Amazon Echo to HA Controllers

[Deane Johnson]

I'm finding it absolutely fascinates people.  The war is Amazon's to lose.
 
From what I am reading they are of the opposite mindset of Apple which is very encouraging.

 

[IVB]

Gotta get ready for soccer, but thanks to jkmonroe, I now have the Echo able to kick off CQC commands! I won't have time to putz with it until maybe tomorrow night earliest, but I might have to help my handyman hang cabinets & paint.
 
Its not yet "production ready", first I need to redirect Sage from using port 8080, but I think that'll be easy enough. I believe its in one of the .properties files, gotta look it up.

 

[NeverDie]

Amazon jacked the price up to $179.99.  No invitation is required anymore.  So, I guess this means that those of you who want more than one can now buy as many as you like.
 
Interesting way to launch a product....

 

[ano]

Amazon jacked the price up to $179.99.  No invitation is required anymore.  So, I guess this means that those of you who want more than one can now buy as many as you like.
 
Interesting way to launch a product....

The $99 Echo was considered the "beta" version and was for Amazon Prime members only.  You could only buy one.
 
When it became officially available, the real price, $179 appeared, and everyone could buy as many as they wanted. 
 
Why do you think this was strange?  Companies often let their closest customers get products at reduced prices since they are considered to be in beta/testing.  Maybe the difference here is that Amazon has so many Prime members that it seems like they were selling them to everyone, but that wasn't really the case.

 

[NeverDie]

By "interesting way" I meant "clever," not "strange."  The lowered price maybe got some early momentum going, maybe in some ways similar to Kickstarter's early bird discount.
 
Anyhow, it's a refreshing change from some home automation products, where you're paying full price for what's billed as the production release, but it turns out to be a beta....

 

[ano]

That's true.  If its like normal new product releases, it should be back to $99 before long.

 

[NeverDie]

Wow!  Amazon is throwing $100 million into developing Echo's developer ecosystem, and they've already done 7 deals.  
 
http://fortune.com/2015/06/25/amazon-alexa-fund/
 
From that I'm guessing this Echo thing is bigger than anyone here has talked about.  I wish I had the data, but I rather suspect that such an amount dwarfs the R&D dollars going into other fundamental aspects of home automation, which--let's face it--has evolved at a glacial speed until fairly recently.  
 
Perhaps Echo will have a catalytic effect on home automation, similar to the way smartphones did.  

 

[Dean Roddey]

Well, as always has to be mentioned, the point of automation isn't having every possible most recent gadget and technology, it's having a highly robust system that always works. The two things are at least to some degree at odds with each other.

 

[ano]

Amazon is trying to be like Goggle. Throw lots of money at things in hopes that someday they will get the money back.

 

[Deane Johnson]

Well, as always has to be mentioned, the point of automation isn't having every possible most recent gadget and technology, it's having a highly robust system that always works. The two things are at least to some degree at odds with each other.

Dean, I have had a tendency to ignore every new gadget that has come along, believing most of them at best will be a passing fancy or a very niche product or worse.  That proves to be true in most instances.
 
However, the Echo appears to be exciting like no other.  It's voice recognition performance is as close to perfect as you can get.  And, it's incredibly versatile.  I have it running Hue, Lux, and WeMo and already I'm finding I don't want to reach for my iPad to operate my home theater, I'm just wanting to use Echo to tell CQC what to do.  It just plain works.

 

[jkmonroe]

For argument's sake, why would you need Echo to control CQC? (keep in mind I agree with you
 
Isn't the beauty of a fully integrated system that the control points themselves become irrelevant?  Make a change to your Hue via Echo, and CQC will see it.
 
We should find some entry point into CQC, and wuench is working on it, but for individual device control it seems to be doing fine.
 
Although once we have that integration, things will change pretty dramatically.  

 

[pete_c]

@jkmonroe,
 
Are you talking to her yet?  (Alexa).
 
It piqued my interest to know that my cousin appeared to be totally enamored with her Amazon Echo and spoke about it at a funeral rather than her speaking about her husband.
 
I do let my automation doo its thing lately and I don't much pay attention to know if it did the doo of whatever correctly.
 
(then I am also finding it interesting to talk to Alexa).
 
Geez my mail was delivered (well the voice in the house said that) but it was just a very loud ground shaking firecracker that triggered the event.

 

[jkmonroe]

I am not.  I was supposed to grab one earlier in the week, but I never made it down (a buddy of mine has one for me).
 
Although I got to interact with her via a Google Hangout.  Does that count?  

 

[Deane Johnson]

For argument's sake, why would you need Echo to control CQC? (keep in mind I agree with you
 
Isn't the beauty of a fully integrated system that the control points themselves become irrelevant?  Make a change to your Hue via Echo, and CQC will see it.
 
We should find some entry point into CQC, and wuench is working on it, but for individual device control it seems to be doing fine.
 
Although once we have that integration, things will change pretty dramatically.  

Possibly I'm not thinking of it the same as anyone else is, I'm not sure.  I'm thinking in terms of Echo having the ability to replace the actions triggered by widgets on an iPad  screen.  In other words, instead of pushing a button on my iPad to open the DVD player drawer, I just want to say "Alexa, open the DVD player drawer".  Or, "Alexa, turn the home theater on" and all of the actions on the list that are triggered by the iPad widget that turns the home theater on would be executed by Echo.
 
Once one could trigger events in CQC with Echo, the world would open up.
 
I'm not technical, so it makes it easy for me to get dumb ideas and to ask dumb questions, but does the new Echo developers kit that was just released offer any possibilities.

 

[jkmonroe]

Possibly I'm not thinking of it the same as anyone else is, I'm not sure.  I'm thinking in terms of Echo having the ability to replace the actions triggered by widgets on an iPad  screen.  In other words, instead of pushing a button on my iPad to open the DVD player drawer, I just want to say "Alexa, open the DVD player drawer".  Or, "Alexa, turn the home theater on" and all of the actions on the list that are triggered by the iPad widget that turns the home theater on would be executed by Echo.
 
Once one could trigger events in CQC with Echo, the world would open up.
 
I'm not technical, so it makes it easy for me to get dumb ideas and to ask dumb questions, but does the new Echo developers kit that was just released offer any possibilities.

 
we can do that already.  it's what we have been discussing and working on in the cqc echo thread.  
 
but yes, the Skills kit will open up quite a few possibilities, including the potential to query via the Echo and get response from CQC.  that's not possible right now.