Savant-Alexa-Bridge

This project is to integrate Alexa on the Amazon Echo with Savant home automation systems.

A few notes when creating your RacePoint config:

• Words in the name of any custom workflow should be separated by spaces only. 'OpenGate' should be written as 'Open Gate'.
• Service Aliases should be named with spaces between words. 'MediaPlayer' should be named as 'Media Player'.
• Only custom workflows that you have enabled to show on the UI will work. (Tools > Review > Custom Workflow usage...)
• Keep service alias's simple, and unique. Otherwise Alexa may have problems understanding your requests
• Disable any A/V services you are not using (i.e, disable any audio only services if you dont use them)

To do:

• Enable support to run custom workflows
• Investigate enabling Environmental services. Some services such as lighting may have an existing Alexa Skill available, check the library to see.
• Look at a generic zone 'Turn off' command, rather than be having a service specific turn off command
• Introduce cli switches to only enable specific zones

Using Alexa

• Services are automaticly discovered from the currently active configuration on the host. Just tell Alexa to 'Discover devices' once the script is up and running
• A single instance of the script is currently limited to 64 services/workflows. This is a limitation on Amazon's side of things. So if you have more services/workflows than this, you will need to run multiple scripts and break out the zones you want to use
• To command Alexa to turn on or off a service just say 'Turn on [service alias] in the [zone]'. You can ommit 'In The' if you wish and just say 'Turn on [service alias][zone]'
• Command line arguments can be used to manipulate the script:
  • -z "Lounge,Master Bedroom,Kitchen" Comma seperated array of zones to discover. There must be no space after the ,
  • -p 4567 Run the script on a different port. If you are starting multiple scripts, The port number must be different for each instance of the script
  • -r Don't append the zone name to the serivice alias. This is handy if you are only discovering services for one zone in your whole config.
• When you upload a new config with new/different services you have to restart the script manually for it to discover changes

Important notes:

• Currently only tested on the Savant Pro Host
• This is currently unsupported on the SCH-2000 host as there is a bug in Ruby on this host that Savant are not going to resolve. If people want support on this host, please contact me and I can give you information on opening a support case with Savant. Hopfully if enough pople complain, we can get this fixed.
• When you look at your list of devices on the Alexa app, you will see they populate as Philips Hue White bulbs. This is normal.
• Integration is currently limited to 64 services/workflows.

Check out a live demo here: