Alexa Smart Home Skill V3 is now live!

Announcements
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After a long time in the making I am excited to announce that Amazon has approved the next version of our Alexa app, which is now live and available for use.

The new Alexa skill supports Amazon’s version 3 (V3) of the Home Skill API which provides a much richer set of features for modeling devices for voice control. While the V2 version of the API allowed basic lighting, thermostat and lock control, the new API can model nearly anything, with native support for AV devices, security systems, scenes, as well as enhanced support for thermostats, locks and lighting/power devices.

Our new skill also takes advantage of using openHAB metadata instead of tags. This allows a much richer set of customizations of items exposed to Alexa. Existing tags will continue to work with the new skill, so users will not need to migrate their current configuration unless they wish to use the enhanced features that the new version of the skill provides.

I would also like to introduce Jeremy Setton ( @jeshab ) who picked up the V3 development effort and has contributed nearly all of the new code base and functionality. In addition he has added support for using the Amazon Skill Kit (ASK) for automated deployments as well as introduced comprehensive test coverage across the entire code base. It been fantastic to work with him, and the new skill will not be anywhere close to what it is without his amazing effort.

The app is available in the following languages and countries:
English (AU), English (CA), English (GB), English (IN), English (US), French (FR), German (DE), Italian (IT), Japanese (JP), Spanish (ES), Spanish (MX)

Amazon will migrate users automatically over to the new version of the skill within the next 24 hours. Due to moving from v2 to v3 of the Home Skill API, voice commands may fail until Amazon sends a new discovery message to look for devices, which triggers the migration. You can force this update by asking Alexa to “Search for new devices”, she may not find any, but the request will trigger the migration. There should not be any changes needed by users to continue to use their existing configuration.

You can find complete instructions and examples at https://www.openhab.org/docs/ecosystem/alexa/

As always you can find the source code, submit issues and create pull requests at

Enjoy!

@digitaldan

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Wow!?!! So much news for openHAB. First 2.5 m.2 now V3. So much new stuff to play with. Good work guys.

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After upgrading the skill to version 3 no device is responding, I’ve also tried to remove one device and discover again (no device found)…
Now I’m completely lost… please help me :slight_smile:
The skill updated automatically…
I’m running openhab 2.4.0 on raspberry pi3 and using also home kit (siri, so i need v2 tagging).

I’ve also tried to use the new tagging but didn’t work) here is an example of my items file
// Camera Grottino
Switch Luce_cam_g “Luce Camera Grottino” (Grottino,C_Bedroom,Lights,Lights_G) [ “Lighting” ] {alexa=“Lighting”, channel=“openwebnet:bus_on_off_switch:8f183ce9:11h4h01:switch”}
Switch Luce_tv_cam_g “Faretto TV Camera Grottino” (Grottino,C_Bedroom,Lights,Lights_G) [ “Lighting” ] {channel=“openwebnet:bus_on_off_switch:8f183ce9:12h4h01:switch”}

Everything worked fine before upgrading to v3 skill
(is there a way to downgrade?)
Can someone help me please?
Thanks in advance

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I had the same issue.
I told Alexa to discover devices (like mentioned in the first post) and then restarted openhab.
Now it works.

Alexa says some devices do not respond, but the commands are executed anyway.

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Tried but didn’t work for me…
:frowning:

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All of my devices have been unresponsive since yesterday. I’ve tried rediscovery, I’ve restarted openHAB, I’ve unlinked and relinked the skill. Still nothing is responding. I still have the V2 format in my items file for now. I’m on 2.5M2.

This is awesome! Many thanks for all the work you guys have done over the last months/years. I’ve been eagerly waiting for V3. I would just like my current configuration to work until I can change over.

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Same for me…

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Awesome thanks Dan and Jeremy, looking forward to getting these enhanced features to save on proxy item workarounds or similar. Great work!!

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That’s usually an indication of some latency in getting the state change of the controlled device. Are you getting this error with all your OH-linked devices?

The new skill now confirms the state change after issuing a command, opposed to the previous one, which directly set the state to the requested command.

Your current configuration using V2 format should be processed without any problem. Can you see your OH-linked devices in your Alexa Smart Home Console? Are any of them grayed out with an offline annotation?

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Hi!
That’s great news!
I indeed needed to trigger the device search and everything was found and is working well.
I checked out the new binding description and the configuration seems to be quite different.
You wrote that the V2 format should be processed and it is. I just added [“Lighting”] to my item type for example. For the new item types should i use the new syntax?

Thank you!

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Great job! Thanks for all of your guys hard work!!

:partying_face: :clap:

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You can use either but would recommend using the new metadata syntax so you can become familiar with it as it provides some granular settings on some of the latest functionalities.

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Ok i’ll try tomorrow :slight_smile:
One other question:
With the alexa app it’s possible to configure groups to naturally trigger lights by saying “lights on” and depending on which alexa was triggered the lights in that room turn on.
Is something like that possible to configure?

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Correct. It’s called Alexa-enabled groups. You just need to associate the specific echo device to the group that includes all the lights for that location.

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Everything shows up correctly. I have two different openhab installations in two locations with completely separate myopenhab login/amazon logins. Both have the same issue. I’m in the U.S., does this make a difference?

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It shouldn’t make a difference. The fact your devices aren’t showing offline means the communication to your OH server is working.

Could you please provide a detailed example including the exact utterance you used (Alexa, _____), the verbal response you got back and the time (with timezone) you issued the request?

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Sure, right now (8/14/2019 at 15:14 EST) I tried “Alexa, turn the garage door on.”
The response seconds later was:
“hmm, the garage door is not responding.”

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Do you see that command reaching your OH server in the events logs?

@digitaldan any chance you could pull the skill logs for that request?

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Hey Jeremy, thanks for looking at this!

There are no entries in the events.log. I just tried a few and watched.

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Hi Christoph,
I had the same issues with items with the tag autoupdate=“false” . Removing it fixed the problem for me.
Philipp