Alexa still not an entry level hub replacement

I was writing up a response to someone about IFTTT and Alexa / Wireless Tag integration which will probably but useful later so I'm saving it here as it reflects on Alexa's poor support for sensors. Note Alexa's home automation interface is still better than Google's almost non existent one. (See compare below.)

Why go through IFTTT when you can integrate Wireless Tags direct with Kumo? As in as in my fridge / freezer monitoring setup which updates values as they change in my Homeseer instance which then can trigger any action Homeseer can perform. Which is just about anything. Plus IFTTT was become very unreliable this year.

Alexa Wireless Tag integration sort of works. I can ask the temperature of a sensor for example, "Alexa, what is the temperature of the freezer" and it tells me the reading from my regular sensor in the freezer. Though oddly in the device list I only see motion values for the regular tags and what appears to be temperature for the soil moisture tags. (Not all my soil moisture tags are dead.) Again oddly you can't use the sensor values in routines. Though finding anything in the Alexa device list is almost impossible since it is designed for people the just have a few things. Even stranger:

• You can sort the device list in the web interface but not the android one. 
• The web interface does not let you do anything with the devices on the list other than forget the device.
• Routine management is missing from the web interface.
• The android list interface does have some groups to narrow down the list but way to few. For example, the only way to see a list of the 12 of my 348 devices Alexa sees as "sensors" is to try to create a routine with one. 
• My Homeseer sees 3137 "devices" as I write this. (Note a "device" is data stream or parent. As in a Hue Sensor would be seen as 5 "devices". A parent and 4 sensors, light level, temperature, motion and battery level.) Alexa only sees 348 of those (note some of the 348 are Alexa devices not in the Homeseer count) and only 12 of those as sensors from SmartThings, Wyze, Ring and Hue so far. Even then for example the Hue sensors report motion, temp and light gut Alexa only sees motion info.
• Lack of complex triggers. For example: if no motion has been detected and door opens, turn on light. If motion has been detected and door opens turn off light. Or if any of room motion sensors are tripped reset occupancy timer. When occupancy timer hits X minutes turn off everything in room.

When you have 348 devices (that Alexa sees) like I do, it is almost useless. Amazon REALLY needs to improve their interface so it can scale if they want people to use their routine framework for any logic. So while it would be nice to have Wireless Tags usable as sensors in Alexa to, for instance, announce the fridge is too warm, I do not really see it as big deal till Amazon makes their configuration interface more usable.

To be fair when Alexa is compared to Google's Home:

Cons:

• Google does not even have a web interface so everything must be done via phone or tablet.
• Often skills like Harmony where with Alexa you would say "Alexa, turn on Netflix". With Google that worked then it went to you had to say "Hey Google, Ask Harmony to turn on Netflix." and then often tells me it did not recognize me and would not do it. Now it seems to be back to just "turn on" BUT for instance when I say "turn on Hero" (my PC's name) to Alexa is just works. I say "turn on Hero" to Google it starts playing something from Pandora.
• It appears too that at some point Google Home lost some of the account links I had setup.

• Lately the Googles (I have a Home and 3 minis) seem to say try again in a few seconds a lot.
• To discover new devices you say "Alexa, discover devices." You say this to Google and it finds phones and asks if you want to ring them. Ask "how do I get you to discover devices", you get "I don't understand" and "I found a related how to get Alexa to discover devices"! It is also easy to do from the Alexa app with a swipe down. Instructions I found online say Google's Home should do that too but it appears to do nothing for me.
• Google appears to allow one Harmony hub to be connected while Alexa allows many. (I have 5 currently)
• Adding skills to Home is an egg hunt compared to Alexa. I just tried to add the Wyze skill for example and I had to search on line to even figure it out. Then while trying to link the account it just exited half way through me entering my login info.
• Wyze, Alexa sees all the cams, motion and contact sensors I have. Google sees on the cameras and contact sensors.
• Google routines still appear to be voice command triggered only while Alexa's allow triggering using voice, time, some sensors (see above), location, alarms, echo button presses and "Guard state".

Pros:

• The devices list in Google does seem to use the room from Homeseer. However I had to add each Wyze and Wireless Tag device to a room during the setup process manually. 

Alexa vs Google revisited.

As so many of these this started as a reply to a question on a Facebook group. In this case what is up the Google Assistant and Homeseer? After a rather lengthy response I thought I should flesh it out even more an post it here. I'm just comparing my experience living with them nt side by side features. In my opinion both Amazon and Google are trying to push hard into siloed home automation which is just wrong. Interoperability is the future and local control is a must. Expect to see local (cloud independent) voice assistants REAL soon.

I find I'm using Google Home less and less. Mainly I use Home when Alexa is one of her moods (had another badly weighted update pushed) but things seem to have peaked with Google Home.
For an example it used to be "tell Harmony to turn on TiVo."
Then is was just "turn on TiVo"
But then "Turn on TiVo" got you "Do you want to use Harmony for that?" "Yes". In diff voice "Turning on TiVo".
Then "Turn on TiVo" got you "Do you want to use Harmony for that?" "Yes." "I don't recognize your voice."
Now back to "Tell Harmony to turn on TiVo." and half the time it says it does not recognize my voice. Which is even more irksome considering how often it responds to someone on the TV or a podcast just saying Google without even the hey. Not to mention all the times I'm not sure what triggered it.

Sorry but having to remember which thing this week to ask to turn something on or off on top of the name for the thing I had to give it so it did not sounds like something else, is just is not going to get you market share. Especially if it keeps telling me it will not do stuff cause it does not recognize my voice. Granted maybe if I spent more time tweaking it I could improve it a bit but that kind of misses the point of it and I've not had to mess with Alexa other than adding devices and alias TV to TiVo after one especially bad update. Though I have to admit recently I added my "Good morning" "routine" so instead of just telling Homeseer to put the house in day mode it also tells me some fun fact and the weather.

I should note too Google is more likely to false trigger and to just not respond than Alexa if it does not know what to do. So it might be having trouble listening when you think it is down. Though Alexa is getting more like Home in that respect. I keep the notification sounds on so I know when they think they heard something but ignored it. Which is why I just do not get people that complain about Alexa saying OK. But then I work in IT so I kind of expect a certain amount of errors. Like saying "thank you" to end a follow on sequence it just makes sense from a programmer's mindset.

Anyway contrast the above with Alexa will generally get a voice command at least by the third try if I have not triggered it some other way before that. Some responses just make you go huh? Like the other yesterday when I said "Alexa , turn on video", a command to switch my main video stream from the triggered security cams back to what I was watching and unpause. Her response, "I can not find a device named lamp." Then too I started putting Echo buttons about as backups / quicker response for things like sending OK / Select to the device currently playing video or signalling the house to go into away mode. They light up green instead of saying OK so you know the command got through. Used to have an Echo button for TiVo skip too before they made that automatic. Planning on getting some more Prime day. Note you can only pair 4 to an Alexa and they are only reliable to around 20 feet though a wall. At 2 for $14 (on sale price) hard to beat for when you just need an easy to hit button. Like advancing to the next show while washing dishes with the volume up. Both seem able to pick your voice out of impressive levels of room noise but you can only expect so much.

Note too IFTTT has been having a ton of issues with Homeseer, among others, lately. So I wonder sometimes which end it is truly on. Or if maybe something in the middle is the iffy bit. Which why you always have back methods for every trigger no matter the interface. Even the local ones.

I must be missing something

Seems like the world is following in the footsteps of a Rube Goldberg comic.
For instance I've seen posted, multiple times now, people putting Echo Dots in their cars to stream music despite the fact it need to use their phone's data to stream. Why not just use the phone?
Another example is one going around of people BUYING the OLD (no longer made) IR to X10 interfaces and a Harmony hub to control X10 devices from their Alexa! I mean you can get a version 2 SmartThings hub for $50 and Z-wave switches as cheap as $25 for a single or $37 for a double outlet so why buy a Harmony hub for $75+ (more if you want it with the remote) PLUS for another $30-$50 to control up to 16 devices max? Not only more cost, unless you have many devices to control, the extra hops make it more error prone, X10 itself has serious issues with many modern things interfering with it's power line signals and if anything breaks you are probably going to have to dig up a used replacement on Ebay and hope it works.
Let me be clear, I used X10 for decades generally working fine till around 2010 when it started driving me nuts being generally being flaky. And automation is my thing so I have all the test equipment and such. I'd often spend a day back then running around with test equipment, plugging and unplugging stuff while monitoring signal levels, tracking down what device was messing my signal that day. In the end I had noise filters on almost as many devices as I controlled. Insteon tried to keep things going by adding RF connections into the X10 mix but it did not help my set up stability at all. Either because of legacy X10 stuff in the mix or something else I could not see. In 2014 I finally decided to try one of the new hubs and never looked back. So it boggles my mind people are still trying to work with X10. It is like someone trying to explain how a PDA and a flip phone are better than a cheap smart phone. BTW a nice write up on the diffs between Insteon, Z-Wave and ZigBee can be found here. Note the chart at the bottom showing what the top 10 security company support. You really want to keep what devices are going to work with your next hub since odds are you will be upgrading at some point.

I can even see stuff like this Google Home built from a Raspberry Pi as a learning project but don't tell me it is a cheap Google Home. $54 for the kit is cheaper than a Google Home but assumes you have a Pi 3 you do not need for anything else or you need to add another $50 to that and what you end up with is not near as easy to use as the $100 - $129 Google Home. Rumor is there a Dot like Home in the works that will be as cheap as the $35-$50 Dot. So if you want a Home instead of an Echo but have an issue with the cost, you might want to just wait for that.

Multiple Harmony Remotes - updated

My goal was to add a Logitech Harmony Ultimate remote to my Logitech Harmony Ultimate All in One remote with hub. Looked simple, since the remote / hub combo on sale was almost the same price as either alone I got the bundle and figured I'd use the second hub in the bed room to control the TV and window AC unit in there. As an added bonus that would give me backups should the main hub or remote go out. From my basic research this all seemed doable. As it turns out:
You can add multiple remotes to a hub BUT only one can be of the touch screen type like the Ultimate or Elite. This chart tries to explain that but I did not get it the first time through. If you try and add a second touchscreen remote it just replaces the first one though both show in the app and no error is given. (In fact even after I moved the second Ultimate remote back to the second hub it still showed in the desktop app as a third remote till I removed it.) What you need is a special remote, the Logitech Harmony Smart Control Add-On Companion Programmable Remote for Harmony Ultimate Hub. This pretty much works. Since there is no screen and only 3 activity buttons you are limited to 6 activities (short and long press of each button) and just basic controls. At about this point it hit me that the hubs do most of their controlling via WiFi instead of IR so I set up the second hub with the remote it came with and cloned the devices and activities from the first set to it I might be good. Unfortunately controlling devices from 2 hubs can cause state confusion in the hub like I've seen when using the original remotes with the Harmony. Plus I should note here my Onkyo receiver, Roku and Fire TV can be controlled by either hub but my TiVos, Blu-Ray players and HDMI switch can not.

Mapping on Companion remote is not quite right either for my Roamio OTA. For example in TiVo control mode, the MENU button on the Companion remote does not map to the TiVo button like it does on the touchscreen. In fact it, EXIT and DVR are not mapped at all. I mapped MENU to TiVo to match the touchscreen and Exit to Advance since Advance is only on the touchscreen on the Ultimate remote.
[update oddly when I added old Roamio Pro the MENU button was mapped to TiVo on both remotes]

To do this mapping it needs to be done from the phone app.
Select you hub
Select the MENU button in the upper left corner.
Navigate to HARMONY SETUP > ADD/EDIT DEVICES & ACTIVITIES.
Select the Activity you want to customize
Select Customize remote
Select the remote you want to customize.
On the picture select the button you want to remap
Select the device you want it to map to and then the command on the device (you have choice here of mapping short or long press)
Press > at top of page to save (will say syncing)
you can repeat to map other press here if you wish
Press > at top of page to continue which gets you back to button selection
If done mapping select > (which seems to sync again) takes you back to remote select
If done select < to get back to activity select
Select < or > to get back to settings
Press X in upper right corner and it will sync one last time.

Another issue was I have 3 security camera consoles and 3 other PCs I like to be able to swap to via my remotes that are on a HDMI switch leading into the receiver. I was able to setup activities for each. Adding to the TiVo, DVD, Roku and Fire TV though that makes 10 activities which is no problem on the touchscreen remotes but the Companion only lets you map 6. So I though why not use the above to make the 6 PCs 1 activity and map the number buttons to control the switch. This seems to work fine.

One last note. My HDMI switch is a Monoprice 8X1 Enhanced Powered HDMI Switcher w/ Remote and is great. I've had it installed for 4 years now without an issue. For some reason the Harmony hub keeps turning it off even though it is set to never be turned off. I finally went in and remapped the power toggle command to the OSD command on the original remote which actually does nothing with this model.

One other note. The day after I got all the above nice and sorted lightning took out my Onkyo. So I did a patch around till I can get the Onkyo fixed. I thought I'd just stick 8 of the 10 devices on the switch but I was then depressed to find the phone app did not seem to let me do this. Fortunately I remembered seeing you could select more than 3 devices for activity in the desktop app and that indeed did work. I keep finding other bits you can only do in either the phone app or the desktop app. So before giving up you should always try both.

Update: 9/1/2019

Note you should also look at this post about the firmware changes and how to get it working again with Homeseer.

Also if you are looking for a remote to carry about you might want to look at https://www.amazon.com/URC-RFS200-PowerPak-MasterControl-PowerBlaster/dp/B000FL9E6U You will most likely need to manually teach it all the IR commands, it does not do macros, Only does 10 devices and only does IR but you can hang as many remotes as you wish off the hub so you can have one in every room and it has a much longer range then the Harmonies. There is a newer model that is supposed to have more range and controls 18 devices but I have not tried it.

First Look: Google Home is still a work in progress

Google Home is not quiet as polished as the Amazon Echo For instance the Echo will search your network for devices while the Home you have to tell it which devices. Homeseer is not supported yet even though it is listed on their web site. Though the Home plug-in for Homeseer is supposed to be ready soon.

The main thing that I bought it for is the one thing it does do that Echo does not. Pass a string to IFTTT. So you can for instance make an applet to log your dreams or ideas you have. And the recognition seems a bit better than Echo too. But do not get too excited because not all actions take a parameter. For instance you can not set up an applet to run any event you say. You still have to do one for each event. Hopefully that will get sorted when the Homeseer plug-in for Home gets released.

Update 8/8/2017

Unfortunately Homeseer still is not linking but I have to say I'm liking this name your own trigger phrase feature more and more. It basically lets you add skills using IFTTT as long as you just want to send a message some where. For instance I used to have an IFTTT applet set up so when I'd add a to-do via Alexa it would get added to my Remember the Milk inbox. The problems were at first that meant using some extra channel to get it from the Amazon list to Remember the Milk. In my case Twitter which meant I got a DM notification every time. Then Remember the Milk got a skill about the same time the trigger word "remember" seemed to stop working. So for example, instead of "Alexa, remember, pick up milk" it became having to say "Alexa, tell Remember The Milk to remind me to pick up the milk at 5pm". I would still need to clear out my Amazon to-do list. Todist on the other hand has a much less polished interface than Remember the Milk BUT it interfaces directly with Amazon so anything I do in my Amazon shopping and to-do lists syncs without any plumbing on my part. So now I can say  "Alexa, add 'pick up the milk' to my to-do list" and get it added without all the notifications.

Now compare that with Google Home. I just create an IFTTT  applet that lets me say "Hey Google, remind me to pick up milk" and it adds it to my Todoist inbox with a priority, due now and a couple tags. The phrasing just flows. Like the memo one above it is nice to be able to pick my own trigger phrase. Note to call an IFTTT from Alexa directly like that you have to say "Alexa, trigger [phrase]" and [phrase] just tells it which applet to run and it does not get passed on. Plus Google Home seems to be better at transcribing text than Alexa. For instance for testing I tried to add "convert homeseer counters to objects". Google got it right. Alexa transcribed it as "for home seer counters".

Updated 10/20/2017

Still can not get Awair or Homeseer to link.

I did get Harmony linked but I can only link in one of the hubs. By default you have to start everything "ask harmony to" as in "Hey Google, ask harmony to turn on hulu". If you want to just say "turn on hulu" like you would do with Alexa then you need to create a shortcut. Note if you have a Chromecast linked by default "turn on Hulu" will try and stream to it. Also when you set up short cuts use the mic to input the shortcut or it may not work. This is a bit more of a pain to set up but it does let you choose what device to play what on though since Fire TV seems to be unsupported in might not make that much difference. Unfortunately you can't just create a shortcut like the "Remind me to" one above but at least you can create a simple one like "to do list" which will bring up the Todoist app which will prompt you from there so you do not have remember which app to bring up and how.

I should probably note here too in order to change the friendly names in Google Home you currently need to unlink and relink Harmony. There is not edit. In Alexa you can edit the names names now of smart home devices, groups and scenes. Scenes is were you will find the friendly names for Harmony activities, channels and devices.

Updated 12/31/2017

After seeing posts in the Homeseer Facebook group claiming it worked with Home I decided to give it another go. This time I did get Homeseer to link accounts and import 83 controls which is short to all of them. It still seems to not grab room info. IIt appears to have pulled in about half of the Hue lights and dimmers (for some reason) on the house hub and none from the shop and barn hubs which my Homeseer knows about. No groups but the all lights on hub. So about 10% of the Hue "things" Homeseer shows. This is fewer than Home pulled from SmartThings months back. (I still have SmartThings hubs for some legacy stuff and experiments.) It does appear to have imported in most (maybe all but hard to tell with so many and the diff in interfaces) Z-wave Switch Binary devices from the 4 networks connected to my Homeseer, my Nest thermostat and virtual devices. It did see the Lifx bulb but not the Ranchio, Harmony hubs, Sonos speakers or Onkyo that are WiFi controlled by my Homeseer. One more point. While linking stuff to rooms I ran into a few problems. When adding a new room the rooms got double added some how. I had to go back and remove the duplicated rooms that had no devices in them. Sometimes adding devices to a room did not save either and I had to go back and link them again. Also it appears you can only add a device to a room. That is fine for filtering lists but if you are grouping for control, which is the case here, that makes it not very useful.

BTW Awair still asks for your login and then just goes back to the devices screen with out error or linking. Tried Lifx and TP-link for first time now that I have a devices to test with and it imported fine. Thought my Nest account was linked but was shows as not so relinked it without issue. Note it took me 3 tries (that Google Home said it understood) before I could turn up the heat on my Nest Thermostat. "Tell Nest to set the temperature to 70" did not seem to actually do anything despite it saying it was doing it. "Set the living room temperature to 70" did seem to work but it could be it just took that long for the first command to make it though all the hops.

For added fun I thought I'd try relinking my Hue account to Home to see if that would allow Home to see the other hubs or just switch hubs to get control of the shop lights. Unfortunately it gets all the way to the final step and flashes a quick message about failing to update. After doing this a few times it did actually update despite the error. But it still only sees the house hub. I'm guessing because when you log into the Hue web interface you can only view one hub (like the official Hue app) and Google goes though the cloud instead of talking directly to the hubs like Alexa does.

Updating devices list

You can now (Dec 2017) say "sync my devices" to Google Assistant (on your phone, Google Home, etc) to refresh all of your smart home services. For example, if you have Philips Hue lights and WeMo outlets, Google will pull the full list of your devices from those services. You can also just refresh a certain category, with something like "sync my lights."

Others thoughts

Granted the landscape is changing fast but here are some articles of where things were at times.

Cnet MARCH 14, 2017: 7 things Amazon Echo can do that Google Home can't

Cnet APRIL 26, 2017: 8 things Google Home can do that Alexa can't

Google Home developer guide.

New Amazon Echo Skills!!!

I went into the Alexa app to link to my Harmony since the Harmony / Homeseer link has been a bit iffy lately and OMG the stuff that has been added since I last looked! 23 PAGES of just smart home / automation type skills alone. Wireless Tag even has a skill now.  I hear Vera is planning to have a skill soon. They look to be one of the few that does not have a skill already so they better get moving.  I only have my Harmony, Nest, SmartThings (as backup Hue channel) and Homeseer devices linked up. The Wireless Tag skill is only useful for changing settings and how often do you need that? That gives me 109 devices connected to my Echo now. Note if you want to trigger Homeseer events you still need to use the IFTTT skill. One complaint though Amazon still does not seem to realize their success yet. When you go into a group to assign devices for instance, they appear to have no order to them which makes grouping a few of 109 devices a bit more of an adventure than it ought to be. I did get a group created to turn on every connected light in the house and shop so I can turn them all off or on. I already have an event setup to turn on all exterior lighting which brings the up in groups. Can't wait till dark to see what the lag time is and if they all come up at once. I also created a group called fan since it could not seem to deal with Mbed_fan as a name. Having to rethink names of some of the Harmony linked devices too so I can avoid confusion.