please add "open" & "close" utterances

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Bob asked · Sep 12, 2016 at 03:33 PM

please add "open" & "close" utterances

Liking the smart home skill, but to be (more) complete, you really need an open and close utterance.

I know I can add such things to a custom skill, but it's nowhere near as neat a solution as just saying

alexa, open garage door

alexa smart home

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5 Answers

Answer 1 · 2016-09-15T02:22:55Z

nivekmai answered · Sep 15, 2016 at 02:22 AM

Not just "open" and "close", we need to be able to expand the "root namespace" of echo. As a developer/user I should be able to control what Alexa will do with anything after she starts listening, it's super awkward to always say things like "Alexa, tell phone finder to find my phone". Why can't I write a skill that allows me to simply say "Alexa, where's my phone?". Similarly, if I want to control my TV, it's so awkward to have to say "Alexa, tell harmony to start watch TV". It would be so much nicer if I could say "Alexa, start watch TV".

There's so much opportunity for way less awkward extensibility if we're allowed to tie into the root request, rather than having to be namespaced behind our app name.

I feel like you would get far more interesting apps made if you were able to do this, I personally have held off from making apps because I don't want to say something silly like "Alexa, tell proper voice service to {insert a normal speech utterance here}".

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techlite · Feb 07, 2018 at 12:00 AM

I too have developed a garage door interface that uses essentially a smart switch (i.e. Alexa.power.controller) hardware that mimics a Wemo switch. I like the fact that Alexa deals with it by discovering and controlling it locally. I do not like being limited to "turn On" and "Turn Off" voice commands.

So, currently I am limited to "turn On" the garage door. I believe that writing a custom skill will allow me to utter "Alexa, ask garage to open my door". That will require an intermediate device cloud service because Lambda can't talks directly to my device. As far as I can tell, the smart home API is limited to turn On and turn off for switch open and close.

The real action is that to open a garage door, you only have to pulse a relay on then off for a short time. So saying "turn on" is really a misnomer when you mean open. My local hardware knows to pulse the relay on then off for 200 milliseconds in the turn on and turn off routines. Since I am limited to turn on and turn off, I have to run a check to see if the door is already open or in the process of opening and closing. Unfortunately, using local control, Alexa can only say "my door isn't responding" if I try to open a door that is not closed and vice versa

I realize that Alexa uses "open" to trigger a skill but I don't see any conflicts if we utter "ask myskill to open [device]" or "open myskill".

So, normal human speech includes open and close to describe a door action so maybe one solution is to add a standard smart home API for a device called "door device" where commands are "Open" and "Close", and a status query return of "opened" or "closed". I wonder why there isn't one. A few locally discovered basic devices other than switches would be nice to have like the Wemo switches. I don't even know where the Wemo switch local udp / http dialog is documented but maybe there are more devices that can be locally controlled?

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Answer 2 · 2018-02-08T18:08:54Z

pvr answered · Feb 08, 2018 at 06:08 PM

techlite - I found the solution for this issue. Within the Alexa App, create a "routine" (is in settings) where you create your proper utterance and in there you activate your "switch". This way, I can say "open" and it translates it into "TurnOn" but at least with that, you can say "Open the garage" and the app will translate it for you to "TurnOn" your garage :)

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Answer 3 · 2016-10-03T21:10:57Z

Josh answered · Oct 03, 2016 at 09:10 PM

+1 for this. Currently tying up a custom garage door opener and I think I'm going to have to either namespace it or tell the garage door to 'turn off...'

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techlite · Feb 08, 2018 at 03:26 PM

@Josh - I found that the newer garage doors have a wired digital push button that is not a simple door bell style. I found a way around it using this blog post from Bart Rogers.

Not sure what you do to "namespace" a device but my device is discovered as "Joes Door" since I wrote the ESP8266 code for a switch and relay. I still have to say "turn On" and "Turn Off" though.

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Answer 4 · 2019-10-13T15:26:13Z

philchillbill answered · Oct 13, 2019 at 03:26 PM

Check the semantic extensions (coming soon) feature detailed here: https://developer.amazon.com/blogs/alexa/post/49eff766-5d95-4faf-9205-2ab52ae8a437/announcing-updated-smart-home-building-block-apis-non-controllable-device-states-semantic-extensions-and-expanded-international-support

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Answer 5 · 2019-10-07T11:59:34Z

NewUser-c893cecc-9cbe-4361-900d-962006faeed1 answered · Oct 07, 2019 at 11:59 AM

Amazon, please add these options to the Smart Home SDK

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barry@amazon ♦♦ · Oct 08, 2019 at 01:23 PM

Hello and thank you for your message.

You can always post such feature requests in our Uservoice space over here.

Regards,
Barry

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please add "open" & "close" utterances

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