Amazon Echo SmartJ Binding Last Voice Command not working anymore

1

@J-N-K,

The last couple days my Last Voice Command has completely stopped working on the org.smarthomej.binding.amazonechocontrol-3.2.17.jar binding.

I have restarted OH and even logged out and back in on the binding.

It could be an Amazon issue, just wanted to put it out there if anybody else is having the issue.

Best, Jay

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2

Can confirm it. Same here. Last entry in events log file is as of 31.07.2023 18:10 CEST while it is being used normally at least once a day.

3

I don*t use amazonechocontrol, but maybe the key expired? or, even worse, maybe the API changed? So you would have to upgrade (minimum to OH3.4.5 as a first step - should be painless)

4

That‘s an issue with amazon not sending the push notifications for that any longer. There are reports from IoBroker with the same issue.

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5

Same issue here. Suddenly it stopped working. Hope anybody has an idea
 Or is there a workaround to react on a voice command?

6

I have the same problem. Thanks for help.

7

how should one be able to help 
?

This

means that it is not supported ( at this moment ) at the amazon end.
If information is not made available by amazon/alexa/push messages it can not be shown in the binding.

Question would be if that is intended or by accident. This is something that you can ask amazon support.

1 Like
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Hey JNK, are you hearing anything from IoBroker about if this feature is going away or any timeline when it’s should be back?

Best, Jay

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Some of the problems seem to have vanished without any change, others persist. Unfortunately this seems to have been removed permanently. We are looking into ways to improve that.

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@J-N-K Just to clarify, when you say “We are looking for ways to improve that”, do you mean that you or other Maintainers have contacts at Amazon to reach out to for things like this?

It would be a huge shame if Amazon decide to permanently remove this feature. I’ve got Sonos Ones all over the house and I use the lastVoiceCommand hook to do all manner of funky things!

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No, there is no direct connection to Amazon that I‘m aware of.

12

I see. I did attempt to contact Amazon via chat today, but spent an hour repeating that it wasn’t an issue with my echo device. The rep simply kept telling me to power cycle my Sonos Ones to see if it fixed the problem :roll_eyes:

Will try again next week and hope to get through to the right person.

13

Hey Alex,

This is a lost cause; you would need to have a contact within the Alexa development department (which will be a worldwide development team is my guess). No C/S representative will ever be able to get to you to correct person nor will they even understand what your asking them.

If you really want to go down that route, look at LinkedIn.

I believe two things happened with this last voice command issue.

  • it was a security issue
  • they realized that other systems (like OH, Homekit, etc.) was using this field to trigger stuff externally from the Amazon eco system and they want everything to flow through their eco system.

My two cents worth.

Best, Jay

1 Like
14

How much delay is acceptable for lastVoiceCommand and lastSpokenText? I have a solution, but it currently has a 15 second delay between the start of the conversation (i.e. the detected wake word “Alexa”) and the update of the channel.

The reason is that Amazon sends an event when Alexa starts recording something, but no event when the conversation ends, so the binding needs to actively request the activity record from the server. For me 15 seconds is a compromise that works fine, nearly every conversation (e.g. “What time is it” - “It is five minutes past eight”) is shorter, but it does not produce a delay that is too large.

3 Likes
15

I’m fine with a 15 second delay, it’s about triggering rules based on certain words/phrases said.

I’d rather have a delay than it NOT working at all.

Best, Jay

2 Likes
16

Can you do it for OH 3.4.5 - Release Build too please ? I don t have hardware( Pi 4) for the 4th version.

Thanks !

17

HI,
some news?

18

Those on openHAB 4 can try to download this file, uninstall the binding and then drop the kar in the addons folder. Please note that some Browsers rename .kar files to .mid during download, please make sure the file extension is .kar when dropping the file in the addons folder.

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19

Will you be doing a OH 3.x version? Please . . .

Best, Jay

20

I upgraded to openHAB 4 so I could give this .kar package a go. Thank you for taking the time to put it together. Unfortunately I can’t get it to work as you have described. There doesn’t seem to be any change in behaviour i.e. lastVoiceCommand does not receive updates, even after 15s.

lastSpokenText was a new one for me, and I can’t see it in the binding documentation (is it brand new?) 
anyway, I added an Item for it but it’s not getting any updates either. Have I missed a configuration step?