive error.
There’s also some way of triggering a restart through the app but I’m old school Moss and Roy.

Anyone know of a physical timer (like a kitchen timer) that integrates into Home Assistant via wi-fi or Zigbee or somesuch so I can trigger an automation when it hits zero (or any, not phone-based, other ideas how to do that).

Sonoff?